I got a job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am still unemployed, and it is still very frustrating to me. Does anyone have any advice? I know the economy isn't great at the moment, but it isn't the sole reason I am still unemployed.

Most of the jobs require you to have prior experience, but I can't get experience if I can't get a job. I have tried to be less picky about the jobs that I apply for, but I am still missing the experience and/or skills for most of them.

Growing up they sure made it sound like having a college degree made it super easy to get a job but that hasn't been the case for me at all. I was also told my college GPA wouldn't matter but most of the government jobs that I have applied for have asked for it.

I even looked for a job seeker's LiveJournal community but it seems that the ones that exist aren't updated very often.

Here's a quick summary of what's been going on in my life as of late:

Work
I interviewed for a company that is part of Virginia Tech on Tuesday. The interview went better than the last interview that I had, but it still didn't go very well. I'd give it a 4 out of 10, where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best. The job would mainly be programming, and I still don't know how I feel about that.

Wedding Stuff
I've written about 20 thank you notes and I have about 40 left to write. I'm stuck on one in particular, and my brain won't let me skip it and go back to it later. Basically, it's one of those notes that I don't want to sound form-written, since that's how most of the others have been written. I really want these people to understand that we really are grateful for their gift. So I'm still working on that.

World of Warcraft
Just got my priest new shiny Whitemend Pants after hours of grinding primals. I hate farming primals :(. When I farm, I much prefer to be grinding something that gives me reputation, or helps me along another goal other than just "Kill all these mobs till you finally get 5 Primal Mights." I much prefer when something is guaranteed as opposed to a random droprate.

Other Stuff
We saw Mr. Brooks on Friday, it was actually pretty good, and I'm picky about most movies.

The four job applications that I sent to VT are still "in progress," even those with close dates that have already past. It is hard to be optimistic, and I think I am just going to be disappointed again, and never hear anything from them. At this point, the prospect of getting a job before the wedding looks slim. I think that I need to make some sort of cut-off date in April when I stop looking. It wouldn't make any sense to finally get a job only to have to say, "Sorry, I can't start work yet, I have to spend two to three weeks in Maryland to take care of wedding stuff and get married, and oh by the way I need a week off in June for my honeymoon." I just hope that there won't be too many people at the wedding who ask about my job situation, unless one of them has a job offer for me in Blacksburg/Christiansburg.

Ever since I put my resume on Monster, I have gotten a handful of job offers, but they are all too far away. A couple were for northern Virginia and I got two offers for jobs in Wisconsin. O_o I am sure that half of my problem -- even perhaps more than half -- is that there just are not a lot of jobs in Blacksburg/Christiansburg. Sometimes when I go looking, my search turns up a list of eight or fewer jobs, and that isn't even taking into account that most of them are not in my field of expertise. I see a lot of job listings for healthcare workers, for example.

I just wish that I could find something that I am really good at and that I enjoy so that even if I couldn't find a job in it, I could be proud of the thing that I am good at. I would sleep so much easier if that were the case.

I found four jobs at Virginia Tech that might be suited to me, so I have applied to them. One sounds like something I might really like: it sounds like it is basically a very simplified system administrator position. This is good because it sounds like it is within my skill level. Other system admin positions I have looked at I am not qualified for because I do not have any experience running large networks or webservers. One of the other three jobs is an administrative assistant position, and the other two jobs are for application programmer positions. Two of the jobs have close dates that are in March, so hopefully I will actually hear something back in a timely manner, unlike the last time that I applied for a Tech job.

Last time, I applied for three jobs at VT. I didn't hear anything for two months, when I found out that I wasn't accepted to one, and in later months, wasn't accepted to a second one. The third, six months later, has my application still supposedly "In Progress." So lame.

Well, today was a complete waste. I woke up around 5:40am constipated. I decided to just get out of bed because I thought that I needed to leave by 7. Somehow I had a brain lapse because my appointment was definitely at 9, and it doesn't take 2 hours to get there, it takes less than 1 hour. Once I got there I filled out a small mountain of paperwork, then took a 12 minute 50 question test to test some rudimentary skills. Once that was done, I got interviewed. The questions were fine, and then the interviewer says, "Do you mind working in the Roanoke/Salem area?"

