Cold Calling

Today I had to make a few cold calls to various companies. Obviously, none of them worked out. They were quite painful to make, and I can't imagine doing this full-time.

I'm worried that I may end up having to do cold calls eventually. Recruiters often try to push marketing majors into sales. Of course, if I were actually great at selling, I would've skipped college and went straight into sales.

The Student Loan Company, Part II

Continued from "The Evil Student Loan Company" (which is no longer available).

Apparently, I graduated from college with over $20,000 of student loans. And, I didn't realize that until this week. Haha! College-Degree-Fail. :P

In my defense, one of the loan agencies had not contacted me until now, an entire year later. I finally went back to my school to get all my financial records.

Part-time vs. Full-time

"Americans aged 18 to 29 had easily the highest underemployment rate in July of any age group, at 28.4%, including 11.8% who were unemployed and 16.6% who were employed part time but wanted full-time work. Among all U.S. adults in the workforce, a higher percentage of women than of men are underemployed."

I'm currently applying for a job that's more like this:

If I somehow get this job, should I even consider accepting?? (There's no overtime, of course, but having health insurance is tempting.) I'm hoping it's going to be no more than 60 hours at the office per week, but the industry average works out to around 80. 50 hours sounds like a dream come true.

Of course, I could just go do something else if I don't mind spending the rest of my life broke. There's always the parents' basement.

The real problem here

 Online commenter:

"I disagree with your insinuation that wanting a job with decent pay and benefits is some kind of selfish materialism. The real problem here is that our middle class is shrinking, and the income gap between the top 20% and everyone else is enormous — and yet it's the remaining 80% of people at the bottom who keep getting asked to make some sacrifices and quit being so materialistic."

So true.

Prayer does wonders

I'm still hoping everything works out. Not to get all religious on you, but praying works wonders. It definitely picked me up from the lowest of my unemployment-lows. I promised myself (and God) that I would do a post on the benefits of prayer if things worked out. And here it is.

I pretty much gave up on the job hunt and stumbled upon my last few interviews by chance. For one of them, I had a sudden urge to browse my school's job board. Everything that has happened recently has been a miracle.

That said, I'm currently still waiting... for what, I'm not sure. One of the things that scares me the most about the "real world" is job-related stress. I'm fine with deadlines, but the constant grind and daily beating associated with some jobs/industries terrifies me. I've heard horror stories of how bad it can get: 100+ hour workweeks, the constant fear of messing up/losing your job/embarrassing your firm, hating waking up every morning, or worse, not being given the chance to wake up at all because you were pulling an all-nighter. (Excuse the poor grammar.) Fortunately, 95% of jobs aren't like that. However, due to the recession, many employers are now hinting that 40-hour weeks are a thing of the past. Going above-and-beyond the call of duty is no longer the exception   it's in the job description, literally.

I hope I have a job after all of this is done. Something that I will enjoy waking up for.

Crazy Week

I've been following several unemployment blogs for months. Eventually, you'll reach the post where the blogger writes:  "This is an awkward situation in the context of this blog, but I've finally found a job!"

Maybe that's why I started this blog? Hoping I could soon join their employed ranks once my incessant complaining gets released into the depths of the blogosphere? LOL.


I would hate to do that to you, dear readers. I must mention that I got lucky and have been on two interviews within the past month. During each interview, it was painfully obvious that I lack experience and have a very shallow understanding of the respective industry. But both times, the interviewers seemed to have developed a decent impression of me.


Okay, enough blathering: I finally may have gotten a job offer. I think I panicked in the moment and mumbled a lower salary than is average for the industry. My mind is still reeling from everything that's been going on.


Anyway, I have no clue what I'm supposed to do now. What should I do if I get the job? The idea of working terrifies me! What do I do next if I don't? I can't focus on anything anymore... I guess I'll go pray for things to work out. I have no idea what "things" I'm referring to nor what "working out" means.


Random: I think I might have gotten my first bed bug bite. (Thankfully, I got it when traveling over the last two days   so it was not from my home.)