plasticjiaozi:

Love // FLORENCE, ITALY, JUNE 2010

I get emails from the graduate recruitment bureau which I signed up to when I was still at uni and was optimistic enough to think that I would find a job straight after graduating…..no such luck…..In my continued panic caused by lack of career, I have been trying to soak up as much “finding a job” info as I can and the “tips of the week” that they email to me have not been much help or indeed relevant to me (here I refer to the age-old gripe of Arts students who find all career information or help geared towards those who have, perhaps sensibly, chosen to do businessy/mathsy type degrees). However this week’s tip did seem to speak to me in that it referred to the rejection I have been experiencing, yet also made my toes curl in anger at the fact that it suggested I did some work experience or voluntary work…I CAN’T AFFORD TO DO THAT, AND HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO AFFORD TO DO THAT THROUGHOUT MY WHOLE DEGREE, HENCE THE SITUATION IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF NOW! 

Anyhoo, lets see if you agree:

‘Latest tip- Why are you being rejected?

Rejection is unfortunately something you will usually encounter during your search for a graduate job. It can make you doubt yourself and can knock your self esteem. However it is possible to use this to your advantage in your future job search as assessing these past unsuccessful applications can make your job search more effective, making rejection less likely. You could be applying too widely across different industries, or applying within a very specific field resulting in missed opportunities elsewhere. Don?t let your strategies go stale, apply speculatively and keep your eyes peeled for networking opportunities where you can build your contacts. Another reason you may be falling at the first hurdle is that you need more experience so consider applying for work experience or even voluntary work Proven experience in a working environment is much more attractive to an employer than just a degree.’

….Grrrrrr…

Rant over…..I will now proceed to go through the jobs that I have saved to my internet favourites sub-folder entitled “Jobs” and decide which ones I could actually do considering I have ‘just a degree’ (just??!! Those three years of toil and tears have been reduced to simply ‘just’??!!!) and am therefore less ‘attractive to an employer’….

…totally lame…

Working up a scaffold is a pretty liberating experience, particularly if, like me you have been averse to manual work before this point.

So, I’m working with my Dad who is a retired police officer and is now what he calls ‘a gentleman builder’. He loves his job mainly because he is his own boss and also because he spends most of the day outside, surrounded usually by wildlife (the gentleman builder works predominantly in leafy Surrey of course). I, however, wasn’t so sure that I would enjoy being up a scaffold (I am not great with heights, but better since I threw myself out of a plane in New Zealand), scraping and painting the upstairs windows, facia, soffit etc of a large house. However today I realised what he was going on about.

While I was round the opposite side of the house to my Dad I heard what I thought was the sound of an eagle. Now, I’m a bit of a bird watcher and I was pretty definite that there are no eagles living in Reigate so I carried on my wood-staining and thought it must have been a seagull. However, the sound persisted and I was now definitely sure that it wasn’t a seagull as the screech was so much more demure than a cheeky seagull’s filthy caw, so I hurried around to the other side of the house, turned Radio 4 down (naturally, the gentleman builder only listens to Radio 4) and exclaimed, ‘Dad! Can you hear that? It sounds like a bird of prey, like an eagle or something!’ And low and behold, there we saw a large buzzard wheeling and soaring in the sun over Reigate Hill. A special moment as I have only seen them in the midlands while driving between home and university, searching for prey by the side of the motorway.

And that special moment made me realise that this labouring malarky wasn’t all that bad. I’m earning a good wage and my Dad’s my boss so I don’t have to deal with any snidey remarks from power-hungry douche-bags; but I also get to see interesting spiders and watch great tits feeding and bees pollinating and observe different weather patterns moving in over the surrounding countryside.

I don’t want to do this forever, but I can see the appeal, and I’m glad my Dad’s got himself out of the hurly-burly of London and into a job that he really enjoys. And next time I’m unemployed, I’ll definitely be getting myself back up a scaffold, or a ladder or wherever the job dictates me to be……just as long as I don’t have to wield a sledge hammer or dig a massive hole, I’m fine; that side of manual labour is definitely not for this Alfred!

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

a baby chicken peeing on my hand in a zoo in New York