The Vine: July 8, 2009
How do you alphabetize a list containing items starting with numbers? I remember learning back in the day that you do it as if you were writing the number out. So “5th” goes under F, as if it were “Fifth.” But Word, Excel and other computer programs just put numbers at the top of a list, before letters, which drives me nuts because I’m irrational and can’t let go of something I learned in elementary school. What do you think?
Thanks!
Adam
Dear Adam,
In the TWoP book, we did it your way; the entry on 21 Jump Street, for example (hee!) (…shut up), went after the entry on 24 and before the entry on Twin Peaks. That’s how I tend to do it when it comes up, and I think most readers of a list can figure out pretty quickly which way it’s set up.
But the Chicago Manual seems to think it’s okay to group numerals in an index together “in numerical order at the beginning of the index, before the As. “Whether you want to extrapolate that to lists, I can’t say, but again, readers probably figure out where to look for those list items after having found one of them, so, since it doesn’t sacrifice clarity either way, do it however you see fit…or can make your software see fit.
Hi Sars,
I’m in my final undergraduate year at a university in Canada, as an international student. Before I came here, I’d spent my entire life as an Indian (dot not feather) expatriate in one of the only countries in the Middle East that isn’t fucked to hell politically.
I had a fairly liberal and comfortable upbringing, my parents are giving, loving people who unhesitatingly paid for me to go to a school halfway across the world, and judging purely from my grades in high school and most often at university as well, I’m a fairly bright person.
The problem? I’ve suffered from depression for as long as I can remember. I was a quiet but content kid, a weird geeky but happy preadolescent, and then: bam. My early teenage years onward were a haze of sadness, anger, bulimia, surliness, the whole deal. As I’ve said, my family weren’t negligent, they probably just thought I was being an exceptionally difficult teen, plus depression is not really something that our culture has much knowledge of.
My first year of university was a nightmare of loneliness and crippling social anxiety, overeating and holing up by myself watching crap TV and movies (I didn’t drink, and barely socialized). I had had no real relationships in high school (no romantic ones, a few reasonably close friendships) and uni was more of the same but worse. It got a bit better each year until I finally, at the start of this year, had some friends and vastly more social skills than I started out with.
The thing is, I still feel totally stunted in almost every way that matters. I have a few friends, but it’s a pretty sparse social circle. I drifted through uni, doing well occasionally and barely passing courses other times.
I will graduate with an English major — I love the life sciences, and did well in the biology and physics and math classes I did, even upper-level ones, but had no idea what I would do as a career even if I could physically buckle down to the workload of a science degree. Not, of course, that I have any more of an idea what I could do with an English degree: I just haven’t had the ability to consider it intelligently, and now that my brain is a bit clearer I’m panicking with how much I have to figure out to be a functioning and fulfilled adult and don’t believe that I can do it.
What scares me the most is the fact that I have no idea of what direction my life is going in and I don’t know if I can take the reins to direct it properly. I have no idea what I could do, don’t know where to begin looking for possible answers. For as long as I can remember I’ve been only just able to manage the bare essentials of daily living; now I have to do much more than that and I’m rudderless.
I guess what I’m asking is: do you (or your readers) have advice for what a new English graduate with a year or so of research assistant experience could do to direct her future? What kind of jobs I could look for, or would be qualified for with my degree? I know that having some kind of direction can only help my mental state, and it’s pretty clear I need help.
I know that this is a vague and pretty desperate-sounding letter, but I’d really like some honest insights from people who may have been through something similar, or who just can tell me how I can get my shit together.
(Note: I can’t afford therapy, and I do take antidepressants, but they only help a bit and the side effects are awful.)
Stunted Twentysomething in BC
Dear Stunt,
People tend to work themselves up into an anxiety attack over what “adult life” is like. I’m not judging you; I did the same thing when I was staring down the barrel of my last months in college. The economy was in the crapper then, too, although not at its current depths, and I had a degree in creative writing, a c.v. that had nothing to do with anything coherent, and exactly zero time spent living further than 50 miles away from my parents.
