Renewed vigor

Wow. Did I write that last post just yesterday? Well, I took a break today, watched a movie (Vicky Christina Barcelona…which I quite liked), talked a few hours with an old friend on the phone, and…just didn’t think about job hunting for a little bit. Though, actually, my friend did give me suggestions as to where I could look. None of them sounded particularly good, but I’m not much in a position to be picky.

I had started, after the movie, to browse craigslist to see what there was in both jobs and housing if I need to relocate. And, although I saw a few jobs that could possibly work, this restlessness came over me and I got the sudden urge to check again for the international jobs. And whadya know? In spite of my assumption that chances were slim near the end of the summer, there were more jobs that had been posted that were right up my alley.

I applied for one of them tonight already. The other one will take a little more time because I need to prepare an essay, and since it was about 10 PM when I started looking…yeah. I’ll finish that one off tomorrow. And there were still more to investigate.

People keep telling me of the things (in this case the jobs) they found serendipitously. That I shouldn’t try looking so hard for what I want. That I should just go with the flow and accept what I can get. Well, I’m willing to look into that, as I mentioned in my last post.

But here’s the thing. I have never found anything in my life serendipitously, and I’ve found that those who claim to have found things serendipitously did so because they never knew what they wanted in the first place.

Well, it’s after midnight so I guess I wrote the last post two days ago now, and I’ll be working on the other application later today. But first, I sleep.

I’ve about had it

Ok, I’ve gone 5 straight weeks applying for positions in…upwards to 20 colleges and universities for international positions. Out of those I’ve applied for, I received two interviews, but (as the title of this blog entry hints at) they didn’t work out. The rest…well, there are some I could still hear back from, but I’ve also gotten a fair amount of “thank you for trying” letters.

As I mentioned two posts ago, it is a good sign that I’m getting interviews at all. It means my resume is catching people’s attention. Perhaps I just need to work on my interview skills a bit more. I did learn a lot from the two interviews I’ve had. I may just need that “third time’s a charm” interview.

I’ll keep a finger on the pulse of…not sure that analogy is working quite the way I want. Anyway, I’ll check periodically for new jobs in the international field, but I think I’ve about exhausted that option. I’m going to start looking at other options that may be more pragmatic and help keep me in this area.

I mean, here’s one of the problems. When I applied for the JET Program and applied to teach in Taiwan...even when I applied for the teaching program here, I was applying for high demand areas that had an insatiable need for people to work in those fields. That is not the case for the positions I’ve been applying for since I left the teaching program. Lot’s of people are qualified and there are only a few positions open.

So, now looking at that reality...well, I kind of did see that reality already, which is why I’ve been applying nation-wide, not just here in Washington. But even so, it’s starting to look like I may not get in, so I’m going to start looking for other options.

Which options? I don’t know. Neither of the temp agencies I’ve applied for have had any work for me, which kind of surprises me since when I worked for one of the companies in Bellevue, there was plenty of work in the summer. But it seems there isn’t much going on in Olympia.

I left a message today with a job placement agency that does instant placement. I’ll try calling them back tomorrow. Maybe I can see if they can place me in a job up in Seattle. I mean, if I can’t get the job I’ve been looking for, maybe I can at least get the location. We’ll see. I guess it wouldn’t be terrible if I were stuck here, but now that I’m not in the teaching program, this area doesn’t seem to have much opportunity. But I could be wrong.

Well, that’s my update of sorts. Hopefully I’ll find where I belong or at least fit in.

On hypocrisy

Everyone is a hypocrite. Everyone lives a double standard. But most people live in the gray area so that the difference between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable is minute, so the contradictions are less obvious.

Those who live in the extreme areas are more easily spotted for their hypocrisy because the difference between what is acceptable and unacceptable is more clearly defined and more on opposite sides from each other.

But it’s all relative. And it doesn’t change that we’re all hypocrites. If we can accept this in ourselves, it’s easier to accept it in others.

Behind in the count

Well, I got two swings and two misses in my job search. One in the DC area, as I mentioned, and one right here in Lacey. The interviews have been a helpful learning process. I see more now what these schools are looking for. I don’t like that I have to learn at the expense of failing the interviews, but I guess that’s the way things go.

I know that I’m qualified for these jobs. I mean, certainly the changes I made to my resume have worked since I’m getting calls. I’ll just keep trying and see what this week brings.

A short commentary on the popularity of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report

I was kind of surprised when I heard somewhat recently that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were being looked at as legitimate news sources. When I had come back to Seattle after being overseas the better part of the previous four years, one of my friends told me that he watches these shows as his news sources...which I thought was weird.

The last time I’d watched The Daily Show was in college (I don’t think The Colbert Report was on the air yet. In fact, Stephen was still on The Daily Show.) and I’d remembered it being a parody of the news. So when my friend told me he watches it instead of the news, I thought, well maybe they restructured the show. I mean, MTV used to play music videos.

But watching The Daily Show again and being introduced to the Colbert Report, I saw that these were indeed parody shows. So why (or how) was my friend (and many others it seemed) viewing this as credible news?

Then I watched the news. In particular, I watched Fox News and MSNBC News and it started to become clearer.

Now, to back up a few years, I had already stopped watching the news before I’d left for Japan (so before 2003) because it was becoming evident that they were not interested in reporting on things we needed to know, rather, news stations seemed to just be competing against other news stations for ratings by being the first to get something caught on film and report on it before they had any information to report on. So basically, just trying to get the viewers' attention and becoming more for entertainment.

In the years I was overseas, I didn’t watch any news stations on TV. And, apparently in the time I was gone, the news became sillier and sillier, to the point where it became even sillier than the shows that were parodying the news (like The Daily Show and...well really, the current state of the news opened up the opportunity for the Colbert Report to be successful).

It’s amazing, really. It’s like, The Daily Show was inadvertently ahead of the curve. And now, “legitimate” news stations have caught up with The Daily Show, causing Jon Stewart, by default, to become a credible news anchor. And what’s more interesting is that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are aware of this, while journalists from the “legitimate” news stations can’t understand the popularity of The Daily Show or the Colbert Report.

Just, um, yeah. Just really interesting.