It's Oh So Quiet . . .

It's oh so still . . .

Eh, never mind. I can't remember the rest of the words, and that's not what this post is about anyway. Now I'm just wasting time.

Being so quiet that I tend to fade away into the background is, shall we say, normal in my day to day life. But I don't like that it's starting to happen so soon after starting this blog. I did have plans for it. And then I got a job. And then I got distracted. And then I forgot those plans. And that's not okay. Not for me.

If re-joining the retail world has shown me anything, it's that (nice co-workers and good insurance aside) I don't uh . . . want to be there?

It's good to have this job in the sense that I have money coming in while I try to make other plans. The problem with this is that if I'm not careful, this job could easily take over my life. I haven't written anything in two months. I've been working. And when I wasn't working I was resting. Or spending the money I was making. Or just trying to bliss out as much as I could on movies or tv or music or books. This is all fine and good, except that I am trying to build a career that's not really related at all ( in any way that I can see) to my current situation. There are things I want to do and I've been letting myself become distracted, by fear that I don't belong there, and by some semblance of a comfort zone at home and at work. Work is not exactly comfortable for me yet, but I can at least get myself through one shift at a time.

They say that everything that happens in your life at a given time is somehow related to other things happening in your life. Or something like that. For example, in addition to my job that I get paid at, I started volunteer work where I go in and read with first graders to help boost their literacy skills and get them interested and even excited about reading. This week I read with a little girl I don't normally meet with. She grabbed comic books she wasn't really interested in, and wanted me to read them to her, telling me that she didn't like to read, because she didn't know how.  Of course I told her that if she practiced reading she would get good at it. We only have a half hour each with these kids, and I'd never met with this girl before, so I'm not sure what kind of impact, if any at all, that I had on this girl, but  . . . yeah. Practice is what makes you good. It helps you reach goals and gets you where you want to be. It's advice I need to follow, but just haven't been.

I just don't want to give up. I don't want this blog to go the way of other blogs I've started and then immediately abandoned. I don't want to just not write.

I promise I'll keep practicing and it'll get better than this. This isn't exactly the kind of thing I want to keep writing. I know this post in particular isn't great. Or you know, good. But I'll be back and it'll get better.

Well, it's been a good run . .

Not done here, but . . .  it's been a busy couple of weeks.

Last week I had three job interviews and got some volunteer work lined up. None of those paid jobs worked out, and I was fine with that. You know how you just kind of get an ominous vibe during the interview? And you don't have anything else lined up, so if you get a job offer you know you have to take it, but you really don't want to? That happened. Luckily they had somewhat the same feelings about me, and told me so.

I'd kind of like to add here that I've noticed something I've started doing in recent job interviews. I don't know if it was really a conscious choice, or what. Maybe talking with people at the employment department did boost my confidence enough that I finally felt I had the power or the right to do this: Just be brutally honest in interviews.

When asked in a phone interview this week if I had knowledge or experience with machinery, I bluntly said "Yeah, not really", instead of "Not really, but I'm willing and excited to learn!!". At a clothing store interview, they asked me if I'd be comfortable pushing people to sign up for credit cards, and instead of saying "Oh, I've done this kind of thing before, I could pick this up, no trouble,", I said "I'll be honest, it'll probably take me a little while to get comfortable with that.". And by 'a little while', I meant 'a long time', or more likely, 'probably never'. I just didn't want these jobs enough to be dishonest about the kind of person I am to get them. Just the way it is now. Feels pretty good, too

This brings me to this past Tuesday. I had an interview at a grocery store. I didn't necessarily want this job more than others that I had applied for. I was honest in the interview. When he asked me  about my long and short-term goals, I admitted that what I'd really like to do is write in one way or another. When he asked about disagreements I'd had with co-workers in the past, I didn't lie just so I could demonstrate problem-solving skills; I was upfront and said it hasn't really come up because generally I can get along with just about anyone. At work anyway.

I feel like the stars aligned a little bit with this interview too, because I didn't feel sickeningly nervous like I have in past interviews. The manager I interviewed with seemed genuinely impressed that I had my Bachelor's degree, told me he took notes on my "great" resume, and seemed to be enthusiastic and supportive about my future writing goals. And at the end of the interview he seemed excited to offer me the job.

