Week Three

Another week has flown by. Life continues to suck hugely.
First things first, no I don’t have a job yet. In a modern world it is unusual to hear anything at all from an employer unless they are want to interview you so I was surprised when all three of the jobs I applied for last week responded to say they had received my applications and I might hear from them at a later date. It didn’t really mean anything but it is nice to know that there are some courteous employers out there. I won’t count them as ‘responses’ at the bottom of the post though as for that they need to offer an interview or decline me.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying to meet with the university careers advisor but she proved surprisingly elusive. Well I finally managed to track her down and headed into university to meet her. It was odd being back when it already feels like that chapter of my life has long since gone. The careers office is fairly sizeable at our uni so it was a little odd to find just myself and the advisor in there. It had the potential to be a useful meeting and it probably would have been had it happened when I had first arranged it. Unfortunately most of what she said to me were things I had already worked out, like what options I actually have, from intense Googling over the last few weeks. An earlier meeting would have saved me considerable effort.
One thing she said was that 70% of jobs are never advertised. This was not what I wanted to hear. Apparently most jobs are got through personal connections to the employers. I reckon no more than 3 local employers even have the slightest clue who I am.
In another meeting at uni I met my lovely personal tutor who was very nice to me. The main purpose of the discussion, though it drifted considerably, was to tell her about the sort of thing I’d like on my non-teacher based reference. She informed me she would do a tweaked version of my reference for every job I applied for. It feels like I am the main antagonist in a video game and am occasionally levelling up and adding extra characters who play a supporting role in the mission.
This is a green 1UP mushroom from the Mario games.
1UP
My job search has not gone very well this week. I’m getting better at knowing where to look and it is just a question of regularly checking to see the new vacancies. I have applied for one more job, working at a local library. I am a big book lover and an obsessive alphabetiser so working in a library would be a good job. I only found it just before the closing date so if I hear anything it won’t be long away.
The big frustration with jobs at the moment is that I keep finding what I am calling “nearlies”. I want to apply for them except for the fact they have one big problem like only being part-time (I will consider part-time but I need at least four days a week), being too far away or not having enough experience. If a lot of these jobs provided training I know I could do a fantastic work for them. Alas.
Just to make things in my life a bit worse, this year my hayfever has reached new heights. I’ve not even been going out the house much but it’s bad- when I leave the house it is horrendous. I’ve only suffered from it for the last few years but this year it is awful. My eyes are the worst, I’d consider ripping them out if they weren’t so useful. Still, I have obtained some tablets today which hopefully will be some sort of miracle cure.
A hilarious photo of a man sneezing
Google Image search hayfever and this is the type of hilarity you get
All in all, not much news to share this week. With deadlines approaching though if I am going to hear about any of the jobs I applied for I expect to do so soon. In the meantime I will continue to browse for jobs and get frustrated about nearlies. Return later in the week for another post on, erm, something or other.
Jobs applied for: 5   Responses: 0

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventure of the Great Reset

Image
In which I reflect and regroup... I am not going to lie, 2024 has been tough so far. You begin a year with such high hopes and sometimes the year decides to take those high hopes and crush them in the most brutal way.  I'm currently enjoying the tranquility of the summer holidays and a rest that has perhaps never felt quite so well-earned. Perhaps the best piece of advice I was given during the many training sessions I have had over the last few years is to make the most of the resets in your life. That might be small resets, as small as a few seconds in the middle of the day or they might be bigger resets like six weeks off work.  Part of this reset has been getting outside. The year so far has not been helped by the endless miserable weather. We always like to joke in the UK that it rains a lot but this year has taken that to the next level. We often think of climate change as meaning we will get hotter weather but it just means that the weather will change and will get more...
Read more

Best Picture 2024

Image
The 2024 Oscars ceremony is mere hours away and I've finally finished writing my annual post about this year's Best Picture nominees. This is my sixth year doing this and once again I've seen all the nominees. Let's take a look! American Fiction Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright who is perhaps best known as Felix Leiter in the Daniel Craig Bond films, is an intelligent African-American professor and writer whose high-brow books sell poorly. Frustrated, he writes a satire of "black" books which is unexpectedly taken by the publishing world to be a serious piece of literature. It's a hilarious film with Wright having lots of fun taking on Monk's alter-ego. At the same time though it's also a clever critique of the sort of media that is consumed by white people to make them feel better about racial issues and the film points out that black people can have normal lives beyond ghettos and gangs- the film itself also tells an ord...
Read more

1000 Miles

Image
Famous Scottish duo The Proclaimers once sang the words "I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door". These lyrics are now part of my plan for 2019. Well, the falling down bit isn't part of the plan but with dyspraxia the likelihood of falling down at someone's door during the next twelve months is not out of the question. I have never tended to set traditional resolutions but I do love a challenge. # walk1000miles is a big challenge run by Country Walking  magazine. The rules are fairly flexible but the idea is simply to walk 1000 miles in a calendar year. 1000 miles is about the distance between the UK and Poland. Now I actually do a fair amount of walking and have hit my 10,000 daily step target every day for nearly three years now. Walking a total of 1000 miles would probably not be a huge challenge if I counted every bit of walking I did, including the many miles of chasing chi...
Read more