When Malaise Morphs into Despair, Part One: The Never-Ending Interviews/Quando mal-estar se transforma em desespero, primeira parte: as entrevistas intermináveis

Yes, I am still unemployed. Nine weeks after my return to the great US of A, after diligently searching for employment in the private, public, non-profit, and academic sectors since the beginning of March, after nine interviews (with five more coming up next week!), dozens of resumes, and probably over a hundred job applications at this point, I am still living in my mother's house. How, you might ask, can a reasonably intelligent and attractive young woman with a Master's degree and a solid work history still be unemployed after earnestly searching for nearly four months?

Your guess is as good as mine.

After all, it's not like I've been idle this whole time. As you can tell from the title of this post, I've been on an astounding number of interviews and applied for public assistance in the meantime. I apply for five to ten jobs per day - and they're all jobs I am well-qualified to do. I've been working out and training for my PHS physical fitness test that I would love to take, once I can secure a federal job. Joel and I contribute to my mother's household; I clean and he cooks delicious meals (as he is wont to do). I network, I follow up on interviews by e-mail, I am gracious when turned down and immediately available if I have to drive two hours to Austin for an interview tomorrow (which actually happened about two weeks ago). But most of all, I pray - rosaries, novenas, chaplets, and Masses - that I find something, anything, that will allow us to have a space and a life of our own.

Still, nothing.

It's certainly not for lack of trying. I suspect I am on the verge of setting some kind of record for number of interviews; just take a gander at them so far:

Date	Type	Employer	Position	Sector	Result
April 23 (W)	In-Person	HHSC (Austin)	Program Specialist V Strategic Decision Support	State Gov't	Pending*
April 29 (T)	In-Person	City of Austin	Public Health Program Specialist Tuberculosis	Local Gov't	Rejected
April 30 (W)	Phone	US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps	Commissioned Corps Officer	Federal Gov't	Approved: Professionally Boarded**
May 1 (R)	In-Person	DSHS (Austin)	Epidemiologist III Environmental Epi	State Gov't	Rejected
May 1 (R)	In-Person	DSHS (Austin)	Program Specialist III EMS/Trauma	State Gov't	Rejected
May 12 (M)	In-Person	DSHS (San Antonio)	Epidemiologist II HIV/STD/TB	State Gov't	Pending
May 29 (R)	Phone	Texans Standing Tall (Austin)	Program Coordinator Tobacco Prevention Community Coalitions	Non-Profit	Advanced to Second Interview
June 2 (M)	In-Person	DSHS (Austin)	Program Specialist V Medicaid	State Gov't	Rejected
June 5 (R)	Phone	Texans Standing Tall (Austin)	Program Coordinator Tobacco Prevention Community Coalitions	Non-Profit	Pending
June 23 (M)	Phone	Veteran's Health Admin. (Baltimore)	Health Science Specialist** Research Compliance	Federal Gov't	Next Week
June 23 (M)	Phone	DSHS (Houston)	Program Specialist III Regional Tobacco Coordinator	State Gov't	Next Week
June 23 (M)	In-Person	DSHS (Austin)	Program Specialist IV Emergency Preparedness	State Gov't	Next Week
June 24 (M)	In-Person	DSHS (Austin)	Program Specialist IV Healthcare Facility Data Collection	State Gov't	Next Week
June 26 (R)	Phone	US Coast Guard (Norfolk)	Environmental Health Officer** Vessel Safety and Sanitation	Federal Gov't	Next Week

*Technically, this position is still pending - I followed up with them three weeks after my interview, and they said they were still deciding - but seeing as it's been over eight weeks and I've heard nothing (even though they explicitly said they would let me know either way), I have essentially given up on it.
**I was approved and professionally boarded by the PHS Environmental Health Board on April 30th, which means that I have one year to secure a federal position and receive my officer's commission (assuming I pass medical and security clearance). I spent most of the month of May seeing my optometrist, dentist, and OB/GYN, plus a dermatologist, a lab, my one-time therapist, and an urgent care clinic (for an EKG) in order to collect all of the necessary medical forms and paperwork. (Fun fact: I am not pregnant, HIV-positive, infected with STDs, or taking any drugs - but my HDL cholesterol is low and my LDL cholesterol is high. Pooh.) Approximately nine hundred dollars' worth of credit card debt later, medical clearance is pending, and I am still waiting on fingerprint cards. Meanwhile, the interviews with the VA and the Coast Guard are positions through which I could receive my commission.

Don't feel bad if you're confused; the sheer number of them confuse me, too. In fact, I have even had to re-schedule some of them because I have had scheduling conflicts. Scheduling conflicts. With job interviews. It's every job-seeker's dream...and yet, no jobs.

