LJ Idol Free Topic: Radial
I knew I needed to stay awake in the meeting, but I couldn’t help nodding off after the third hour of sitting there, listening to the mindless dribble for a job I couldn’t care less for. And honestly, I didn’t fall asleep; I simply had trouble holding my head. No amount of coffee seemed to help that.
Yet the powers at be thought I was bored and uninterested in the job. Seriously, how could I NOT be interested? I mean, I know I spent $75,000 for a Masters degree, and this was my dream job. I always wanted to be a glamorized secretary. I spent many hours dreaming of filing and updating lease summaries. When I went to sleep at night, I thought of how wonderful it would be if I could JUST read commercial leases ALL day.
OK, it did bore me. It bored me to death. But I wasn’t performing brain surgery. I could be bored and still do my job. People do it every single day.
Apparently, I couldn’t.
I thought no one could see the way I hated my job. I smiled, I put on a happy face and came in early and stayed late to look good. I made stupid mistakes, sure, but I never held a real job before. I went straight from undergrad to graduate school. I worked an internship, but nothing major. Couldn’t you give me more than a single month to learn the job? Couldn’t you have given me a manager who could actually MANAGE. I know she was the Executive Vice-Presidents daughter, but she didn’t learn her mother’s wonderful managing skills in the whole 23 years she has been on this planet. She was smart and great at her job, but a good manager? No way. Somehow, I needed to know what to do without ever being taught. I needed to come in and have psychic abilities. I would ask questions, but sometimes I didn’t even know there were questions to ask. I did what I thought I was supposed to do and apparently the job required a full-blown psychic and I could not fulfill that requirement.
You can only do so much when you hate the job and don’t have the proper support to do well even when you do try. I was miserable. I would day dream about what I would rather be doing. Maybe I could get certified to teach? I love the academic world. Maybe a doctorate degree is in my future? Oh, I would love to be a writer; maybe I should try my hand at a novel again? I wish I could work with animals, I like dogs more than I like people (especially those in my office). If I only had the time to pursue something else…
Well it all came back to bite me on the ass today. I got fired.* Yes, you read that right. I lost my first ever professional job. I am back at the beginning of the whole sequence again. I came full circle and back to where I began.
And I am thinking that perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. The time I spent there taught me a valuable lesson. What was that you ask? That I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I need to make a change NOW. All those thoughts about what I would rather be doing should maybe turn into what I SHOULD be doing instead. And now I have the chance to make that happen. Being in a job that made me miserable made me realize what I need to do in order to be happy. No amount of schooling could have taught me that.
*Technically, I didn’t get “fired”. They eliminated my position. I could have told them that my job was useless from day one, but it took them this long to finally realize what a waste it really was.
Yet the powers at be thought I was bored and uninterested in the job. Seriously, how could I NOT be interested? I mean, I know I spent $75,000 for a Masters degree, and this was my dream job. I always wanted to be a glamorized secretary. I spent many hours dreaming of filing and updating lease summaries. When I went to sleep at night, I thought of how wonderful it would be if I could JUST read commercial leases ALL day.
OK, it did bore me. It bored me to death. But I wasn’t performing brain surgery. I could be bored and still do my job. People do it every single day.
Apparently, I couldn’t.
I thought no one could see the way I hated my job. I smiled, I put on a happy face and came in early and stayed late to look good. I made stupid mistakes, sure, but I never held a real job before. I went straight from undergrad to graduate school. I worked an internship, but nothing major. Couldn’t you give me more than a single month to learn the job? Couldn’t you have given me a manager who could actually MANAGE. I know she was the Executive Vice-Presidents daughter, but she didn’t learn her mother’s wonderful managing skills in the whole 23 years she has been on this planet. She was smart and great at her job, but a good manager? No way. Somehow, I needed to know what to do without ever being taught. I needed to come in and have psychic abilities. I would ask questions, but sometimes I didn’t even know there were questions to ask. I did what I thought I was supposed to do and apparently the job required a full-blown psychic and I could not fulfill that requirement.
You can only do so much when you hate the job and don’t have the proper support to do well even when you do try. I was miserable. I would day dream about what I would rather be doing. Maybe I could get certified to teach? I love the academic world. Maybe a doctorate degree is in my future? Oh, I would love to be a writer; maybe I should try my hand at a novel again? I wish I could work with animals, I like dogs more than I like people (especially those in my office). If I only had the time to pursue something else…
Well it all came back to bite me on the ass today. I got fired.* Yes, you read that right. I lost my first ever professional job. I am back at the beginning of the whole sequence again. I came full circle and back to where I began.
And I am thinking that perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. The time I spent there taught me a valuable lesson. What was that you ask? That I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I need to make a change NOW. All those thoughts about what I would rather be doing should maybe turn into what I SHOULD be doing instead. And now I have the chance to make that happen. Being in a job that made me miserable made me realize what I need to do in order to be happy. No amount of schooling could have taught me that.
*Technically, I didn’t get “fired”. They eliminated my position. I could have told them that my job was useless from day one, but it took them this long to finally realize what a waste it really was.