I never expected it to be a sprint...but this..

...this is a bloody marathon.

I haven’t posted in here since August.  And why? I’m not so sure.  Probably plain laziness. 

I did work in College until the start of the new academic year which is a plain enough excuse until October.  So I never did get to meet the hundred or so people I have dealt with, handled, and contacted.  Which I suppose, being in the epicentre of a job which follows so many people through such an important part of their life, it’s kinda not rewarding to see how happy they are.  In fact the best I saw of it was one student recognised me from a tour and said he was incredibly happy with his choice which made me very happy indeed.  And so I left that job with my head held high choosing to ignore the pulling my hair out times or holding my head in my hands while repeatedly saying out loud “Why, just why?!”.  All in all, sucking up to (or rather trying to be amiable with) the boss for so long paid off as she finally saw fit to sit down and write me a reference.

And so that’s the stage I’m at now.  Yes, since October I’ve managed to rekindle my note-taking job, gain another job working on a World Heritage Site (it’s less glamourous than you’d think) and try applying for all sorts of jobs from NHS, retail, jobs within the university and jobs in an office.  And guess what? The success rate is an overwhelming – 0.  Well that was until I got an interview for a Primary PGCE.  It’s still in early stages but I’m going to clutch at that and run with it, I’m going to run with it and make something with it, cos if I don’t…well where will I be next year? Probably about a stone heavier and sat where I am right now.

So here’s to prepping for my interview, and here’s perhaps to a more eventful time in the next few days.  However, the more I’m being stagnant the more likely I’ll visit this blog.

Never ending revolution

This is just a brief blog to say:-

It's weird how the life you lead at the age of 8, comes back around when you grow old and aged.

It never ended...

Despite reckoning that this blog would become high in activity with me posting prolifically, you may be wondering precisely why it has in fact been desolate.  Instead of assuming that I was forever departing from college I am still working there.

Why?
Well to my utter disbelief I was asked to fill in in a temporary position for the admissions secretary.  This was a role I was eager about, before I thought about it...  The person who was supposedly in charge of me has decided to take off the next two weeks, leaving me and the rest of the staff puzzling over what exactly I should be doing.  So I'm left doing back breaking activities, working 11 hours a week.  Just 11 hours.  At a rate that doesn't match the job I'm taking over.  Not only that but they expect me to be around college anyway to answer to the beck and call of people who happen to wonder through the door.  Great stuff.  It's like I've walked into some melodramatic time warp and found myself in the same place as I was in 2010.  Not exactly moving on in leaps and bounds, and not exactly on track to meet my target of £10,000.  In fact my funds are quite dire, and pay hasn't even touched my bank account.  I've not had a lick, a drop, or splash of cash enter my bank since I got some tax back.  So now I'm sitting under the £100 mark and desperately seeking new ways to make money.

I'm guessing you're sat there thinking, why are you complaining you've got a job.  But for the last 3 years I have got myself involved in all sorts of jobs to make ends meet.  Some I have literally hit the jackpot.  The majority alas have been back breaking ones, and this is the one.  It's hard going.  I love giving tours but not when I'm on my 5th one and not had a taste of food since 7pm the night before.  Or trying to get a laugh or reception from a crowd of tired and unamused parents and equally bored kids.  But I love it.  I honestly do.  Not lately though.  And the office work itself is moving file from a -> b, it's so immensely boring that in actual fact I just end up staring and doing it mechanically, going through 10-20 files before I notice I should have changed this or ticked it off here.

I figured this week, maybe it's because I'm reading Alan Sugar, that work is for money.  No matter how decent the person is no-one really works for nothing.  And this is what I've been doing for the last 3 years.
So I have a renewed vigour to find something, anything, that pays.  And today I've launched a full scale attack on all things I can think of to get a job forgetting the seemingly unhelpful graduate bureaus.  If you want something you got to go out and get it.  And I'm going to start by trying to get out of my college.

It's all over...so what now?

The last week has been one of great change.

