levertovfan | Frustration and anger in a post that was cathartic for me to write, but you may want to skip

There's this horrible way in which a job search is subject to the whims of other people. I feel like I'm subject to the whims of other people, and when I get into an actual job, I'll be even more subject to the whims of other people. Right now I'm applying for a lousy job at Borders and I'm waiting for my reference, who is a Carleton professor with lots and lots on his plate, to get back to me that it's alright I use him as a reference. Every hour I wait is an hour in which it's likely they hire someone else. And I'm just an annoying blip on this prof's radar screen, the kid who worked for him a summer ago, the bottom of his to-do list. The job market is crazy right now. A hundred people will apply to a job the day after it's posted and I'll be so busy perfecting my cover letter that I won't get it in that day.

The want ads for jobs I'd like are all for people with 3 or 5 or 7+ years experience. No, I don't want to be an accountant or a building manager. I seem to be either applying to jobs for which I'm overqualified or jobs I feel like I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting because, see previous, I don't have any experience save summer jobs and the job market is swarming with overqualified candidates. Ergo my strategy of applying to part-time jobs where the competition is less intense.

To whom it may concern at whatever business I'm applying to:

I've got growth potential. I've got lots of potential groth. I've got growth up the wazoo. Not *a* growth, though, and not in any untoward places. And once you've hired me and I've spent a lot of time in your organization, then maybe I can draw on my mad Carleton skillz.

Sincerly yours,
Emily, stuck pacing my little room and rebooting my computer every 40 or 60 minutes when I use the internet.

In some of the jobs I am applying to, my well-being & the course of the job are going to depend very much on the individual personality of my supervisor. The job at the startup company, of course, is all about the head of the company. Hell, whether or not the company even exists in a few months depends on him, and he doesn't seem very dependable. And there's a job screenwriting a television show for this environmentalist (one of the jobs I probably don't have a snowball's chance in hell at, but, hey, he might decide he wants a bright young person from the best college in the state) who's also a political candidate and a one person business that would be highly dependant on his whims. And let's not forget, my last and only "real" job was one where the squabbling amongst my supervisors made it nearly impossible for me to work.

OK. That was cathartic.