The Real World
First off, I would like to apologize to my readers for not posting a new blog in about two weeks. But I do have a valid reason – it is because I have become a victim to the horrible thing that my mother has warned me about for the past twenty-three years: the real world.
I thought that I had hit the real world once I moved out from my parents and into a new city for school. I had to learn to adapt to new surroundings, new people, housekeeping, and my own (often unsuccessful) adaptations of my mom’s recipes. But let me tell you, despite the fact that this was a big wake up call and may have seemed like the first sign of adulthood, it is nothing compared to what happens once you graduate.
Upon graduating I felt lively, ambitious, and eager to start my path towards a career. I moved to Toronto with the fresh idea that this was the beginning of the rest of my life. What I quickly realized however, is that if this was how the rest of my life is going to go, I would be living on a park bench and doing magic tricks for money.
The first two months of my move were the hardest. I was in a huge city with only a handful of friends, all of whom had a 9-5 job and would be too tired to hang out at night. I spent the days by my lonesome, handing out resumes and filling out countless online applications. What started off as a fun, ambitious mission quickly turned into a grueling, tedious task that often lead to unreplied emails and regretful thoughts of moving here. I started losing hope in finding my big career job and I missed the security of being a part-time student who was looked highly upon for maintaining a part-time job at the same time. But now I was a full –time job hunter, and my funds were quickly depleting.
I talked to a lot of my friends who had just graduated and many were in the same boat. I don’t think that the recession was really doing us any favors in finding a job either. We all realized that we were in (hopefully) the hardest part of our lives – being done school, jobless, and having no idea where to turn or how to try to even start our lives. With no luck in the job hunt, I resorted to a few different serving jobs that ended up being horrible experiences (see my blog on the ridiculous things I’ve seen while working at a bar). One job was not making me any money, the other was not offering enough hours, and I had to put up with drunk people, cheap tips, and cleaning up broken glass and vomit. Needless to say, I was not having much luck and the last week of each month was filled with anxiety on whether or not I’d make rent.
Months later, things began to really shape up. I got an internship somewhere that I really love and that I can truly see myself working in that field in the future. The only down side is that my internship is unpaid, but this again is not an uncommon thing for graduates to have to go through. And again, this is another aspect that has made me realize that this is going to be the hardest part of my life. Me, and countless other career-seekers, are forced to start our careers by working for free. I have realized that for me to get my foot in the door, I have to put my financial needs aside and repeatedly assure myself that the experience is worth more than money right now. And don’t get me wrong – it really is an amazing experience. It’s just very unfortunate (and in my opinion a tad unfair) that in our society, educated and ambitious employees basically have to put in hours of hard work with no financial benefit in the end. It takes a lot of strength and self assurance to stick with an internship and to stay hopeful that it will help lead you into a dream career.
And so, since I don’t get paid for my internship, I am also working a serving job for cash. Basically, I’m working about double the amount as most adults and making half the money. I’ve lucked out with an amazing serving job that is making me great money and I also lucked out that my bosses at my internship are flexible with my new job. But I’m pooped. In the past four days I worked sixty hours between both jobs. I’ve become addicted to coffee and I’m getting used to eating at my desk and/or on the subway. I’m also running on five hours of sleep a night and I am used to not having much of a social life.
This, my friends, is my first glimpse of adulthood… and it really makes me miss recess and homework.
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