2008 February « "The Young and the Jobless"

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February 26, 2008 at 7:40 am | In Career, Dating, Friendship | 1 Comment

When I was ten years old, I couldn’t wait to be 18, 20, 22.

I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be an opera singer. I imagined myself as a young woman, beautiful, confident, walking in pretty dresses, thick curls, a smile, and always having an outlet for my creativity.

Today I’m 22. I am officially an editorial assistant for this wonderful company, whose vice president called me this morning to let me know that his company will sponsor me, will pay for my working visa and enable me to live in the States for years to come.

Today I was young, beautiful, walking the streets of New York, thinking of the job I have that encompasses all my dreams and gives me an outlet for the creativity that pulsed within me when I was ten.

I’m not an opera singer, but I sing at home. When my roommates are gone, I sing from the soul. I’m not an artist, but I draw when I find the time. I paint when I have the energy. And I write.

I have a job in New York City that, stating Monday, will allow me to release my passion for words. I have a job that will allow me to learn and grow and let my dreams unfold before me.

I have an amazing ex-boyfriend, who planned an amazing dinner, who surprised me with tickets to a Jazz club, who sent me flowers and balloons and shared a passionate kiss with me in a cab on my way back home tonight.

I have friends back home who read this blog consistently, who love me, who share in my joy today.

What do I have to complain about? Nothing. Not today. Perhaps little things tomorow and the day after, but not today.

My life is wonderful. The big things are there. My dreams are real. My passion is mine. The souls that touch my life and color it are alive. My dreams are throbbing.

My life is filled with joy, with pain, with gratitude.

Today I have everything. Tomorrow I will have everything, too.

Thank you. You, who reads this, you, who doesn’t. You, God. You, Time. You, 10-year-old who helped me get to where I am today.

You, 10-year-old Nati, who I know would have been proud to see me in my pretty dress today, smiling up at the New York City sun behind brown curls, embracing life, and truth, and the passion that life decided would mine.

Let Me Count the Ways…

February 23, 2008 at 7:09 am | In Career | 5 Comments

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”

It seems like yesterday when school was in session and we, English students, were first getting acquainted with Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Ah, as she counted the ways she loved that lucky man, we counted the minutes till class was over and we could run outside and party plan.

Now our frazzled recent grads count the number of interviews they’ve had, the number of edit tests, the number of minutes they’ve gone over their phone bills thanks to all the week’s networking and shameless pleading for a job.

They count the total amount of money they’ve spent on the expensive New York rent of the past six months, they count the months they’ve been in the city looking, fruitlessly, for jobs.

Or, if they’re lucky, they count how many letters are in the name of the company that just offered them a job. They count the numbers in the five-figure salary offer. They count the days till the start date.

But let’s not get carried away.

It’s my turn now, so let me count the companies:

1. Springer Science + Business Media: 1 lukewarm interview, no word (Oct 07)

2. Taylor & Francis: 1 amazing interview, 1 edit test, 1 intro to staff, many hints that they’ll hire me, 1 admission that their budget wouldn’t allow it after all (Oct 07)

3. Esquire Magazine, Hearst Corp.: 1 edit test, 1 glossy rejection letter (Oct 07)

4. Woman’s World Magazine, Bauer Pub.: 1 exhilarating interview, 1 call back, 1 food poisoning that prevented me from going to the second interview, 1 decision from them that they couldn’t reschedule the interview (Nov 07)

5. Harlequin: 1 long manuscript test, 3 successful interviews, 1 rejection (Nov 07 – Jan 08)

6. Dentsu Communications: 1 interview, no word (Jan 08)

7. Interview Magazine: 1 wonderful interview, 1 hold up thanks to budget, 1 promise of a call back. Still no word. (Jan 08)

7. Simon & Schuster: 1 okay interview, 1 writing test, 1 rejection e-mail (Feb 08)

8. Skyhorse Publishing: 1 manuscript test, 1 annoying phone call where they said some other dude got my job thanks to his cooler internships (Feb 08)

9. Penguin Group: 2 great interviews, 1 edit test. Still waiting to hear. (Feb 08)

10. _____ : 1 thrilling interview, 1 easy edit test, 1 exciting offer letter.

