Whew! It's been a crazy ride since I moved to New York! I'm finally having a spare minute to update my blog. So terribly sorry that I haven't written in months! But here I am to fill you all in on what's been up, here in the Big Apple.
So just to back track a little, I moved up here 11 DAYS after my graduation and there was definitely a lot to get used to. First of all, May in New York is HOT. I mean yeah I'm from the south where it gets to be 90's and above in the summer but one thing that houses in the south and apartments in New York don't have in common, is central air conditioning. Here in New York, they have window units which just in case you're not familiar, window units cool only the room they happen to be in the window of, which in my case was not my bedroom. So there were a few months there where I didn't even have a comforter on my bed because it was sooo hot. So the first month and a half ish I was pretty unemployed. I mean I dabbled pretty lightly in freelancing for a company but other than a few hours a week I was scouring websites from Craigslist, to LinkedIn to Quirks applying for all kinds of jobs that were just barely tangentially related to what I wanted to do with my life. By mid-June I'd been on several interviews and had soooo many phone interviews and gotten soooo many rejection emails that I was beginning to feel like I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I lived far away from my mommy and daddy and there was a point there where I had such severe homesickness that I actually looked up ticket prices for a flight home. In order to kind of pull myself out of this rut I tried to get more involved in church and I literally called my mom like five times a day just to chat. But I was still pretty down. I had these grandiose expectations of my life after college and my life plan was just not falling into place. I mean I know that in today's job market things are bad blah blah blah. I've heard that a million times but I, like I guess everyone else in my generation, have this mentality that those kinds of generalizations just won't apply to me. However, in the midst of this state of severe disillusionment and discouragement, the ball started rolling. And here's how it happened.
So I applied for just another random entry level market research position I found on a random job website. By this time it was like the millionth job I'd applied for and I didn't really think anything about it. Then I get a call that they want me to come in for an interview. So I'm excited but at the same time kind of wary since the address they gave me wasn't for the company described in the posting. So I was wondering if this was some sketch thing but I decided to go anyway. So I show up to this place on Madison Ave and I meet a bright, sweet, bubbly recruiter who tells me all about her job and this position she's trying to fill but then she goes right into how there aren't many entry level positions out there right now and that not a lot of people are hiring but that she wants to keep in touch even if things don't work out for this job and that she thinks I'm really great and that she wants to help. So I leave the interview not really feeling encouraged but at least I still hadn't gone an entire week in New York without an interview.
That night I went home and went back to Craigslist and applied to be a PowerPoint Designer at a random company that wasn't even mentioned in the ad. Since I'd had good practice with PowerPoint all throughout school, I decided that I'd be awesome at that job. So I sang my praises in my cover letter and to my surprise, they actually called me in for an interview. So I make the trek down to lower Manhattan near Wall St (where the OWS protesters are now camped out) and met with a happy and super nice guy who interviewed me for the job. By the end of the half hour or however long it took interview, he had basically told me that the job was mine and that he'd call and confirm the next day and that I could start the day after that. So I was pretty excited. Yeah it was for $11 an hour but that was $11 more an hour than I was currently making. So true to his word, he called me the next morning and offered me the job. Obviously I accepted enthusiastically and reported for work the next day. Now this job was especially wonderful for my first New York job. It was very flexible which allowed me to work from home if I wanted to or to go for other interviews and it had really good hours, 10-5. Even though the work wasn't particularly thrilling-- it was all about financial training exams-- it was work and I had something to do and at the end of every 2 weeks I got a check which when you haven't been getting any money for a long while...
Anyway so I do this job for a few months and things are going great...I'm still not able to really support myself financially but I'm making money and at least paying some of my bills (thanks Mom and Dad def couldn't have done all this without you!)And one morning while I'm at work I get a call from the recruiter who I haven't spoken to in weeks. She says, 'Hey there's a temp position at a really cool market research firm and they're looking for someone like you to temp indefinitely are you interested?" Am I interested? Is water wet? So we went through all the preparatory things for my interview. I had a phone interview on a Wednesday and started work the following Monday.
The job was absolutely perfect. Challenging but fun and exactly what I wanted to be doing in my first job. There are great people and it's a really fun and hip company and just overall a fun company. I get to work for really cool media and TV clients and I've learned so much and I love it. So after a month or so, my bosses started asking me if I was interested in staying on full time and of course I enthusiastically said YES! But nothing really happened with that until the end of October, when I was officially offered a full time job as a Quantitative Analyst that I happily accepted!!!
So now I'm a full time, tax-paying, benefit holding contributing member of society! WOO HOO! I have landed my dream job within SIX MONTHS of my graduation. While I'm the youngest person in my office, I really feel like I fit with the company and that I'll be here for a very long time. I love everything about it which makes me just so happy because I know so many people out there who start out in jobs they hate and have to stick with it for a while. Thank you God for looking out for me and teaching me all the patience and perseverance of those six months of unemployed-ness and thank you for providing such an awesome first job for me!
