thene: Naomi Hunter is very suspicious. (naomi)
thene ([personal profile] thene) wrote2013-03-15 02:41 am

thene appreciates that this is all lol

thene is quoted in the grauniad again, in this article about young women and stress - it's a tepid two-parter that didn't even go into the topics of the more interesting survey questions, but eh. I apparently missed even noticing the box where it asks what your job is? BUT. This may be fortunate because I literally didn't know until Tuesday, when I had a genuinely awesome conversation with the Dingbat right before leaving work. He was telling me about stuff he wanted to teach me and, because I am sprucing up my resume and hustling its ass around again in preparation for the end of my two jobs next month, I took the opportunity to ask what the hell I should declare about this job. I don't think I've had time to spell this out, but I am so glad to be here right now - I am earning about twice what I made in GA, partly because I have the opportunity to consistently work way more hours than I used to, and I am not even doing this shit for the money; i think the fact that i have literally gained far more valuable work experience in the last two months than i have in the entire rest of my life before that is of a bit more worth.

So anyway, he tells me which particular responsibilities I ought to specify and which new ones I'm going to be picking up before I leave, and also goes on about how intelligent I am, which I am mentioning only because I am smart enough to have noticed that these last two months are literally the first time my intelligence has ever been beneficial to me. Ever. I am used to it not being worth squat in any respect. Ffs the only thing I ever did with my undergrad degree was write Totalised. So, after he was done with his spiel I asked him wtf my job title was and he said to just put 'accountant'.

I am very lol@self for being chuffed with this, as a) I had no idea that that was what my monkeywork amounted to, and b) [therefore analogyfail, okay]. In any case I am not massively comfortable with putting that on paper given how minimal my skillset is, and another month isn't going to change that much. I have been applying for jobs (jobs I really want, too), but part of me just wants to say fuck figuring out what I am & am not qualified enough to talk my way into and leave it to the agency to figure out what to turn me loose on until I have got better at stuff. :/ I want some kind of trainee position that doesn't really exist irl because no one is dumb enough to pay me for it, I am sure.

(While we're on weird vindications, a fandom friend recently wrote an MA essay about Totalised, and got a very good grade & enthusiastic response to it, and I cannot read any of this academic intercourse because it is all written in Czech. I don't even.)



Very related to the above, via [personal profile] wallwalker: 5 Popular Self-Help Tips That Actually Hurt Your Career. I can totally see how most of these happen, but the real kicker is the part about stress being caused by intelligence. Apart from the jobhunt, I had another bad case of this recently. I don't stress over my jobs - just get grumpy at times - but I had a real wigout when I was doing cash-in-hand work for my upstairs neighbour. I'd been busy and let it sit for a week after she'd paid me, and I had a brief HOW DOES I SELF-EMPLOYMENT meltdown before going upstairs to visit her with the job done, but she was super-nice to me and now keeps giving me food and stuff. ;_; (The niceness is also because we shovelled snow with them and the people on the middle floor didn't, so I think she started liking us partly out of civic spite.)

Then a week afterwards [personal profile] nakki came by and this happened, which was equal parts cute and disturbing!

[identity profile] 1000kindsofrain.wordpress.com 2013-03-18 12:04 pm (UTC)(link)
My top self-help tip: be very sceptical about self-help tips.