Or, How I learned to stop worrying* and embrace student life.
*Worry less.
Worry a little less.
Worry about the same amount but not spiral into despair over my inability to affect positive change in my life.
So here I am, at the age of… over-26… back in post-secondary for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. A lot of people ask me, why? What brought me to my current studies? Certainly my classmates ask that, with just a soupçon of “We’re fresh out of high school, what’s your excuse” in their voice.
Well, here’s the story. With headings. And maybe the occasional tension-breaking corgi photo.
Escaping Underemployment
My first real proper jobs, once I’d escaped being a projectionist for poverty wages, were in communications and marketing. Running communications for a nonprofit think tank then online marketing for an online payment system… that was primarily used for online gambling… That one paid well but could have been more fulfilling. It ended when the company I worked for bought a company in Montreal to access new markets through a different brand name, then somehow the company we bought ended up in charge and fired half of our office.
I always assumed that eventually, I’d find a new copy writing job, or something similar in my prior field. I had lots of experience, my former supervisor liked me plenty, it should have been only a matter of time. I just had to find something else to keep the wolves at bay in the meantime.
One attempt of which, as my most popular posts of all time explained, went very badly. After some time doing freelance tech writing (which ended thanks to oil prices dropping) I found a job in an internet cafe, and when an opening appeared made manager. It was fine. It was a perfectly fine thing to do while I found a proper career.
Then it was five years later. And I was no longer the primary manager, having traded that position for a three-month leave of absence to do a Fringe tour of Eastern Canada that was a complete and unmitigated disaster. And my last two successful job interviews had been spectacular disappointments.
Clearly something had to change. But first… let’s dig into those “successful” “job” “interviews.”