The tendency to view post-university life as an intimidating monolith of mortgage payments and caring about school districts is natural, but it’s not rational, is my point. “Adult life” contains multitudes, as the expression goes. You don’t “have to” be or do anything in particular, so your first job is to stop comparing yourself to “people” or “everyone” or any group noun with no faces, and focus on yourself and what you want to do.
Your second job is not unrelated, and that’s to get serious about your mental health. I feel like I’ve answered dozens of letters over the years that boil down to “I suffer from depression and it’s making my life very difficult to navigate, but before you suggest that I do anything about it: I can’t.” I know it seems like you can’t, I know it seems like a pain in the ass…it is a pain in the ass, but it wants doing, so that everything else that wants doing won’t be such a huge chore, or present as something you think you can’t possibly accomplish. Go back to the doctor, get a recommendation for a free or low-cost clinic, and work on finding a prescription that doesn’t interfere with you physically. If the first one doesn’t fit, go back again. This is a task on your to-do list for daily living; it goes at the top, and you’ve got to keep at it ’til it’s crossed off, or the rest of the list is going to feel like a millstone.
While you’re making lists, write down all the jobs you’d like to have or think sound cool. All of them; anything. Write down where and how you’d like to live, what you think you need to make a home. Google. Read. If you want to become a beekeeper, figure out how, and start. Take a few botany classes, go to beekeeping school, apprentice with a local apiary…befriend a few bees, whatever. Do something. Go in a direction. If that direction sucks, go in another direction. Figure out what you want to do, write down all the tiny steps on the road to that objective, and start crossing them off.
Your issue is that everything seems huge, and therefore hopeless; the solution is twofold: 1) get in a healthier headspace where “hopeless” is a smaller factor, and 2) break the huge things down into all their small component parts so that you can start doing instead of staring and sweating.
Everyone goes through this; most of us go through this more than once in our lives, trying to figure out where to go and how to get there. It’s not just you, and it takes a while. You won’t get to keep bees next week; you have to learn, and work, and do other things from 9 to 5 at times, and get stung. (This metaphor is boomeranging on me, but I’m not backing down.) It isn’t all fun, but disorganized know-it-alls like myself do it every day, and so can you.
You wanted specific advice about how to get a job and manage daily living, and you probably don’t think this is it, but…it is. Get your meds straightened away, make giving yourself a break a priority, and just get started on something, anything. You’ll feel better about things very quickly, and if you don’t, remember, it’s not just you.
I’ve looked around and I haven’t found a suitable answer for my question…
When interviewing for a job, is it current/cool/hip/whatever to send a Thank You For Interviewing Me card?
I know it gets batted about every now and then, but I don’t know anyone who has actually sent one, and I can’t help but feel that for someone of my age/generation (30) that it’s obviously a brown-nosing technique, and not a true thank-you, at all…
(And if we are supposed to send one, what do you say?)
Thanks!
I am employed, but my friend isn’t
Dear Emp,
Interviewers know what’s up with the current economic climate; egregious brown-nosing is not a great idea, regardless of the state of the job market, but they have a job, you want that job, and everyone involved probably understands that you’ll do what you need to.
With that said, while I don’t think there’s anything “wrong” with it, I do think it presents more pitfalls than it does opportunities. Is it memorable, more so than other interviewees? Perhaps, but that can cut both ways. You have to walk a nice, straight line of professional demeanor, keeping it short and free of personal asides; you have to use a bland, formal stationery; you have to worry about it proceeding through the mailroom in a timely fashion…all for something you could just as easily do in an email, and more quickly, with less anxiety.
In the case of an informational interview, or one with a friend of a family friend, a situation that has a personal cast to it or where there’s a pre-existing relationship, sure, send a note via snail mail. If it’s something you got through Monster.com?That could come off as a little weird, and the simple fact is, it just takes too long. Unless you’re super-sure of yourself with it, stick to a brisk follow-up email.
Tags: grammar health and beauty workplace
Adam — I’ll second Rebecca’s (numerals at the front, numbers written out in the alphabetical part of the index) system as being more or less the library standard. Which doesn’t necessarily apply in your case, but, hey.
