October 26, 2006

Optimism Crushed

So I've been back since July 2006, which means I've been in the States...oh...3 months now.

My situation is thus:
1. I have a great room in a not so great neighborhood. I am paying through the teeth for it each month,
2. I have no source of income and seem to be spending lavish amounts of money like Britney Spears,
3. I've been looking for a job for the last months...unsuccessfully. I was offered a job with unsatisfactory pay and decided not to bargain for a better salary because the position was not exactly what I was looking for.

So once again, ladies and gentlemen, I am temping. What is temping you ask? It is a mechanism whereby strapped-for-cash individuals get short-term, banal, unchallenging assignments for meager paid-per-hour salaries.

I am the queen of temping. I've done it long and I've done it hard. But I'm proud to say that I was able to quit temping cold turkey in favor of the various virtues of having a real job with a real salary.

Why are you temping now, What happened, you ask? Well, it seems that, with my French/English bilingualism, my masters in International Health from a reputable school, my 2-year work experience abroad, my enthusiasm and good recommendations from previous employers; I was getting a little too cocky. I though: "it's going to take me 1 month, or 2 tops, until I find a job". Wrong!

And thus I am temping...again.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I hope something comes through soon! A friend of mine just back from Kenya is going through the same thing, and she's had probably 20+ interviews. She has been job hunting full time since about the same time you got back. It's rough all around, it seems. Network, baby, network!

Anonymous said...

The following are two public health listservs that post jobs, one is The Young Professionals' Public Health Network, Inc. Subscribe: BYPPHNETWORK-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the other is The Spiritof1848 listserv to Subscribe: spiritof1848-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

I hope this helpful, I know that job hunting is difficult especially in our current job market.

Best wishes,

Stacey

Anonymous said...

Hey Dorothee,

I work for the ONE Campaign and I’ve been tasked with looking for blogs that talk about extreme poverty and AIDS. Our Online Organizer here, Ginny Simmons, wants our blog (www.theONEblog.org) to be better connected with, and help to build up - the poverty blogosphere.
You are back from your time in Africa but we would still love it if you could help us get this blogoshpere rolling!

We recently put out a new ONE TV Spot. It’d be great if you wanted to post it on your blog. You can find code for the ad here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G3bNxStYBI&eurl=

The rest of our ONE videos are here: www.youtube.com/theonecampaign.

We’d be really interested in hearing from you. Please shoot an email back to me (one@one.org) with any questions, ideas or thoughts.

Thank you so much for all your good work and best of luck in your job search!

Meagan McManus
The ONE Team

Anonymous said...

dorothee you are supposed to be getting a job so that you can get ME a job. you're my mentor/inspiration/yoda figure remember! only joking, lots of sympathy, temping is rubbish but i'm sure something perfect is going to turn up and you'll be glad you waited for it. take care, branwyn xxxxx

007 in Africa said...

Thanks Congogirl, I hope something comes through too!

Steve, temping is (sort of) paying the bills now but it's a lot of administrative positions-definitely not what I want to do in my next job! Sigh...

Stacey, thanks so much for those links...I will sign up for them now.

Meagan McManus, thanks for contacting me. you should have received an email from me.

Branwyn. I'm your mentor! Choke...Thanks, I'm flaterred but you are oh-so-misguided :) I can get you a job as Office biatch, which is official one step down from my position!

Thanks all for the encouragements.

Anonymous said...

Dorothy,

Temping jobs were the best in my life. Who the hell wants 'responsibilites' anyway? Plus, on a per hour basis, it's still the most money I've earned (I'm currently working on a Saturday). - Will.