Got an email about a job fair at Indiana University - and if you've followed any postings of my blog, Confessions of A Middle Age Coed, then you know just how demoralising, alienating, depressing and generally shitty it can be going back to school when you are older than most of your professors. So - I spend the morning rewriting my resume, pull on some clothes other than a dirty, sweaty t-shirt and cut off sweastpant shorts with holes in the butt, ditch the flipflops, slap on some makeup and head over to Staples to make copies of my resume. I'm thinking positive, I order 30 copies on expensive real resume paper and I throw in a grownup clicky gel pen. I want blue gel ink but clicky gel pens apparently only come in black ink, because black gel ink is the grownup ink color. So, whatever - standing next to me also getting reume copies is a VERY Kappa Delta looking girl (if you know what I mean). I ask her major - it's math; beautiful and smart - she's a shoe-in for an internship or a 100K sales rep position with Eli Lilly. She asks me my major, I say African American Studies and Labor Studies - that stops her cold, "Well, that's very . . . (long and very awkward pause) specialized." My mother said about the very same thing, in nearly the same way. I feel my confidence begin to chip and fall away. I begin to doubt every decision I have ever made in my life.
A year and a half ago I started out as a Chinese Studies major with a minor in Itallian (it made sense to me at the time) then came a switch to English and Education, followed by Criminal Justice and Portuguese only to end up with Labor Studies and African American Studies - but suddenly, one comment from a stranger and I begin to question my choices. Is this REALLY a good combo? It sounds good - but is it really? If you think about it, it's far from the academic equvalent of surf and turf, more like an educational burger with heavy pickle and a side of fries. Well screw it I think, it's senior year and too late to change now . . . although I begin to wonder if it's too late to switch to gerontology. I suck it up, literally because my pants are to small and they are painfully pressing on my jelly roll and creeping up the backside to form one heck of a wedgie. I pay for my stuff and head to the fair.
I forgot to mention that I am walking with a rolling gait and an occaisional wince and cannot bend over or stand up straight because I threw my back out the day before. Before I get to the fair - it gets worse - so bad that not only must my biorhythms be completely out of whack amd my Uranus be in retrograde - but I am convinced God and all the saints must hate me. I am hit with the mother of all hot flashes, my own freakin tropical heatwave, drenching me from the top of my head to my increasingly annoying wedgie, the strap on my shoe breaks, I step in dog crap and place my resumes in a pile of bird crap as I search for a quarter for the meter, and if all that isn't bad enough, on my way to the fair, I sneeze, simultaneously screaming in pain from the bad back AND slightly wet my pants - get over it, it happens.
I will condense what happened down to just the basics because I really really need glazed donut and a double gin and tonic.
1. Recruiters who are not interested in you will avoid eye contact - at all costs
2. Recruiters who want you to leave their table will give you parting gifts to go away. I got 2 flashlights, a bendy clock, some stickers and a couple of beer cozys.
3. You cannot force your resume on a recruiter who is not interested in you - I tried, it doesn't work
4. If you are over 23 and not in a blue power suit, smell like dog excrement and walk like the Quasimodo you need not apply - just forget about it - limp back to your car - eat donuts and drink gin and complain on Facebook
Got to go, the gin is getting warm.
If anyone wants a flashlight or key chain, message me - there is also a plethora of cheap crappy pens and a couple of beer cozies if you are interested.
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