Stunt — It’s worth keeping in mind that no job or career is a life sentence (well, OK, hardly any) — you always have the option of changing what you do (my mom spent some 20 years as a housewife and retired as a professor a few years ago, e.g. (which was a great example for me, when I was stuck, career-wise; thanks, mom!)) So you can figure out what you might like to do right now rather than fretting about where you will be in 20 years.
Emp — I interview for academic jobs with hiring committees. I always send a card unless I know the schedule is really tight, in which case I send an email. Something neutral and short — “thank you for interviewing me; I think the position and I are a good fit; please extend my thanks to the committee and the others who took time to meet with me; I look forward to hearing from you.” It seems to have a positive effect more often than not. Different markets might favor letters over cards or emails over either, but I generally find a paper thing works better than an email.
I have a version of @Bella’s that I call the five-minute drill. Dishes, sweeping, putting clothes away — do as much as you can in five minutes, which is actually a longer time than you think.
Everyone has their tips and tricks for staying organized and motivated, but the takeaway is that a lot of us…need tricks. I have to schedule bill-paying and desk organization in my calendar; it doesn’t come naturally to me, and many many other people struggle with staying on top of various tasks and goals. Yes, you do have to take care of certain responsibilities as an adult, but you don’t have to like it or act like it’s easy.
Stunt: I’m going to take the bold step of recommending you consider a book I haven’t read yet but am about to read, based solely on what I know of it. The Onion A.V. Club recently excerpted “The Big Rewind,” which is the new memoir of its head writer, Nathan Rabin. (Full disclosure: Nathan is a dear pal of a dear pal; I met him once, just briefly.)
I found the excerpt completely riveting (and often funny); the book is about his long history of depression, group homes, horribly family stuff, and so forth, and now he’s…you know, the head writer of the A.V. Club. The feeling you’re describing of kind of, “How can my life possibly get picked up and become good after all this?” I am anticipating that the book is going to contain a lot of discussion of how, precisely, that occurs, and what it takes to get from point A to point B. Just a thought — check out the excerpt and see if you find it at all relatable.
Stupid me: Excerpt is here:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/excerpt-the-big-rewind,30037/
Stunt, I’d like to second the poster who stated that a job isn’t a life sentence. I’ve been in the same company for nearly 28 years now – which DOES sound like a life sentence, huh? – but I’ve had several distinctly different job functions here. My friend has had the same job function, at the same desk, and has worked for three different companies due to mergers & spinoffs and such. The corporate world is always in flux. Everything always changes. Nothing’s ever final. So don’t let that scare you!!!
Stunt,
(As for the bee-keeping metaphor, at least Sars didn’t go in for the nectar and honey stuff.)
1. I agree with Sars about the meds and therapy issue. Many therapists (in the US, many of which are social workers, and so they may have more of a bent to finding “real world” solutions, whatever those are) will do pro bono work, so you won’t be paying mucho bucks per session. Really, honestly, you can’t afford NOT to do it at this point in your life. Antidepressants can be tricky, and your doctor (medical doc, not psychologist) should be taking into consideration any other medicines you are taking, your history with bulimia, etc. Some side effects suck worse than others… take the time and find what works for you.
2. Another option is to seek out a “life coach” –a title that is vague, can vary from state to state (or province to province, I would imagine). This is like therapy, sort of, but more focused on finding a path.
3. To that end also, I recommend both _The Pathfinder_ and _What color is your Parachute_. I found them very helpful to figure out what to do with my degree in Medieval Studies and German and my MA in Germanic Linguistics (note, I work as a tech editor for “the Man”, but have found a way to work for me!).
4. Keep a journal. Even if it is filled with expletives and frustration.
5. (and final) As I keep telling my 17 yr old stepdaughter, being a grown up is great and stinky at the same time. You “get” to do stuff, but you also “have to” do stuff. Not freaking out isn’t always an option. But finding the balance… that’s the thing called life.
HANG IN THERE!
A purely personal observation, which might not hold water in today’s uncertain job market:
I do not think I would want to work with or for someone who felt that a formal thank-you note after an interview was “brown-nosing.” It’s an expression of courtesy, and anyone who thinks courteous behavior is something to snicker at is probably not someone I’m going to be too happy about having as an officemate.
