An Update on the (Real) Job Hunt

(I apologize in advance if this post seems whiny)

So the past few days I've been posting less because I've been chasing around the specter of a job that will, if nothing else, keep me from having to explain a period of unemployment on my resume and from starving to death in the fall. I can now tell you that I was evidently aiming too high by shooting for an hourly retail job. I also thought about digging holes or some sort of manual labor, but then I remembered I'm a female with T-rex arms (though they're deceptively strong, I must say) and this suburb is stuck in the '50s, so I'd probably be rejected on the grounds that I might strain my ovaries or something. Besides, I've already applied for a dozen unpaid internships and been turned down for every single one. If no one will deign to allow me to toil away for them for free, why should I expect some other poor sap to pay me?

And really, now that I've all but abandoned hope of finding Middle East or policy-related employment, why should I be paid to do something I don't want to do and am no good at? Taking the pre-employment quiz at Macy's, I kept having premonitions of working on commission in the shoe department--a circumstance I would find abhorrent, although future employers in the policy world would no doubt like to hear about the time I talked a lady up from Crocs to Prada or whatever kids are wearing these days by guilting her about unfair labor practices in Crocs factories.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to negotiate the future possibilities of the internship that fell through, but my contact hasn't replied to my (time-sensitive) e-mails in the last week and a half, so I'm left to assume I said something terribly offensive. Or she knows I've been griping about her organization's bureaucratic inefficiency non-stop for the past two weeks.

Collectively, this whole mess just makes me feel disappointed. I can borrow a bajillion dollars in students loans so I can eat and have a roof over my head in the fall (unless Congress votes to abolish student loans entirely, which at this point wouldn't surprise me). I can get used to the idea of graduating a semester late and watching my friends get awesome jobs before me and throwing my 3-year life plan out the window again. What really bothers me is that right now, I have the ability to contribute beneficially to some sort of organization instead of flinging my ideas anonymously into cyberspace, and I'm not being given the opportunity to do so.

But I won't let this summer become a waste. Between this blog and some pieces I plan to write for journals and whatnot, I'm going to make myself come out of this summer a better candidate for a job next year, if only to spite the people who passed on me this time around.