Wait. What?

1 offer letter?

Yes! I can’t hold it any longer: I’M THAT LUCKY RECENT GRAD!

After an incredible interview two days ago, I woke up this morning with a wake up call: I have a job. Literally, the vice president of the company called me and extended an offer, which I gladly accepted. Wait, did he say these have never paid anyone as much as they’re paying to keep me? Three weeks vacation? Full benefits? Wait, I have health insurance? Wait, I have a job??!! A career?! At 21? Really?!

Those were the first thoughts of the morning.

The next few series of thoughts had to do with surviving the dreadful snow outside on the way to FedEx to fax in my signed acceptance letter. But I survived. After plunging steps in thick snow, the deal was sealed.

And that’s when it hit me. Wait. They didn’t ask my about my citizenship. Oh, wait–they don’t know about my citizenship. They won’t care, will they?

I had to tell them. Nervous, I went home, and practiced my speech away from the mirror. Then I called the guy, asked if he needed any further documentation for me, and after he declined, I brought to his attention that yes, I can start right away on Wednesday indeed, because, yes, I am legally authorized for work till October, but I will eventually need sponsorship to continue working thereafter.

There was a pause on the line. His pause, and mine, as I held my breath.

“Oh,” he said. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

I presented the case lightly, that it was no big deal really, that it’s common procedure and all we have to do is get a lawyer to do all the paperwork, and then the company will just have to sign. (And pay the legal fees, which is another story altogether).

The guy was clueless; the company had never sponsored before. Many frazzled minutes on his part and mine and a few phone conversations later, he called back to tell me that he’d have to talk to HR to figure out what the next step would be.

*sigh*

So that’s it. I know the next step: I have to spend my weekend waiting, continuing applications just in case this doesn’t work out. *double sigh*
We said we’d “touch base” on Monday. I always hated that expression, by the way. But if I can convince this guy, get the lawyer myself, and tell the company to take the few grands’ worth of fees out of my salary, I think we might have a deal. Because then the company has no real reason for refusing me, aside from discrimination.

I guess the lesson here is that sometimes it pays to be a U.S. citizen. And if you’re not, sometimes it pays to make sacrifices for the long run.

And to pay now so that, as the new editorial assistant, I can have the power to take out phrases like “touch base” from the English language forever.

Tangerine Girl

February 10, 2008 at 7:39 pm | In Dating | Leave a Comment

If recent grads are lucky enough to have a job by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around, whether or not they have a significant other to share it with doesn’t really matter.

Because they know that their employer loves them, and that their landlord does, too, always receiving their rent payments on time.

It’s when recent grads have no job that Valentine’s really hurts. It makes them feel empty. Lonely, perhaps, too.

As a day of evaluation of love and happiness, the approaching Valentine’s Day makes me shudder. Last night I had a dream: I was in a theatrical production—the beautiful, dark-haired girl with a secondary role, who really turns out to be the protagonist at the end. Throughout the play, she wears pink satin dresses for the few minutes she appears onstage, she walks barefoot in the sun, she gathers daisies and eats tangerines. The tangerine girl, they call her. She watches the main girl’s melodramatic heartbreak story from afar, until in the end the male protagonist recognizes her as the tangerine girl, the one love of his life, and rescues her.

Rescues her from what, I do not know, because as the tangerine girl, she knows her beauty and calmness the whole time through. So it’s not really rescuing. He thinks it is, because his brain is befuddled with chivalrous stories of a nostalgic past full of bittersweet idealism and inequity. But she is too independent, too complacent to give any thought to titles and stories. To her, it is just love—a beautiful touch added to her already colorful life.

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t remember the ending. There was no ending really—doesn’t every play, every Hollywood love story end right at the point where the lovers get together and idolize the whole life they have ahead of them to celebrate the beauty of their union?

Well, I didn’t need an ending. I saw it in real life yesterday, when I ended my own real-life love story as I pulled the curtains down, giving him no time to follow me into the production area behind.

The man in the dream was actually my Middle Eastern man with his kind and chivalrous heart. My Mr. Darcy as they call him in real life. The tangerine girl was me. Innocent, complacent, satisfied with daisies, and tangerines, and the man that came into my life three months ago to “rescue me”.