Wednesday saw me sitting my first ever 'real job' interview away from the university.  Without exhausting you with extensive details, I can honestly say that the whole interview appeared to try and delve into my very soul with such ridiculous questions as 'No-one can maintain popularity with everyone; describe a time in which you have been unpopular and have reconciled the situation' and 'what is the worst job experience you've ever had'.  For some reason I felt it was within my duty to answer each and ever question in depth, which in hindsight I should have gone 'to be honest, really can't think of a time'.  And so with that I was inevitably waiting for a fail, and so I got, the next day, via First Class post.  And so yet another job rejection.

Friday started off at 7.30am for graduation.  The whole ceremony, alongside me accidently forgetting my receipt for my robes (and not needing it anyway), spilling purple nail varnish all over my hands (and hence facing the prospect of shaking the Chancellor Bill Bryson's hand and staining it) and dropping toothpaste down my new black top (becoming a potent blemish in all photos), was rather surreal.  I don't know which was the most bizarre scenario; whether it was a man dressed like a town crier making us whoop and 'ogg' and mexican wave to try and get us in the mood, or whether it was walking on stage in utter silence, or walking out to a standing ovation.  But no matter how surreal it was, it signified one thing, the end of my education career.  And nothing sealed this fact more than moving out of my home for the last three years and moving back into my family home.

So now I'm sat on my bed, watching Top Gear, writing this in some vain attempt to try and make myself of some creative use.  And this is where I must say that I am very much likely to become a prolific blogger.  But as a blogger I have established a number of goals.  Those which have been highlighted in previous blogs about getting over the parental insecurity issue, the getting a job and reaching my first £10 000.  But also new one's such as fully exploring the UK and losing the weight I have steadily gained over the last few years (3 stone just at university!).

So here's to day one of freedom, alas day two and three will be consumed by work back at my college, but passed that, what will happen is fully attributable to fate.

Getting the job done.

So I'm graduating this week.  After all the hum-ing and hah-ing, putting off work by going to university, and just general laziness, now is the crunch.  I have no other option but to work.

Those of you who know me will know that I always seem to be working.  And not just the one job, but two or three at the same time.  And over the last few weeks, despite wanting to soak up new found (adult) freedom I found job after endless job to do.  In fact I even started unconsciously flipping through the infuriating GRB website and joining more (equally frustrating) graduate sites.  So I'm sat here, little less than a month from finishing my exams working two jobs and waiting to hear back from three more.

This is my situation:-

1. A holiday rep job.  The perfect opportunity to travel and work courtesy of a massive money making travel agents.  Status: REJECT.
2. Learning tutor in a Secondary School.  The possibly opportunity to enter an educational environment for a years contract lending itself to further training qualifications. Status: FAIL TO GET BACK TO ME.
3. Science Explainer.  A role as a fun explainer of all things science-y, including giving talks in a planetarium and science lab. Status: CONSIDERING.
4. Education Support Worker.  Helping those who have neuropsychological disorders get the education they require by providing assistance.  Status: INTERVIEW (finally)
5. Library assistant.  Working to shape up my college library. Status: ONGOING.
6. College tour guide.  Showing people around and adopting a lively entertaining manner. Status: ONGOING (never-ending seemingly)

And here's me thinking that maybe I did just deserve to take a year out...

But now I have a new semi-goal...reach the £10,000 stage in under a year...Oh please, please, please!

Just £9,800 to go...

Realising reality...

I'm currently taking about 20 minutes out of intense revision mid-finals to write this as a method of catharsis.

