Story Time: New Beginnings
It’d be funny if it wasn’t funny. Well duh Jilly. You know what? My mom would’ve hated that. She’d get so irritated when us kids said duh to each other. If we called each other stupid, that was worse than saying fuck you. Not that I ever said the eff word out loud in front of my parents. I still don’t say it out loud all that often. I think it a lot and I write it a lot …
I never heard a curse word out of either of my parents mouths. Well until I was in 4th grade that is. We had a set of utensils hanging above the stove and when a ladle was knocked off the rack and fell behind the stove, I heard my mother say “oh shit”. And I thought “oh shit” this is bad. My ears!
Mom also disliked chewing gum and us sticking our tongues out at each other. In fact, she’d tell us Mother Mary cries every time kids stick out their tongues! Well that cured me. The thought of making Mother Mary cry. Heavens no. What an awful thing to do.
Now back to it’d be funny if it wasn’t funny …
Lulu is looking for work. Four long years and she graduated with a degree in psychology and minor in criminal justice. Yay! Not to take away anything from her, she made it through but the degree is not what you’d call in demand. Still she is done and looking for her first “real” job. But and it’s a BIG but, she has no experience. She worked a few part time gigs but nothing really that is resume worthy. She has loads of volunteer hours but that’s not really the kind of experience employers are looking for.
She’s been told no and received more that a dozen “you suck” emails. We called them that at work too. The dreaded automated rejection letter that goes something like this:.
You’re great! Yea right.
Your skillz are mad. Sure they are.
But we’re going with someone better. Gee thanks a lot. I suck.
Lulu asked me “Why don’t they just say, I didn’t get the job? Telling me they are going with someone else is salt to the wound”. Hear that you HR types!
I remember being in the same boat … worse with only a high school diploma. Crying to my dad about getting turned down for no experience but how was I supposed to get experience without someone giving me a chance. He told me he just had a feeling it would work out and somehow it did. But when you’re knee deep in the middle of it, hard to see things turning out okay.
And this is not about me. Shocker I know! For I am the sun and the sun is me.
Had Rona not hit, she would have gone back to the campus in March. She had two interviews and an on site career fair that were cancelled. Not that she would have got those jobs either but she had a plan. That plan has changed significantly.
Still she keeps trying. Bless her heart. These days everything in online. Not like me walking into a placement agency and being sent out to companies that were hiring. She set up her profiles on all the sites. Somehow in applying for two of the jobs, her name went through as San Antonio. She was pissed. She sat there for quite some time, pounding on her laptop keyboard until finally correcting her info. Of course her brother has taken to calling her San Antonio. See it’d be funny, if it wasn’t funny.
As always, more to come.
J-Dub's Grin and Bear It 