I am conflicted. About the future. About the present. Shoot, even about the past. It always feels like time is just passing me by, like I have to wait for something to happen before I can start living. Not to say I'm not living my life cause i'm still getting on with it. I just don't know where I'm headed or what I want to do. I'm always scared I'm making the wrong move.
So after a year of working part time at my job, they made me full time. And it's a decent job, the pay is...ok. It's better than unacceptable but nothing to swing from the chandeliers about when you live in a high cost of living place like metro dc. I mean literally for the past year I have been gunning for them to make me full time. I'd bug my supervisor that this job was too much work to be just part time. I'd work tons of extra hours whenever they needed me. I am efficient and organized, whereas my boss is the creative type. She loves me cause I came in and made her life so much easier. This job previously was just a bunch of tasks divided up among several full timers and part time employees. I arrived and took all those things on and made it clear, "wouldn't it be great if I was here full time!" And so now I'm full time. I can't stop thinking about what I'm going to do next.
Seriously, I just "got" here and I already feel like this is not the job for me for the rest of my life. I mean sure it's fine for a couple years. I wouldn't say that I can't learn more here cause I know I can indirectly. Not in this specific job but from the organization as a whole and from the people in other positions I work with. But since those things aren't quantifiable in dollars, it's hard to think about that as a benefit when your job just barely pays you enough to just cover your living expenses.
And then I think, well when will I ever earn "enough". I mean technically, if I can cover my bills than it's enough right? I mean I could even manage to save some money if I ate beans and rice and eggs everyday and didn't drive all over the place.
I have been wanting to go to grad school basically since I graduated but there has always been something holding me back. And now, I can't decide if it's really worth the investment. I suppose that really depends on what you study and what type of job you plan to get when you finish but we've been interviewing for another position at my job recently and it's really made me question some things. First off, people barely look at your resume. I had to go through 50 some applicants for my boss and weed out all the bad ones. I don't have time to read through your work history and it's boring. I glance at it to see if anything interesting pops off the page but mainly I go for the cover letter. This is your chance to truly sell yourself. So many people use a generic cover letter and don't tailor it to the job and don't really talk about their experience.
(As a side note, this was funny to me. Years ago on best of craigslist I read a post from rants and raves about cover letters and the poster talked about crappy cover letters and then posted a great cover letter. I modified that cover letter for every job I applied for after that and always got called for interviews. So as I was reading the cover letters, what should appear but my go to cover letter! Practically word for word the same as the one I read on craigslist.)
Then I give my boss the top 8-10 and we went through them with the other person interviewing with us and we chose the ones we were going to interview basically from the ones I had already picked. So most of the top ten have masters degrees. and experience of course. But it makes me think two things. One, you practically need a masters degree to even be considered for jobs these days because everyone you're competing with has masters degrees. And two, people with masters degrees are going for a job that is basically comparable to the job I'm doing now! It might be one pay grade higher than where I'm at but I actually never looked up the job when it was posted so I'm not sure exactly what the pay range is. Do I really want to go back to school just so I can get a job that is slightly better than the job I have now? And if I study something different, I have the problem that I don't have any experience. Practically all my experience in the last 7 years is ESL. I'm interested in so many things but I feel like once you're in education you are practically STUCK in education. And if I'm being honest what I really want to do is open up my own little boutique hotel in a beach town in Mexico.
Ok, so i don't actually think I'm stuck. I truly believe it's never too late to do whatever it is you want to do. i just haven't really decided what that is right now.