So, for myself, I would send it – if it made the recipient roll their eyes and cross me off their list as an asskisser, I’d try to consider that a bullet dodged.
Fellow English Lit graduate here, Stunt. I’m 35 now, and graduated with just a BA at 22, but I can relate to the “what the hell do I do now?” feeling. Ditto Sars on the advice for the mental state. Perfectly stated, IMO. And then just know that it’s going to take time. Hell, I even have accountant friends that went through school for their specific degree that applies to their specific job, and after several years working in their specifically designed for them field, they’re rethinking it. Shit happens. It’s happened to me, my husband, my brother…everyone I know, I’m sure. I’ve been an administrative assistant since the year after I graduated from college, and it appears as though it’s what I was meant to do. Yay.
Except…I really want to be a voiceover artist. But I need to go back to school for a new degree (or at least some level of experience) in broadcasting, and to meet people in that field in order to try to get a baby toe in the door, and it’s basically a field where you have to wait until someone dies before you can get a chance to break in, and why the hell did my heart decide this was the path for me 10 YEARS AFTER I finished college??? I dunno. It sucks, but I’ll work it out somehow.
This…is life. Muddling through. Finding a path. Working your way down that path in a maybe-forever-but-maybe-not-job in the meantime so you can pay the bills and have food on your table until you get to the path that works best for you. We can’t all be doctors or lawyers, or whatever. And that’s totally ok, because the world needs baristas and admin assistants and accounts payable managers, etc, etc…too.
Oh, and for Emp? At my last job, the person that hired me told me that she had interviewed over 30 people for the position…and I was the only one to send a follow-up “thank you” email. It worked…I got that job. And in my HR experience, emails are always an effective follow-up, honestly. Ditch the formality of the card in the mail thing. Not necessary.
Oh, and word on the exercise/hobby stuff. In fact, my hobby .is. exercise–sports teams and cool rand-o weekly fitness classes (like, say, boxing, which should be prescribed as an antidepressant). Plus, I find that walking around the house and addressing little things–straightening up, minor repairs and the like–is incredibly effective in making me feel better, both at the time and later: When I’m rushing out of the house, I don’t feel overwhelmed by all the little jobs I’m leaving behind.
Stunt – here’s what NOT to do – graduate with your BA and then go to (and pay for) law school b/c (a) you think your BA is worthless, (b) you don’t want to go back to waitressing, and (c) everyone tells you that even if you don’t want to be a lawyer, there is SO MUCH you can do with a law degree. A job doesn’t have to be life sentence, but it will be if you (like me) spend tens of thousands of borrowed dollars on a degree, and then take a high-paying but mind-numbing job at a ginormous law firm in order to pay it all back. You’re fortunate that your family paid for college; avoid major debt and your options will be considerably more numerous. Good luck!
Stunt: see if you can get a university receptionist/secretary job. Yes, I know: pink collar, doesn’t make use my of skills, etc. Here’s the thing, though: most universities, especially state/province ones, have excellent health plans and give good sick and vacation time; AND you can still take classes, tuition-free. See what I mean? You’ll have a steady paycheck, you’ll build basic skills that ANY job needs (working with people, organization, working with meetings and projects) while being able to get medical help and taking a class in what interests you, maybe even toward another degree. Trust me: you will NOT be labelled a pink-collar-for-life. Youll be showing yourself as a resourceful person who got through a difficult period in a smart way.
I always send a thank-you note when interviewing and I always expect a thank-you note when I am the interviewer. I agree with the previous poster who said that if there is only a short amount of time they send an email. Here is what the note should say:
1) Thank you for your time.
2) I wanted to discuss, elaborate, or point out something that was an aspect of the interview.
3) Let me say in one sentence again why I am right for the job (especially phrased as ‘this is why your company would benefit from my skills’ as opposed to the other way around).
4) I look forward to hearing from you.
This does a few things. It makes you seem polite, which is always good. It shows your interest in the position. It reminds the interviewer of your positive attributes. If it’s a particularly tough search, it makes you stand out a little bit.
