Details

A few days ago, I posted about the fun I am having searching for a summer job. It seems that leaving out the details, to maintain some anonymity, resulted in unecessary confusion. Since then, I've done a lot of thinking about whether it's really so important to keep my identity hidden. As I have discussed in another post titled Outting Myself, I am especially concerned that a potential employer, fellow student, or university staff or faculty will stumble upon my blog and connect the dots to figure out that it's me. While I'm not ashamed of my mental health issues, I am not convinced that the "typical" person is capable of separating my diagnosis from my person. Despite this possibility, I think I will go ahead and include more details. Otherwise, I'll never get the most out of my blog. I need to be completely honest, somewhere. Strangely, even though I've never met most of the people who comment on my blog, I implicitly trust them, I trust you. Yes, my nightmare may actually happen, but I think I need to trust myself to deal with it and overcome the potential discriminations or assumptions.

Therefore, here's some more details about me that may or may not be relevant...

As I have mentioned, I am a student, specifically, I am a la stoodent (think leegle), full time theoretically. Hopefully you can figure out what I mean even with the camouflage spelling to deter googlers. Also, I'm hoping you won't hold that fact against me. My undergraduate degree in biologie, specifically plants, is from a UC school. I moved to upstate NY from Northern California to get my next degree, a Ph.Duh. in molekular biologie. After I finished that degree, I knew that research wasn't for me anymore. Sadly, while I no longer enjoyed the work, I wasn't too bad at it and still loved science. So while sticking around for a postdoc, I did some serious soul searching to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. In the meantime, I went through my divorce with my first husband which nearly took everything I had in me.

I finally settled on my current field of interest. Ultimately, I want to be in intellektual property (pa.tents, copyrite and the like) for biotek. While I thoroughly enjoy studying this stuff, I have been unable to unlock the secret to success on the exams, of which there's only one per semester and it is the only thing your grade is based upon.

In this professional area, there is a very set way of applying for jobs. The summer after your 2nd year is crucial for future employment. Most students secure a high paying firm job in their favorite city for the summer, and that usually turns into a job offer for after you graduate. We all began the process at the end of Summer 2006. Then, most travelled all over the country during the Fall for the "call back" interview, after the initial screening interview. I landed 6 call backs; this was lucky since I was only applying to the few firms in my area (not a big city) and in my narrow field of interest. I was thrilled with my prospects and had, what I thought to be, great interviews.

And that's where I was wrong. Actually, I have no idea where I failed in this process, the list of possibilities is too daunting.

So now, I am in the no man's land of leegle employment. It's ugly and evil. The little firms will hire once they know their summer needs, but that doesn't happen for a few months yet. I have been scrambling to come up with options, choices. Now, I am looking at in-house counsel for biotek companies, not-for-profit resurch organizations, etc. I am totally alone, as I don't know any other student who failed their Fall employment search as I did. Depressing.

Sorry for all of the misspellings, but I am trying to trick the search engines, if that's possible with my limited knowledge of the web and computers. Also, so sorry for the boring nature of this post, but I needed to complete the story of my hunt for employment. Hope you survived it.