Though he wasn’t really rescuing me. It became clear that maybe he thought he was. He treated me way too nice. He was too intense. He lost his identity when he was with me and gave me his all. Which for me was too much. No, I did not want his coat at the mere mention that it’s cold outside. No, I did not want him to always put his arm around my shoulders, crushing my independence, every time we walked. No, I did not want him to try to fix every little problem in my life when I talked about it.

He didn’t understand that. In fact, he thought me spoiled when I complained about all his niceness. And yesterday, he told me to write down in that “little blog of mine” that he was too intense for me, and go back and revisit in ten years and see what I think then. I know what I will think then, I told him. That you were way too nice and that I wasn’t ready for something like that.

What is it with men and their pride anyway? Maybe the Leo and the Pisces just don’t work. The Leo is way too prideful, way too caring. The Pisces is way too independent and non-traditional. The stars warned me from the start, but I didn’t listen. How non-traditional of me.

But seriously, what is it with their pride? I felt like I was in a chivalrous fairy tale the whole time in this relationship. I loved it, he treated me great, but I also felt like I was weak, just like those women who were treated too nice for their own good in those tales.

I didn’t want a guy to smother me with love. I wanted a cough syrup kind of love—one that would be tucked away in a little, brown glass bottle, preciously guarded on the top shelf of the cabinet, only to be taken out now and then and fed to me a dollop at a time with a little silver spoon. Then I could taste its sweet and soothing bitterness, let it trickle down my throat, slowly healing my every nerve.

And for the rest of the time, to know that my love stayes guarded in that little brown cabinet, away from the mouths of the world, away, quietly, strongly enough, that only the image of the bottle radiates inside me with warmth and gives me strength to go on with my life.

He didn’t get that. I told him I wanted a man with whom I could be comfortable enough to sit there, and read the paper, and watch TV, and eat a croissant in peace. I wanted a man who would be comfortable enough to go about his business and not shower me with attention every minute of our existence together, as if I might fall off my own two feet was I not watched for a single minute.

He didn’t get it. He thought I was spoiled. He thought I subscribed under the westernized view of “disposable relationships.” That basically I wanted a relationship in which I could be with someone, but not really.

And that’s when I realized that these are the cultural differences that my parents warn me against. Why did he have to think in extremes? Why did it have to be either a fairy-tale kind of love or a disposable relationship? Why couldn’t it be slow and natural, budding like an unripe flower?

A few weeks ago, I told him I loved him. Though by the end, he doubted my love. He told me he loved me, too. In fact, he told me I was the love of his life. He had never loved anyone as strongly before. I know he means it. But the kind of love he could give was the brawny kind that put gold fetters around my ankles, binding me to him. The kind of love I expressed was the kind that made me think of him at the sight of the nuances of a lavender flower. The kind that made me thank God for his overbearing presence in my life at nights. The kind of liquid love that tastes sweet, that slides down the throat as smooth as the transparent juice of the tangerines.

But it’s over. The dream, the reality, the end. The actors have bowed, the audience has clapped, the music has stopped. Here, the theater doors close, the actors part, some returning to their small studios to sleep within the frigid space of their four walls, others getting together to celebrate the success of their production tonight.

No matter what, life goes on. And Valentine’s Day approaches. And this recent grad will surely be celebrating it sitting on her bed, finding comfort in her stack of meaningless job applications.

Santa On Vacation

February 4, 2008 at 9:20 am | In Career | Leave a Comment

Sometimes it’s tough to get through life’s disappointments, but if you live in New York City, one lesson you learn fast is that you really have no choice but to get through them.

Life moves so fast here that if you take time out to get over whatever you have to get over, life passes by you and you miss all of it—and the few chances it has to offer.

Especially for our vulnerable and often-too-sensitive jobless recent grad, life in the big city can be tough.

So it has been for the past few weeks.

After a big test and three interviews with the world’s largest romance book publisher, I got a nice, big, prestigious rejection from my dream editorial job.

“It was very close,” the HR manager told me apologetically on a Friday. I thanked him and hung up. These words were no consolation. In fact, I found much more consolation in a tub of Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream a few minutes later. German chocolate. European, like me, I thought then, gobbling down another spoonful of chilly, sweet compassion.