A thank-you letter never has a down side. I have awful handwriting and spelling so I always type mine onto letterhead and place it within a thank-you card. I can not express strongly enough how important I think the note is. It’s not going to get you a job, but I have hired people because it was a choice between a card sender and a non-card sender and have always gone for the card sender. It shows me the card-sender can follow-through on things and understands the value of manners.
Another lawyer here to say that the standard etiquette in our industry is to sent a thank-you note after an interview. I interview a lot of people, and if someone doesn’t send a note, I don’t automatically reject them, but it is a strike. However, I don’t think it necessarily needs to be handwritten — personally, I have atrocious handwriting, and I think we’re in an age where legible handwriting is not a necessary skill. The important thing is that a typed note should be in some way personalized to the interviewer — if you talked about some particular aspect of the job, refer to that conversation and link it up to your skills or interests (for example). If they shared a particular war story, refer to that story and how excited it made you about the job. Personalizing does a few things: 1) it shows that the letter is not just the result of a mail merge; 2) it shows that you pay attention to detail; 3) it demonstrates that you are interested in the job; 4) it serves as a way to remind them of your strong points as a candidate.
(And if this sounds like work — it is. When I was interviewing for work after law school, and again when I switched firms, each visit to a firm would usually involve between 4 and 14 interviews. After one two-day visit to D.C., I wrote 24 thank you letters. One trick is to make a note for yourself immediately after the interview about some detail you can mention in the letter.)
Another job the English major could think about is technical writing. Since you also have a science background, you can make a great living writing for medical journals, or documenting medical devices, lab procedures, etc., for biotech or other science-based companies.
Tech writing is a lot like being in school: research, take notes, write a paper. If you were good at that, you’ll be good at this. And it might feel safe, familiar, and comfortable while you figure everything else out.
@Stunted – I think in our current culture, where 40 is the new 30, that 30 is the new 20, and the twenties are an extended, advanced adolescence for the most part — the adult training stage. This is the stage where we figure out who we are and what we want to do, and the best thing to do that is to try different things, without fear of failure, and without comparing your own experiences to other people’s. Some people need the whole decade to figure this out and graduate to real adulthood. Some people need a little more. Some need less. You have your own set cooking time, and you’ll know when you’re done, and nobody can rush the process.
I think I was a couple of years into my thirties before I got there. I just reached a place where the world seemed less intimidating, I had far fewer hangups than I started out with in my early twenties, and I had a pretty solid sense of self and knew what I wanted and what I needed to do to get there. Which isn’t to say that I’m not still figuring some things out at the ripe age of 36. But I have no trouble viewing myself as an adult now, which is a lot more than I could say at 26.
In short: don’t rush yourself. There’s no reason to be in a hurry to figure these things out. I wish somebody had told me that when I was your age.
Messy home & depression: so interrelated! You’re depressed, so the housecleaning is low priority, so the house gets messy, but then the mess is even more depressing. I also think it ties in with self-esteem, that when you’re depressed you feel you don’t deserve a nice place to live or a nice life (maybe that’s just how depression has its way with me) so you let it slide and then beat yourself up for it. Every f’ing crumb is an accusation.
If you have even a touch of ADD, this is truly devastating, because your mind spins on all the stuff you’re not getting done in the mess, and you can’t rest in your own home!
So I highly recommend keeping at least one room clean so that you have a haven, a “peace place” that’s safe and pretty and calm.
And plumbob has a great idea there – my son-in-law is a technical writer & makes more than I do and loves the work he does.
@ Stunted: I second what everyone else said, and I wanted to add that sometimes the depression and the sense of professional aimlessness can be really interconnected. I also majored in English, and have gone through something that sounds similar to what you went through. (As Amy says, do not do not do not go to law school out of a sense of liberal arts aimlessness: that is what I did, and it was an expensive dumb thing to do.)
Check out what your school has to offer, whether or not you’re still in school. Undergrad services are usually free, and sometimes help for grads is also free. See what resources are available to you there, and if it’s nothing or not much, check to see whether your local library has a career section. Doing the self-assessment in books like “What Color is your Parachute?” can be really helpful – not only in helping you figure out what kind of work you like to do, and what sorts of environmental/people preferences you have, but it can also help shake loose some of the stuff underpinning the depression.
