success

...well, sort of. I was back in Boston this past week back on the job hunt. I finally got offered some jobs but both kind of sucked. One was being a travel consultant working 5 out of 8 hours a day on the phone, making $30,000, and pushing travel insurance sales on people. I also had to do a group interview for this job which sucked because people are already so fake in interviews and then you have to compete and kiss ass to other people who are trying to take your job. But the good thing was that I never really thought this job was so great and so I didn't care about the interview and did well because of that. It felt great to reject a job and tell them that I didn't take it because even though naive recent college graduates are going to take low-paying exploitative type of jobs more often than not, I could at least send a message that they should pay more. For that wage I could be slaving away in the non-profit actually doing some thing good in life. The other job was recruiting for professional staffing group for also $30,000 but with commission. But commission sucks too because whether you are a car salesman selling "lemons" or a job recruiter placing people at waste management plant and either way, the incentive is always more about yourself than the people you are supposed to be helping (as well as competing with your co-workers). Ahhh ethics and morales, what good are they in the real world?

The other thing that has been frustrating with looking for jobs is how no one takes the time to even write back to tell you didn't get the job. It wouldn't be that hard and you can always make up some bullshit reason. The people who get back to me, and usually very quickly, are people that can make money off me, like recruiters and staffing agencies (hence the commission).

So I'm not that desperate yet. It's only been two months and I can hold off probably 3 or 4 more before I accept some thing not so great. I just wish my Macalester diploma held more esteem around here. In the Midwest things would be different perhaps than my latest interviewer asking me, "oh, so you went to MAC-a-lester, what was that like?" (this is the way we pronounced the name at a group gathering before a tennis match and Tobin or Alex would say 'a-lester' after we said MAC!) I mine as well have gone to Champlain Community College in Vermont and not have thousands of dollars in debt hanging over me like a dark swarm of bees about to dive in. Wow, sorry about the depressing entry (this has truly turned into "dear diary.")