The End

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a couple of days, because I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. Since last week, my life has been a crazy whirlwind of excitement and making plans and freaking out more than a little bit. Why? Well, on Wednesday of last week I accepted a job offer, and this is my last week in Boston, because my new job is in New York City.

Interview Overload

Interviews can get a little overwhelming. In the past four weeks, I have had five phone interviews, which have thus far led to three in-person interviews. I also had five more interviews for which I did not have a phone interview and one in-person second round interview. Next week I have a second round Skype interview (the team I would be joining is based in two cities, and I’m Skyping with the out of town people) and another first round interview following a phone interview. That totals up to sixteen interviews in January. Sixteen interviews in only twenty business days.

And I’ll be honest: I’ve started to slip a little on some of these.

In Which I Question Self-Identification

Alternatively,

Who Am I (if I’m not a student anymore, don’t have a full-time job, and don’t want to identify myself with the job I’ve held part time since college but live in a world where twenty-somes are expected to focus on career).

Alternatively,

What Do You Do (if you don’t have a full-time job yet and sometimes worry that you’ll never find someone who will hire you) With A BA in English

Hello, 2012!

It’s 2012! Depending on who you ask, just another new year, or maybe the end of days. I’m hoping for the former, mostly because if the world ends, then all my hard work job hunting will have been a waste of time. Then again, apparently we have until the end of the year, and I’m not sure what else I would do with all that time.

A few months ago, I celebrated a different new year, and talked about how arbitrary and artificial transitions based in dates can be. The first day of the Jewish new year didn’t drastically change my life, and the first day of 2012 is no different.

SEO, the lazy way

I Google myself pretty regularly. I want to know what my potential employers are finding when they Google me. Just “Rachel Goldfarb” gives you a bunch of results that aren’t me- only one thing on the first page is me, actually. “Rachel Goldfarb Brandeis” gives you a whole lot of me. LinkedIn, some of my college extracurricular stuff, internships, and this blog are all on the first page. Also on the first page? Three different articles on Boston.Com (the Globe’s website) from December 2010, when Westboro Baptist Church came to Brandeis and I served as Media Outreach Coordinator, aka spokeswoman.

So Maybe There Are Perks

I’ve spent much of the past six months complaining about how boring being underemployed can be. I want to be busy! What am I supposed to do with all this time? I don’t know how to function without a packed schedule. I’ve got to find my purpose! I’ve got to stop quoting musicals!

But recently, I’ve realized that there are in fact some advantages to my current schedule. On Tuesday afternoon, I drove out to Brandeis for one of my favorite annual events, the Messiah Singalong. That would be Handel’s Messiah, at Brandeis, where half the people singing are observant Jews and the Catholic priest shows up in a leather jacket and Santa hat.

In which I don’t wish I could go back to college

There are times when I hear the Avenue Q song “I Wish I Could Go Back To College” and agree with every single word. The lyrics poignantly remind us that “life was so simple back then,” because “In college you know who you are./ You sit in the quad, and think, ‘Oh my God!/ I am totally gonna go far!'” And there are in fact times when I miss the simplicity of knowing exactly what was coming in the next few months (another semester, with different classes but an equally crazy workload) or the thrill of being able to pick up something new just because I wanted to (it’s my last semester, let’s audition for a musical!). And I have no trouble admitting that I am a total nerd who was perfectly happy to spend her days reading and writing and thinking.

But most of the time? I’m so glad to not be in school.

Life Without Deadlines

I spent four years of college (and thirteen years of school before that) with a pile of deadlines on my plate. In college, I was pretty damn good at hitting those deadlines. I asked for extensions maybe twice in all of college, because I had more than one major assignment due during tech week for a show, a reason that my professors seemed to find reasonable when I asked far enough in advance. Beyond those rare theatre-induced extensions, I hit my deadlines, and I hit them well in advance whenever possible. Drafts would be finished a day in advance so that I could re-read and revise a paper before turning it in. Reading was started whenever I had the time, because it was better to get it done early. Deadlines gave me structure, helped me write out a schedule of my time, forced me out of bed in the morning and sometimes kept me away from my bed at night.

The same, I assume, will be true in the workplace. My internships have had deadlines for projects, someone waiting on me to finish the assigned work so that we could keep moving forward. There’s always something to finish and another thing coming up. These days? Not so much.