Working through this stuff is a big job, no kidding. It can feel huge, and pointless, and scary, because “what if you put in all this effort and nothing changes and is it really even possible to be happy? Oh, who cares,” but it’s work that’s worth doing. Find people and resources who can help you break it down into smaller steps; don’t be afraid to try things, and then to try other things when those don’t work. It’s a process. But it’s so worth it. And you deserve to be happy. Something else that’s important to remember: antidepressants are a little like steriods. You can take all you want, but if all you do is sit on the couch all day, all you’ve achieved is a roided-up larpitude. You have to work *with* the drugs to get better. But, like muscles, the more you work at it, the easier it gets.
From your letter it’s hard to tell if there’s family baggage underlying what’s going on with you; your parents sound supportive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have a boxcarload of unaddressed issues following you around. A book you might find helpful, if that is your situation, is “Hand Me Down Dreams,” by Mary Jacobsen. It can be a little tough to find, but it’s a great book.
Stunt:
I’m a THOUSAND years too late to post here, and you’ll probably never see it anyway, but I’m going to give you a piece of advice I wish SOMEBODY had given me and I have heard the same from countless people across all academic disciplines:
DO NOT confuse not having a plan with an excuse to go to graduate school.
I don’t know if a Masters or PhD is even a blip on the radar for you, but I know for a LOT of fresh graduates (especially in this economy) it is. I started a PhD in developmental biology two weeks before I turned 22. I wasn’t sure what to do with my life and I had been thinking of working as a technician in a lab for a year or so but I had a handful of people SWEARING if I didn’t go to grad school RIGHT THEN I’d never go. That was crap. I would have made a MUCH more reasoned and dedicated researcher at 23. And, I might not have spent SIX YEARS doing it before I discovered what I REALLY wanted to be when I grew up: A teacher.
My point in all this is… discovering what I wanted to with my life every day took me until I was 27 years old. NOT having that conviction of purpose in your senior year of college is forgivable.
“roided-up larpitude”–lol.
I second this and all that people have said in the same vein:
You have to work *with* the drugs to get better. But, like muscles, the more you work at it, the easier it gets.
Adrienne: I’d like to follow up your excellent advice with a similar caution:
DO NOT confuse not having a plan with an excuse to go to law school, either. Law school is a great choice if you really, really want to be a lawyer – but it’s a dreadful default if you don’t know what you really want to do with your life, so you might as well go to law school, because hey, lawyers make a bunch of money, right? The truth is, fresh out of law school, lawyers often DO make a bunch of money – not always, but often – and by the time they put in the hours expected of them each week, especially the new associates, they’d make slightly more per hour flipping burgers at Burger King. And they often find that they really don’t want to be lawyers, either, but they have to stick with it at least long enough to pay of their huge law school bills. So: Law school can be a good choice, but a really sucktastic default plan.
I’m embarrassing myself by writing too much, but can I make one last (very specific) recommendation to “Stunted”?
Carl Zimmer–English major who now writes popular science books. I just read “Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs,” and it was insanely interesting. I think it’s because he was an English major first.
A talent for turning complex scientific concepts into smooth, clear, appealing language is important right now. Think what aspects of the future will be decided by whether non-scientists have a grasp of these concepts.
I will now ban myself from commenting for thirty days and go call “Washington Journal.”
Oh, see, this is what happens when I start reading posts from the bottom up. I find that after reading Adrienne’s excellent advice and dashing off my impassioned plea … Amy has already said the same thing.
Amy, I’m so sorry. I don’t know if it’s any comfort to know that you are not alone: I see your situation all too often. The only advice I can suggest is pay off your loans as quickly as you can, and see if there IS some place you can use your degree that would be more to your liking: environmental law rather than corporate, etc. And if at all possible, hang onto at least one hobby for your sanity. Good luck.