I got the job. I'm gonna have money again. And maybe a life.

Instead of saying "So much for the English Major's Job Search", I think the focus of the blog is just going to shift a little bit. While I'm working, I'm still going to be writing and developing interests outside of work. I'm aware that I could make this job that I have now my career, but I'm also aware that if I do, I've just spent three years and more money than I'm willing to mention wasting my time. And I'm done wasting time.

Maybe the name of the blog will change, but probably not, because I'm lazy that way. It is still sort of a job search anyway, since I'm still looking for a way to put the skills I learned at school to work. I'm going to be stepping out of my comfort zone, making mistakes, and falling on my face, which I've always been painfully afraid of. So who doesn't want to read about that, really?

So I hope you'll come back, because the blog continues! Probably! (kidding! . . . I think!)

Interview Hell

Hey Guys,

This week I want to talk about interviews and my hate/hate relationship with them. I haven't quite figured out yet how to pass an interview with flying colors. I usually leave them feeling jittery (not in a good way), tallying up all the mistakes I made, and cursing myself for not carrying band-aids in my purse, as my cuticles and the skin around my fingernails is often bloody and raw after an interview.

I have reason to believe that I got my first job based on the fact that I had a car to get there, and I was available in the evenings. That's kind of it. I had no prior job experience, aside from baby-sitting, but the job was part-time in a beauty supply store in the mall. I could be trained easily enough ( I wasn't, but now's not the time for that story!). My second job I still don't know how I got, I just remember that I damn near cried because I was so nervous. This was a job in a dollar store. You read that right.

A dollar store.

Same thing happened with my third job, I was so nervous that I imagine I resembled The Joker with my wide-eyed, ear-to-ear grin. This apparently sat very well with the store manager, who told the head supervisor "Well, she gets the green light from me", before the supervisor took me to her office to go over availability.

This kind of experience is what the norm is for me in a job interview. Well, maybe not the whole getting-of-the-job thing, but the wide-eyed nervousness and overcompensating smile happens more often than not. Doesn't matter how well-prepared I am ahead of time, or how well I've researched the company. As soon as I get in the building, the nervous energy kicks in.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an interview at a department store. While I made it through the interview with the skin around my fingernails intact, I still feel like I looked too overexcited or nervous to be there.

Why?

Seriously, I'm asking. Why is it like that? It might have something to do with being conscious of the fact that I have to impress these people. That's the whole point of the meeting. I've never enjoyed this, and I don't think I've been particularly good at it, not just in the career category, but in most areas of my life. That's why I often cringed when I had to do a presentation in class (especially solo presentations. . . I like having other people to lean on a little bit), or even just hand in a paper.

So my next question is: what does it take? How do I go in there and treat these interviews like they're no big deal? Does it all just have to do with an attitude shift, and that's most, if not all of the battle? Sure. I 'm sure it does. I've had this thought before, and I've had people lecture me on it as well. But this is where I begin working myself into a frenzy. How do I do that??? It's so much easier said than done.

I guess I don't have any concrete answers to the questions I've posed here, and the point of this particular post is to say "Hey, who's with me? You get those feelings too?"  Sorry. I don't know if I should be, but I am. I feel like if I'm taking the time to write this, that I should at least have some valuable advice to offer, but I kind of don't this time. I guess if anyone does have any advice, or even just anything to add, feel free to leave a comment, but otherwise that's what I've got for you this time.

P.S. I realize it's been a while since I've posted . . . or maybe it just feels that way to me. I would like these to be more frequent though, and I've started making a list of topics I can discuss. See ya next time.

Intros

Heyyy People,

Hi. My name's Gretchen. I have an unhealthy obsession with (most) animals, coffee, and makeup. Feel like you know me? Okay. Let's just jump right into this, shall we?

Last summer I graduated from college with my Bachelor's in English. I'm in my late 20's, and I've been out of the whole "working girl" game since 2008. 7 years, you guys. Resigning from my last job was a mistake on my part, but that's a post for another time. Yes, I resigned from my job in late 2008. Yes, I still kind of feel like an idiot for it. But I was 22. People make mistakes when they're 22.