You see, I’ve got everything working against me these days. It’s not just the damned English major that leads you nowhere, neither the competitive market of New York City, nor the terrible economy of the United States at the moment. It’s all of these, combined with the looming deadline of April 1st.

April 1st: my death warrant. After eleven years in the States, I am still stamped as an international. An alien, as they call us. I love this country as much as the next grinning douchebag holding a hot dog and wearing that horrible all-American sock-sandal combination, and yet I’m the one who has to leave the country if I don’t find a job by April 1st. (And I will shamelessly admit that I have a better fashion sense.)

And it’s not just find a job. It’s find a job related to my majors. Find an employer willing to do a load of paperwork and shell out $3,000 to keep me. April 1st.

I’m turning 22 soon, but this year I’m only celebrating if I get sponsored.

I asked Santa for the sponsorship, but he lost his way this year, it seems. Poor guy. Who knows what kind of worries he faces these days, too.

But forget Santa. He’s a global citizen. I’m a Greek citizen. What will I do if I don’t get sponsored, I wonder sometimes. What can I do, but bring my wonderful BA in English to Greece and fan it around to sweep the waves of heat away from my face?

But I have to remind myself that these are the thoughts of the desperate non-citizen, English major, recent grad. Not mine. I’ve been in New York City since August. My skin is tough. My heart is made of stone. I am no desperate non-citizen, English major, recent grad. I am a hopeful non-citizen, English major, recent grad. I am hopeful—that’s the difference between me and the other applicants. I am hopeful, and I have the skills.

So, at some point during that depressing afternoon of ice cream and the process of making my eyes clear, it hit me: You can’t help the outcome, you can only expedite the present. With renewed hope, I ditched the ice cream (after emptying the tub, of course), wiped my sticky fingers, and logged onto my computer.

Mediabistro, Bookjobs, Publisher’s Marketplace, Journalism Jobs, Ed2010, Craigslist, Hotjobs, SimpyHired—my favorite websites revisited.

For every thirty-five applications, I received two answers. Therefore, after a week of applying to five jobs a day, I got two call-backs. And one extra one (must have been from Santa, feeling guilty).

One was for an office manager position for a communications agency. The lady that interviewed me was interesting. And by that I mean too distracted and creative for my taste, but when you got no job and no future, you don’t complain.

The second one was from a famous magazine—Andy Warhol’s magazine, in fact. The interview went great, and I was warned that everyone is way too “eccentric” there. But when you are desperate—which I’m not—or in denial, you nod and give your description of how your own eccentricity would be a perfect fit in the company culture.

And the third, Santa’s call, was from a cool fashion website.

There’s no way these guys just called me, whispered my fading self-esteem in awe after the call.

I snapped at it and decided to get productive instead of thinking. So, forty-five minutes of a stuffy subway train and a few chapters further into Pride and Prejudice later, I found myself in the heart of Union Square, armed with flash drive and résumé paper, ready to take on Staples by storm.

“You’ll have to come back and pick up your stuff in an hour,” the frazzled lady in front of the Copy & Print Desk told me. Fine, I mumbled. I walked out, and into nearby Forever 21. Dresses.

*sigh*

Pretty dresses. Tank tops. Green sweaters, gray pants. Stripes, polka dots. Orange socks. Color combinations. Fashion choices. These worlds I understand, I thought. Why can’t hiring be the same?

Two hours later, I sat on my bed back home, a beautiful, new, cream-colored dress laid out in front of my computer, into which I stared intently as I crumbled my freshly printed résumés.

After a week of interviews, our fashion staff have filled the position and will not interview you tomorrow. The words stared back at me. The screen flickered, reminding me to blink.

Bastards, I thought as I slammed the screen of my iBook shut. I chose the last date possible so they could remember me best. My chance to prove myself was taken away from me for nothing. Santa is dead.

I opened my window and lit a match. The mice scratched faintly within the walls, the sound accompanying the quiet ripples of blue smoke that I blew out into the cold night as I sat on the window sill, gazing at my neighbors’ closed shutters.

This is New York City, the English major recent grad’s idealistic dream.