"Well, I'd rather work in the Blacksburg/Christiansburg area..."

"Oh, well you know we have a Blacksburg office, right?"

"..."

Rewind to two days ago. Two days ago, I filled out the online application on this job agency's website. I then clicked on the button that said "Click below to select the offices to send your application to." There was a long list of offices. I most definitely clicked on the BLACKSBURG office. After I submitted the information, I went back to the Account Information page and clicked on "To view the offices that you have already notified about your application, click show history." It very clearly stated (and still states) that I sent my info to the BLACKSBURG office.

Now yesterday, I received an email about 2 hours after I had submitted my application. "We appreciate your interest in opportunities with (name removed) and opportunities with some of the major companies in the Roanoke, Salem, Vinton and New River Valley."

New River Valley means Blacksburg/Christiansburg yes? I didn't even think anything of it since I had very clearly applied to the BLACKSBURG office. So yesterday, I called and made my appointment, which brings me to today and the completely wasted morning. Why is it completely wasted? Because now I have to do this all over again at the Blacksburg office, because each office needs a paper trail. Sigh.

Ways You Know You're Getting Old:

1. You tell your Mom that you want clothes for Christmas :(

/cry

In other news, I made that phone call that I was terrified about and now I have an appointment with the job agency at 9am tomorrow. I am nervous, but I was more afraid of the phone call than this interview. Phones are evil.

I found a job agency online and I filled out their application online and sent it to them. They emailed me back and they want me to call to set up a time for an interview. I, of course, am putting off this call as long as possible. I don't know why, but I'm always frozen with fear whenever I have to make calls like these. I wonder if I will ever change in that regard. =/

It's sad that I really have no schoolwork that I have to do and yet I'm still feeling stressed. I'm hoping that after this job stuff settles down, I'll feel less stressed. Right now I'm filling out applications for this one job (I haaate applications), and freaking out about the fact that I have two interviews on Tuesday. And I'm a little ;_; that I haven't heard anything back about the job that I really wanted. Sniff. And what happens if I get accepted to more than one job, how will I choose? And what if I don't get accepted to any of them? Aaaaugh.

Yes, I know I'm stressing out about this far too much. But it's not like I'm stressing on purpose. :P At least I finally got off my butt and applied for jobs. That much, I can feel at peace about. Soon I'll actually be pulling in a paycheck, so I don't have to worry about where my money will be coming from. And then I can open up a new bank account, cause I'll have money to put in it. Yay! And I won't have to sell my precious DVD collection. *_* Ehehehehe.

Still need to sell my Beanies, though, if only to get rid of the box on the floor. *lazy*

[cloned from A Bird's Melody]

I finished my last real exam tonight, Diffeq. I have one more exam tomorrow night, but I'm not counting it because it's Public Speaking; I won't need to study for it and taking the exam won't take more than a half hour. This leaves me suddenly done all work. No more schoolwork, no job to go back to. It's kinda scary, really. I mean, sure, left to my own devices with tons of free time I'd find things to do on the computer. I have my websites that need to be updated and things I want to expand on, I have a PHP image gallery I want to write, I have anime to watch, and so on and so forth.

But as much as I would like it, I can't enjoy some free time. I really need to find a job because I am so broke right now. After I paid my car insurance bill two weeks ago, I looked at my bank account and realized that I would only have like $30 in my checking account after the car insurance amount went through. That will barely buy two tanks of gas. Luckily, I managed to get money from Dad, by getting next semester's rent and food money in advance. But that will still leave me broke before the end of next semester. I need a job. And it would be nice if it were a job I like.

So I can't relax, even though I'm basically finally all done. Darkness looms in the distance. I don't mind working so much, I just would really like to enjoy it. And it would also be nice to actually feel like I have spare time, unlike what I usually feel like.

I just hope I find a job. I really don't wanna trudge back to Mom, having to say "you were right, I shouldn't have bought *anything* for myself while in college, please give me some money for food so I don't starve." Or I guess I could sell my DVD collection, but I really don't want to do that. Say, anyone interested in paying me a high price for a lot of retired Beanie Babies? I need money and I'm trying to get rid of them...

[cloned from A Bird's Melody]