So I got a job as a Resident Advisor at a school in San Diego for international students. I took the job after three-plus months of looking for something that has to do with my major, a B.S. in High Technology Management. I applied for job after job after job and heard nothing. I went on interview after interview and wasn't offered anything. Short of feeling absolutely retarded and useless, I did get offered this job, but I make $300 a month and get a place to live in exchange for working with the students. It's good, but I need to make more money... I can barely survive much less pay off my debt ($7000 now) making this. So, I was speaking with the academic director of the school about the possibility of using my teaching experience in France to teach English here to the international students, and she said it might be a possibility, (I'd have to interview for the position and submit my résume, which the thought of just scares me. I think my résume is cursed - if I submit it to a job, there's like a 120% chance I won't get called back... such is life though I guess in this economy.
I mean, I know there a lot of people, seemingly, in my boat, but I don't know anyone else who just cannot, for the life of them, find a job, other than Rebecca and myself. It almost makes me feel like I wasted 6 years in college, putting in a lot of hard work, for nothing, if I can't get a job. I mean, I applied to good jobs that i was underqualified for, jobs I was perfectly qualified for, and jobs that I was overqualified for (front desk receptionist?!) and I got nothing, for three months, so I'm not sure what i'm supposed to do. Do I wait, not being able to pay off any of my bills, or do I do say goodbye to my education and take a new path?
I guess that is one semi-new crossroads that I am at. I still have the desire to move back to France, it's still there, very strong, but I'm just not sure how to make all the xs cross and actually do it, but I refuse to get stuck into a job and a career that just "makes money" for the sake of keeping me alive - that is no way to live life. I have the opportunity, maybe, to become a teacher here, and the money wouldn't be too great - but it would get me something, and I could use the teaching experience in that to get back to France and teach there. In fact, it might be one of the only ways that I could actually go back there and make some type of living for myself. I don't speak French fluently enough to work a real job, (my last blog post took me over an hour and a half to write,) although my French is getting a lot better.
I think if I take this route, if I get this CELTA certificate, (like the TEFL but more accepted world-wide,) I would be able to work here for a year, giving me a total of two years' teaching experience, then I could get a job that pays the equivalent of about $35,000 a year teaching english in France. My plan then would be to save up and get my Masters degree in France (is Masters capitalized?) which would allow me to get a better job, but I am feeling more and more drawn to the education field the longer I live. I feel that my personality, the way God made me, is not suited to the sale and production and marketing and advertising of widgets. I want to feel that at the end of the day, i have made a real impact on people, made a change to someone's life, and the thing that frustrates me so is that I've known this for a long time. How are you, at 18, when you go to college, supposed to know what the rest of your life should look like and what carreer path you should take? I chose HTM because I thought it would net me good money and that I'd be a nerd forever, but I find myself caring less and less about computers and technology everyday and more and more interested in people, in culture, in life, in art, in drama, in music, and in the things that give life purpose, not 1s and 0s.
So I could keep trying for jobs here that have something to do with my major, but each time I read over a job, I just look at it and I get this nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking "I would hate doing that - why would I apply for that?" "oh - money, that's right." And then I turn around and look at the massive amount of hours I put into my current job which pays me pennies and feel that I don't mind working extra because I love doing it, and if I were able to teach here as well, that'd be pretty good. I figure I would love a teaching job here because the job I had in France teaching was the first job I had EVER had that I really, really, really liked, felt comfortable in, naturally good at, and that satisfied me at the end of the day. Every other job I've had in the business world left me feeling unsatisfied, left me feeling that no boss really cared what i did or how I felt or whether I put in extra hours here and there, they wanted numbers, products, solutions - and I can't stand the way people talk and act in the business community, all the little catch-phrases and hotwords that they use.
So, I don't know what to do.. still... it's been what... 3, 4 months since France was winding down, and I'm still caught in this afterparty of lostness, trying to figure out where my life should go. I hope that with more time and more thought, something will dawn on me- I have always been SO logical in my ability to parse things and take mounds of thought and come to a conclusion that is satisfying to me, but this time I just feel like it's too overwhelming. Each decision I make to take a step forward introduces two new problems that set me back, so I tread water and get nowhere, and I have not moved upstream in three months I feel.....
.jpg)