That's right, boys and girls - you can go on nine interviews and still have zero job offers. "But you have five more next week," you say. "Surely one of those will work out!" Which is, of course, what everyone said when I came back from being abroad and had five interviews lined up. Or after I had gone on four more, leading to a total of nine. I understand that, objectively speaking, my odds continue to improve, but I'm going to honest: my optimism (which typically runs low anyways) is beginning to run dry.

Trying to explain it all to people is nearly as exhausting as doing the interviews themselves. To avoid answering the same effing questions forty more times, I feel like I should just have one of those stupid town-hall meetings that politicians are so fond of holding now. That way, I can get everybody in one room and explain that:

• I can't take a low-paying secretary job until something better comes around (I've tried, and I'm overqualified);
• I've tried applying to temp agencies and they don't want me (again, probably because I'm overqualified);
• I can't just leave my Master's degree off my resume in hopes of getting the aforementioned administrative jobs (because my former job titles and work experience give my overqualification away);
• I can't pick up a wage job to make money in the meantime (because I am traveling for interviews, often on short notice, almost every week - and no employer will tolerate that);
• I can't get a job in occupational safety with the oil companies in Houston (because they require their safety compliance specialists to be qualified as engineers - I've checked);
• I will continue to go to Austin for interviews until I have an effing job ("How many more of those do you plan to do?");
• Yes, I am applying for jobs outside of Texas even though I will be away from Joel (because a job far away is better than no job); and
• No, I am not just "being negative" - these are legitimate challenges to my unique job search (because yes, I have been accused of that).

I know that everyone means well. I know that these suggestions are well-intentioned and meant to help me. I know that things could be worse, and that I'm not homeless or starving or without support. But I'm at the limit. Yesterday morning, I asked Joel when he needed to be in Austin for his new student orientation at the LBJ school for his Master's program that begins in August and discovered, to my horror, that what I thought would be two weeks of curriculum overview and buying books was actually a full-time "workshop" schedule that begins in July and continues until his classes start at the end of August. My husband has to take classes before his classes start - and before his loans are disbursed - when we have no income, no car, and no place in Austin to live. I poured myself a cup of coffee and retreated to the bedroom so my mother wouldn't see me cry.

While perhaps not a silver lining, this whole situation has amused me in an ironic sort of way - in that I am now beyond grateful that Joel and I are currently childless when, less than a year ago, I was waxing poetic on how nice it would be to be able to start a family in the near future. I saw an article on Facebook the other day, Ramona at Forty, that really drove the point home:

Bit by bit we find out about all the jobs Mr. Quimby has held. In Beezus and Ramona, he has an unnamed position at Pacific Gas & Electric, and in Ramona and Her Father he loses his job in an office of a small moving and storage company, and everything appears to go downhill from there. For what feels like a painfully extended time (all of Ramona and Her Father), Mr. Quimby is standing in line at unemployment, waiting by the phone for interviews and job offers, and smoking. By the close of Ramona and Her Father, Mr. Quimby has finally secured a job as a checker at a grocery store chain with management potential. In other books, we’ll learn how much he hates his checker job — once again a concept which may not mean much to the kids for whom the books were written but one which resonates far too loudly for adults — and how he’ll leave that checker job to go back to art school and then get a teaching certificate while also working part-time at another hated job in a frozen foods warehouse.

I've spent a lot of time over these weeks thinking about that stereotype - the man as unemployed breadwinner, often with the unenviable burden of supporting a family, desperately seeking work and gradually lowering his standards for the kind of job he'll accept, shamefully accepting public benefits and coming home to his wife who, equally frustrated, demands to know why he hasn't found something yet. Suddenly I understand how such men become sullen and bitter as their self-confidence erodes, and how they lash out at well-meaning friends and relatives who, while well-meaning, still manage to be insulting when they make (what they believe to be) helpful suggestions. I remember my father, a hard-working and well-qualified engineer, taking a job at a mine in Nevada and working as a grocery sacker when I was a baby. I remember my mother, after being turned down for public assistance during her divorce (despite having no job and two children), smiling at people who suggested that she "just get a job at McDonald's." I think of one of our groomsmen, who went through this exact situation and spent seven months looking for work when he and his wife were expecting their daughter (and who may in fact be smiling as he reads this). And I take comfort in the fact that, despite all my despair and frustration, at least Joel and I only have to take care of each other.

And then I feel like a selfish asshole.

But who knows! By the end of next week, I might have a third interview (yes, that non-profit requires a third interview before they make a job offer) or even a job...though it might be in Norfolk, Virginia.