Lost in Transition

Today I visited my college's career counseling website. I clicked on a link called "Your Job Search Starts with You" and it led me to an article with the heading: "where do I start?" Now we are talking, I thought to myself. All this time I've been floundering and trying to figure out where, in fact, I should start, when all I had to do was go to my school's career counseling website. They probably have a list of questions I can ask myself or maybe a quiz that will help me define my skills. Perhaps they even have a section called "What Young Women Living in Brooklyn With Their Cat And Interests in Dance, Trapeze, Women's Studies, Pop Culture and Media Should Do With The Rest of Their Lives." I mean, that's a semi-reasonable thing to hope, no?

Instead, after being informed that the job search can be stressful and anxiety-inducing, the article states that "The problem is that until you can answer the question [what do you want to do?], your job search isn't going to get off the ground." I read on to learn that if I don't know what I want to do my "job search will lack focus, and [I] could fall into another trap: [I] could be trying to fit [myself] into a job, rather than trying to find a job that fits [me]." But did this page offer any advice as to how I should go about narrowing down my interests? Did it have any suggestions for just how I might unlock my secret ambitions? Am I any closer to knowing what color my parachute might be after reading that my whole job search is totally fucked until I do? Not so much.

This is making me dread my scheduled Wednesday morning phone meeting with a counselor from this office. I imagine that the conversation will start out with all the usual pleasantries: "Hi. How are you? How can I help you begin this exciting time of transition?" But as soon as she learns that my job search lacks focus, that I am full of anxiety and stress only amplified by the fact that I don't know what I want to do, she will probably barely be able to choke out the words to tell me to stop wasting her time before slamming the phone down in disgust.