This Friday, I have an appointment with the career office at school. I'm very hopeful, but a little wary. I'm 27 years old and I've never had a real job before. It's not that I haven't tried -- all I wanted for a long time was to be able to have a real job and support myself. I got close when I was getting my first master's degree (in chemistry) and they paid me for working as a TA. Of course, eventually, I had to graduate and move on. Now, I'm almost done with my second master's degree (biotechnology) and I have to face the job search nightmare once again.
I've always made use of the career offices at my undergrad college and the college where I got my first master's degree, and the advice they gave seemed sound as far as my resume went, but for the most part they just told me to network with people and do informational interviews. My mother had pretty much the same advice. Unfortunately, for a person who needs to remember that looking at the other person while talking is a good thing, this advice is probably the worst I could get. I don't really know how to have a lunch conversation and I don't have clue one about how to go about an informational interview. I need help with real interviews, and for me, informality doesn't help. At all. At least I can do a lot of stuff online, but there's always that stupid interview.
I chose a profession where personal interactions are at a minimum on purpose. It has nothing to do with my job. Now, I am perfectly capable of doing presentations on research and presenting data to a group. I am also capable of writing reports clearly and concisely. What I can't do is one-on-one interview.
Now, I'm not completely deficient in those skills, and I have worked incredibly hard through most of my life to get to where I am, and I am extremely proud of the progress I've made. I can maintain eye contact for more than ten minutes. I can follow a conversation. I even have real friends who I love and who love me back. None of this was really possible when I was 12. I worked really hard and continue to work hard to improve every day. However, I know that no matter how hard I work or what I do, I will never have the same level of skill as someone who was born with it.
A while ago, my mom actually suggested that if I couldn't get a job in a laboratory, I should try pharmaceutical sales. Are you kidding? That was probably the single worst idea I had ever heard. I'd be fired in two weeks, if it took that long. This is the reason I never really had a job before. In college, I worked briefly in the library working on cataloguing slides for lectures, and I also occasionally was a model for art classes. I liked both very much. Anything else, like waitressing or working in the mall or something generally included talking to customers and as such, not something I would be remotely good at, and in high school, something of which I was completely terrified. People still scare me, but not to the degree they once did.
So, in summation, I really hope I can learn how to convince someone to give me a job. I know I can do the actual job, and I am qualified. It's not like I'm applying to be a spy or anything. I just want to work in a lab, and I find it extremely annoying that I have to run this gauntlet using skills I barely have that have nothing to do with the actual job I want to do.
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