I had a transfer degree, and tried a couple of times (unsuccessfully) to enroll in 2 different universities. Third time ended up being a charm and in 2011, I went back to the university I had tried to attend in the first place. Three years, a few crises, and many, many essays and presentations later, I earned my degree. But let's go back to 2011 for a minute . . .

Ahh, 2011. A little movie called Bridesmaids dominated movie theaters, and Adele was taking the airwaves by storm with a tune called Rolling in the Deep. Think hard. Remember? Good. So this was around the same time I made my return to school. Plenty of people were happy to hear of this decision, and immediately wanted to know what I planned to study. My reply, that I was planning to study in the English literature department, was usually met with this question: "Oh! What grade do you want to teach?"

. . . Eeeerhhhhhm . . .  (quietly) none of them?

I figured I might get some of that, and a lot of people do take an English lit degree back into the classroom to teach. It was frustrating though, to have so many people actually laugh at me and tell me that teaching was the only thing an English degree was good for anyway, that a Bachelor's degree is only as good as a high school diploma these days. and that if I didn't plan to teach I'd still be unemployable upon my graduation. These were all things I really, seriously heard from people.

These things are not true. I'm willing to be a little vulnerable here and say that I'm someone who struggles with self-esteem and depression anyway, and hearing these things didn't help. And I'm sure the people I talked to were not trying to bully me. But these are the things that made it harder for me to branch out of the retail world during college and after graduation. So far, these have been the only jobs I've actively gone after.

For the record, here's just some of what a lil' ol' English degree offers:

• A well-rounded education: at the university I went to anyway, students were encouraged to take classes outside of the English major. Some of the other classes I took were music, history, and film.
• Comprehensive knowledge of major literary movements and the people who contributed to them: Courses like these test your memory, if nothing else. But it's not nothing else. Learning these things sparks curiosity, offers insight into the past. and, for lack of a better phrase, gives otherwise uninterested people something to be passionate about. Wanna know more about Old and Middle English slang? We got that. Insight into what women's lives were like in the 18th century? Look no further than a women's narratives class. Comics and graphic novels? Welcome!!! Major players of the Harlem Renaissance? . . . You get the idea.
• Writing practice: So what do we do after we've read all this stuff? Write about it, of course! I've written papers as simple as a paragraph in response to the first four chapters of an assigned reading, and as involved as a twelve (I believe) page response/rebuttal to a scholarly article on The Tempest. I've written papers in french (part of the B.A. program requires you to choose a second language). Some of these papers have been torture (I'm lookin' at you, 15 pages on 19th century printing presses!), and some have actually been kind of a blast to work on and think about (critical analysis of "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion", anyone?)
• Practice talking in front of people: No, we don't all just sit with our noses in books. Some of us may try to get away with that, but it usually doesn't work. Not only do we get together in groups to discuss what we'll be presenting, but usually we have to organize that information into a power point presentation, and find ways to engage the rest of the class. Our grades depend on it. Also, if the occasional group member slacks off, or bails altogether, the rest of us have to think fast and be on our toes. We have to cover for them and learn the information they promised to present.

So this is what I spent three years doing. I'll probably talk more about this on the blog in the future, too. I've made mistakes that I wish I could have corrected, and that are coming back to bite me now. Hindsight, amiright?

This past year, I've been applying for jobs, like a good college graduate, even if they are all retail jobs. Retail jobs are nothing to laugh at, either. I've done retail jobs, and they are mentally and emotionally draining, not to mention physically challenging. Maybe not as challenging as other jobs, but I remember backaches and sore feet at the end of my shifts. Not hearing back from potential employers and having online applications rejected before I could even talk to a manager had me discouraged, and I kind of gave up around the new year.

About a month ago though, I found out through my mother about a program at the employment office that helps people in their job search. I don't know how long this has been going on, and I had no idea it even existed. But since I've started with it, it's worked wonders for my motivation alone. I've started applying for stuff again. I'm starting to dream a little bigger, and recognize that I can do more than retail. Old habits do die hard though, and I do sometimes still find myself looking for retail work.

I'm learning the hard way. Or I was, before I knew just what kind of resources are available to me. I'm making mistakes and gleaning the lessons from them. Part of the goal here is to pass those lessons along to anyone who takes an interest in this little endeavor of mine. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out what the other parts of my goal ought to be. I guess they'll reveal themselves to me through the writing process.

So . . . Welcome.