Our education system has given us a certain kind of mentality. It becomes totally hard to think out of the box when all you know is that after school you will get employed. It has been a norm that once you go through the necessary stages of education which are primary education, secondary education, college or campus and graduate, you will hustle your way out to get a job. Life has become tough and jobs have also become rare. Companies are closing down and most startups don’t live to celebrate their 5th anniversary.
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You couldn’t wait to see this day when you finally say goodbye to boring lectures. Goodbye to cats and exams. Goodbye to demanding projects and term papers. Time has come when you can finally get your dream job. Earn money and become an independent human being. You are fully equipped with knowledge and ambition. Your certificate is proof of the 4 years of hard work that you have had to endure. Welcome to the world full of harsh realities.
Everybody will tell you how difficult it is and how energy draining the search for a perfect job is. But those will just be words and you will not understand, experience will help drive the point home. It is a real struggle. You will send email after email, walk into office after office, drop your curriculum vitae in all the places you think of. You will talk to people and ask them to let you know when they hear of an opening somewhere. There are times you will be called for the interview and get no feedback at all.
Most probably you will be staying at a relative’s house as you do the search. You have to keep in mind that that is not your house and you will have to follow the rules to the latter. Helping with house chores is not an option. You have to be back at a reasonable time and spending nights out will be postponed till you ‘become of age’.
When all you have is bus fare then lunch will be forfeited. There are times you will get lost and even get late for your interview. At the end of two months, you will know every street and every building in town by their names. You will know where each office is located and you will never forget all the rude interviewers you met along the way. You will always replay each and every interview in your mind trying to guess which will come through for you. To your surprise the best ones will always never be the ones.
There are times you will have unanswered questions. You will wonder why someone had to call you for an interview to ask you if you have an experience in something when your curriculum vitae clearly shows otherwise. Don’t be offended when the same company calls you after a year for another interview forgetting that they had a session with you the previous year.
Your phone will be on 24/7. It will be close to you, just in case one of the employers gets into a good mood and decides to call. The sleepless nights that you are about to encounter will drain all the energy out of you. There are times you will render your going to school invalid.
You will wake up with puffed eyes. Each morning will bring a new kind of hope and a new kind of despair at the same time. Hope that someone will call with a job opening and despair that your job search efforts are null.