So what's up? Well I came home to really concentrate on my revision, heck being at university is just a world of procrastination (and all those who have been there I'm sure you can agree!).  Home, on the other hand, is just a world full of solitary confinement - or is if you're me.  So, there I was, head in my hands going over why oxytocin might or might not be a facilitator for human mating, enhancement of social recognition or inhibition of fear to allow the opposite sex to mount you (pleasant), and why this pair bonding cannot propagate minus the inherent role of the dopaminergic reward system, when I noticed an email.  It was let another listless attempt of the Graduate Recruitment Bureau (GRB) trying to get me to apply for yet another job, another job away from this clapped out region.  And so I looked at the details.  "Good interaction skills? (tick), good interview skills? (tick), analytical thinking (well I did get an A in Critical Thinking AS-so, tick), confidence in stats? (errmmm...well not really-cross), experience in the medical/pharmecutical area (cross)...If you tick all the boxes please send your C.V. to....".  Foiled yet again by the dreaded 'experience'. Thank you again GRB for sending yet another useless advert my way.  But it got me thinking.  I've been part of this website thing for 2 months now and yet have I been advertised a job in the region I actually selected? No.  In fact if I hadn't carelessly ticked every box and ever profession I probably would have been thinking that the GRB hadn't got my email correct despite doing the obligatory 'confirm your email' nonsense.  So it dawns on me, the only real way I'm going to be able to get a good career is by moving.

And here's the complication.  My mother.

She walks by my door and so I shout that I've been looking up a job.  "Oooh" she says, "sounds good, where at?" Me: "London", Her "Oh no you can't go there, you have to stay here, look for jobs around here, it's no good moving, you can't afford it".  And there slams the biggest door in my life.  They always tell you in secondary school etc "Oh you can't drop this subject, you'll be shutting doors". Well, hello big door slam.  Cos in one sentence my mother had completely and firmly closed the case on me actually getting a job, with money, with prospects, with an independent life.  And so I sit here thinking: how people laugh that she has to do my washing when I'm at uni; I get angry that she still gives me 'pocket money' when I've been earning my own money for the last 3 years by going from job to job; that I still need to tell her where I'm going and ask her permission to leave; to come back for meals; to have to rely on her cos she hasn't bothered teaching me the appropriate life skills; that I can't do this cos 'ooohh that's a bad idea' or 'you don't want to do that'. And I just got sick.  I don't want to be told that I can't do this or I can't do that.  I'm actually an adult.  An adult that can drink alcohol, get married, get a tattoo, have a family (if I wished), drive a HGV, a fork lift truck. Anything I wanted I can actually do (weeelll I can't become Prime Minister, but then who would want to become the country's most hated person?).  So why am I still stuck here, living in a 20 minute radius?

Cos of my mother.  Just FML.

Teething problems

See I was going to name this post 'Teething Problems' but I ended up calling the blog it by complete accident.  This is the state I am currently in.  I wanted to call my entire blog 'Turning adult'.    This is because I am 21.  I am graduating in June and everything in my life is yet to be determined.  I figured that writing a blog might be some way of accepting the fact that I am not so young any more and embracing the long adventure and journey I am about to set off on.
However, teething problems might just be more apt for it.
Before I rush into any problems or angsts I may best introduce myself.

I'm 21 (just turned thereof), have a boyfriend (for a year) and studying Psychology as a Bachelor degree.
Thus far on my long road into career-dom, I have worked as a librarian (only 15 years old!!), a cafe assistant serving coffee and tea to students, an office assistant, collating together files for a conference with important documents, a cafe assistant again, making breakfasts and food for the recovering mentally ill, campus tours around my university and college, acting as assistant to the assistant admissions secretary, tutoring sixth form children into pursuing a higher education degree and taking notes for the disabled/those who have difficulty learning.  My work experience is vast and wide and I indeed, as I set out into each and every one of them, have stories to tell.  However, what I want to do for the next 40 years is completely up in the air.

For those who were or are or even those who are reading this before my age, have all been here.  We all wanted to be vets, children's presenters, authors like JK Rowling.  But what are the chances? 1 in a few million I guess.  So what do I want to be?  A teacher (conform to the parents), a novelist (my lifelong dream), a journalist (and pull people's lives apart).  I just don't know.  And this is the main problem I shall be battling with for the next few months.  Well, that is the time frame I shall be hoping for.  I need to put justice to the £24 000 degree I bought into and come to terms with the fact that it won't even give me the First I was aiming for...

So this blog is about battling my teething problems and getting into the adult world.

This is more than teething problems...this is Turning Adult.