01. All These Things I've Done

I suppose I should start this trip out right. In my book, that includes mapping out where I've been. It's a good way to guarantee I don't make those wrong turns again.

First of all, for those of you who missed the About Me page, hi! I'm Katie, I'm a recent graduate, and I've been jobless for about a month. I'm well aware the dates don't exactly add up - that's what this post is for.

At the beginning of the second semester of my senior year, I got an internship at a company twenty minutes north of my campus. For the purposes of this blog, I'll call it Company P. I started off doing data input and a bit of research for the internship. When I convinced the company to get a Twitter as a means of advertising for their B2C website, I got transferred to the lead generation department. As graduation approached at the end of April, I asked and was informed that I could stay on full-time at the company in a Marketing position. This would make me the rare college graduate with a guaranteed job and potentially career path straight out of college. Naturally, I was on that like white on rice. Because I had a job set out for me, I stopped looking for other jobs. I settled.

There are worse places to be parked, but not many.
This, as it turned out, was a pretty big mistake.

I had settled into a company that, quite frankly, could do nothing for me. I was writing copy for an industry I had very little knowledge of and little more than apathy towards. I was an English graduate with an interest in pop culture, video games, and the nerdier side of the internet, writing marketing material about reverse logistics. It was not my field - not by any stretch of the imagination. There was little structure to my job; I oftentimes had too little to do to fill forty hours weekly, while my supervisor had far too much to complete in the span of one work week. There was no balance, and from what I could see, very little if any room for me to advance in the company. By settling, I had hit a dead end.

I handed in my letter of resignation and two weeks' notice at 9 a.m. on October 8th, a full ten months after I had been hired. I was called down into HR at 3:56, given my final paycheck, and escorted up to my cubicle to clean it out. So much for two weeks.

Ever since then, I've been on the hunt for jobs. I've been on phone and personal interviews, received several offers, and am still following that bit of road map I currently have, trying to figure out the right turns to take and find the right path to follow.

I can't say I miss working at Company P, though. I think leaving them has been one of my best - and definitely scariest - decisions to date. At the very least, it's let me shift out of neutral and really get going with my life.