@La BellaDonna Yes. Yes. YES. I went to law school because I realized I didn’t want to go to medical school, and my dad suggested it as an alternative. File that one under “seemed like a good idea at the time”. I actually liked law school, and my occasional ambivalence about being a lawyer seemed like no big deal because the school spent ALL THREE YEARS telling us that there were so many things we could do with a law degree besides practice law.
While that’s true, in a way, it doesn’t address the fact that most people come out of law school with 6 figures of debt – debt that needs paying off. We’re talking more than a grand a month in loan payments. You need a pretty good salary to swing that, so an awful lot of people go to big firms for the money even though the work sucks and the atmosphere is nothing short of soul-crushing. Seriously, I hate my job. HATE. I joke sometimes about starting a consulting business where I will take 2% of what you expect to spend on law school tuition in exchange for talking you out of it. I kid, but it would probably be a decent little business venture and could save others the daily agony of having to get up and slog through 15 hours of something you hate just to pay the damned bills (loans + mortgage + laid-off spouse = zero flexibility for me).
Ahem, sorry. All of that is to say that I cannot possibly agree more with the folks here who have cautioned against getting into another degree program to prolong having to make any job choices. The first job out of college doesn’t have to have anything to do with the rest of your career. Two years in a 9-5 position builds a little resume fat, leaves plenty of time for indulging in all kinds of other interests, and (best of all) lets you earn a living while figuring things out.
Hi, emp, I recently applied for a job that I found out about from a friend who knew me and the people hiring. I left the interview knowing that I didn’t want to work there if they offered me the position, however. I also have a very entertaining story of The Worst Job Interview I Ever Had. But I felt I had to make a good effort for the sake of the mutual friend. I had brought a thank you note with me but left the interview so rattled that I forgot to mail it. After a few days the mutual friend called and asked if I’d sent a thank you note, because the people hiring had mentioned that they hadn’t received one. So I rushed a hand delivered one, feeling genuinely bad that I’d forgotten to mail it (my resume says “detail oriented” and usually I am, but seriously, this interview was weird). Anyway, part of the reason I wasn’t offered this job was because I didn’t send the thank you note on time, and I think that in turn reflected badly on the mutual friend. A thank you note politely acknowledges that they took the time to interview you, it also can be a chance to mention anything you didn’t say in the interview. My two cents.
@Hannah And now I’m stuck wondering how it all worked out with Brad and Janet and the kid-question…
@Stunt. I was there! Only I was even more confused about my direction than you are because I didn’t graduate (wasn’t healthy enough to even attempt the last year). I deferred uni and went off to get a totally unrelated job because, well, bills. Fourteen years later I am still working for the same company, in a completely unrelated position, respected, fulfilled and healthy. And next year I’m planning to quit my job and (finally) go back to study. In another field again.
I guess I’m saying this to not only encourage you in the baby steps, but to say that you don’t even need to know where you’re planning to go as long as you work to your strengths. My life looks nothing like I ever planned but I’ve had a lot of fantastic experiences along the way.
Stunt sent me an email recently to say that she’s made some significant headway, and more importantly that she appreciates all the support and insight from you, the TN readers. Well done as always, team.
Amy – HA! I second the rec about not going to law school. It didn’t necessarily seem like Stunt was headed that direction, but yes – staring down the barrel of law loans when you’re done is just as sobering as not knowing what you want to do with your undergrad degree.
Emp – I’m 30 also. I don’t think it’s brownnosing to send the follow-up. Neither do any of my buddies of similar age searching in today’s crappy market. Anything to stand out.
An update from Stunted, which she asked me to pass along:
“You and your readers made a huge difference with all the support and encouragement; and I thought you might like to hear about some of the actual concrete effects of that. I finished my last set of exams today – and they were oral exams so I got instant feedback – and I passed. These were the last exams I needed to sit to finish requirements for my undergraduate degree. So now I’m done, and I’m graduating, and now I get to go home and get well again – and I can’t thank you all enough for helping me get over the final hurdle.
If you could maybe publish this letter as a thank-you to everyone who wrote in, I’d really appreciate it. I owe y’all.”
Done and done! Good work, team — and congratulations, Stunted!
I will not hire someone who does not send a thank-you note after interviewing. Now, or in any economy. I am 28. Just a data point.