Career Choice or Choice Career?
 Help Wanted: Career Counselor. Must have patience. Ability to perform miracles a plus. Odd shifts available.
For the past year I have been on the prowl for a job. That's not true, I have a job, several in fact. At this point I need a career, or at least a mere career TRACK. One thing's for sure: I don't want to work in a cubicle, and I don't want to wear stockings and heels. Since I'm already putting in my requests...I want a health insurance plan with dental and eye care, stock options, voluminous vacation time, and a bathtub with jacuzzi jets. Is that too much to ask???
For that matter, I don't want to wear a suit, unless it's for bathing. Still, for the sake of trying on a new figurative "suit", I recently went to an interview clad in a business suit. When I graduated from college, a career counselor handed me a folder of practical career "tips". Don't chew gum in an interview, nod head enthusiastically when told anything about the position or company, write a pleasant but not desperate thank you note and send it the day after, etc. The college career services office offers lifetime counseling for alumni, and I'm beginning to wonder if they thought anyone (until I came along, that is) would truly take them up on that. To avoid homicide, I've turned to online career guidance, in the form of a friendly monster, who regardless of my uncompromising wish list continues to further my search.
I've learned how to shake someone's hand when we first meet, and for how many seconds to look them in the eye and smile. I know my lines for all the probable, and not so probable, questions an interviewer may ask. "So, tell us about yourself". "What interests you about this position?" "What is your best quality?" "Worst?" "Where do see yourself ten years from now?" I have become adept at making my scripted answers sound unscripted--I tilt my head, scratch my head, say "Gee, no one's asked me that before, let me see..." Then, I impress my interviewer(s) with my quick off-the-cuff responses, full of profound insight and clarity.
In spite of all my training, last week I was thrown by an unexpected question. Exec: "What's one word your friends would use to describe you?" Me: "Um, in-debt...?" Exec: "Well, what's one word you would use to describe yourself?" Me: "Hungry." Me again: "...for meaning." Goodbye to that job prospect.
I've registered myself for a 10-hour crash in computer graphics, since every position which remotely intrigues me demands QuarkXpress under my entry-level belt. So I bought a package course deal: Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator. To top that, I have even begun to learn the very thing I have always thought would bring home some bacon: HTML. If a monkey can teach it to me, I can learn it, damn it1x So, stand back. The oyster will soon be my world. Or vice versa.
When all's said and done, the idea of any 9-5 kills me. I just heard through a friend of a friend that a friend of another friend was diagnosed with cancer and told he had 5 years to live. He had worked for years in a pharmaceutical company as the head photocopy guy. Faced with this new knowledge, he mourned the years he wasted beside the copy machine, when he should have been enjoying life. You're probably thinking: What candyland are you coming from, where the photocopy guys actually WANT to do what they do?
You've got a point. But I found a book which offers alternatives, a book I would recommend to fellow willing-to-work but unwilling-to-settle folk: Creating a Life Worth Living : A Practical Course in Career Design for Aspiring Writers, Artists, Filmmakers, Musicians, and Others Who Want to Make a Living, by Carol Lloyd. I hope the book gives photocopy guys a future farther away from the photocopy machine.
By Laura Schiller
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