Who ever said finding work was easy? The diary of an impatient job seeker.

Ok. So who ever said finding work was going to be easy?  Rewind to Aviva post graduation: the thrill of University finally being done, those painstaking days grappling to finish end-of-year projects after realizing that perhaps going out every night wasn’t the best of ideas, the dreams of being launched into industry and taking the real world by storm…Fast forward to the present, 4 months after graduation and only now does the excitement begin: 3^rd round of interviews for a visual merchandising position at H&M, turning down an internship to work for an emerging label titled Tevrow + Chase, being offered an internship at Lush Magazine, and waiting anxiously by the phone to hear if an interview would be allotted with Sears for a professional shopping gig.   However, life prior to this did not seem so peachy…

After making the move to New Zealand, realizing it just wasn’t for me, and making the 24 hour trek back to a land I could relate to, I came home to realize that I had missed the cut off for some of the best jobs on the market.  Having to deal with heartbreak (breaking up with the kiwi boyfriend), readjusting to North American life (having been spoiled by studying and traveling Europe for 2 years), the last glitch I truly wanted to deal with was finding employment. 

There is not a lot that can be said for the unemployed bum.  Basically looking for work, is a full time job in itself.  From my experience, the Internet is useless- unless a glorified telemarketing job is really what you want!  The world revolves around networking.  This is the secret to life, and consequently finding employment: Sheila knows Bob whose cousin owns Paul’s building whose nephew owns a fashion label and it turns out they are hiring!  This becomes the pattern of your unemployed life.  It’s like linking a game of broken telephone with a game of Jenga- you build on contacts but one might be wobbly sending the whole network crashing! Eventually, after several meltdowns later, and coming to grips with the fact that you might have to live in your parents’ basement for the rest of your life, it happens…the job offer.  After one comes another, as the old saying goes when it rains, it pours!!!

This then leads me to reflect on myself as a young lass in her last year of fashion school vs. my tutors.  Should the tutors, fully knowing the truth about the real world and all of its’ lack of virtues, burst a young lass’ bubble and warn her by saying: “Good luck tuts in finding that dream job because it doesn’t exist!”  No. Learning how to deal with obstacles on your own is definitely a life altering experience.  In fact, it is the final bridge that renders a graduate into adulthood.  Tutors should let their students minds soar, not only for the sake of the students, if not for a little inner chuckle.