The Young Witch Starts Job Hunting

Please, Lord, kill me now.

Of course, I know about Job Hunting. It's something that I've been going over how to do in my mind and with everyone in my life (advisors, friends, parents) since the first semester of my last year of college. None of this, however, prepare me for last Wednesday when my Team Leader, the wonderful Rhicka, and I had our check-in.

RHICKA!!!!! by Lo

What's a check-in, you definitely didn't ask, but I'm sure are dying to know? It's when my just above me bosses like to check in, see how I'm doing at this point in my year of service, and actually making my LACY (Life After City Year) plans, which after Career Day, I definitely am trying to cement, by overdoing and overthinking all my life decisions.

The thing is, I've pretty much known what I've wanted to do since forever: writing (I know. It's a shock to me too. It's not like I ever talk about it). In high school, I decided that would be broadcast journalism after falling in love with "The Colbert Report." Then in college, Buzzfeed videos and YouTube became my two best friends, and that when I truly knew what I wanted to do.

My favorite Proof of Life pic I've sent my family

Global Domination.

I'm kidding. Mostly. Kind of. Sort of? It's a work in progress. No, I wanted to work for Buzzfeed. With the mass of content they created for different subjects and different areas of my extremely varying interests (my little spooky heart and my geeky, dorky heart and my traveling heart and my...well...I think you get it), I knew that it was a place I wanted to be......I should have written that in my not-a-cover-cover letter, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

After Career day, I was inspired. I began to work to perfect my resume and linked in and began doing more than just casually scouring the job boards of LinkedIn. I only sort of causally popped up the Buzzfeed job site because...why not? I want to work there eventually and I like to see what they've got offered.....every few weeks....That is all besides the point.

So, I began to look through for my check-in because jobs are what I wanted to focus on. I pulled up one I was looking at with another company, and then pulled up a few different ones that looked interesting at Buzzfeed. Then I saw it.

A Fellowship.

No, not the Fellowship (and yes, that's Hobbit. I love Martin Freeman. Go away). We aren't in Middle Earth. Though life might be infinitely more entertaining if we were. It was social media fellowship which meant maybe an opportunity to get my foot in the door. Then Rhicka walked in (I looked at the jobs before, I was originally just pulling them up).

So the check-in starts. Quick how are you feeling (fine right now), how do you think your service is going (pretty okay, bar a few issues we then talked about), and finally, how's your LACY plan going?

Then we were off. I showed her my CV/resume, we talked about it. I showed her my LinkedIn, we talked about it. We tweaked both. Then we looked at the jobs. Then we looked at the Fellowship.

"My thing is," I started, "It's due today."

"SO?" Rhicka said getting excited.

"And if I got it would start next month."

"Yeah! But we're not going to think about that right now! You are applying for this job, Ariel!"

This is modified version of several "me trying to convince myself this isn't a good idea" conversations we ended up having throughout the day.

Why do these conversations keep happen, you're all dying to know, I know! Because I have an apartment I'd need to find a sublease for, I have kids who I love, the only people I know live in San Jose, where am I going to live, when is the actual start date, what about my year of service, what is-

"Ariel, we're not thinking about that now. You're just applying."

Thank you, Rhicka, the voice of reason. I was only applying. I still have my job. I'm allowed to reach for my goals and try things. This is just an application (for the place of dream of being employed at (shut up, Ariel. You're freaking yourself out.)) There is a) probably a lot of applicants, b) more opportunity out there, and c) the possibility for you to say no, even if you do get accepted. So stop freaking out.

So, I applied. Yep. I did it. But, right now, I'm not worrying about it (kind of. There was a tarot reading that had me asking some questions, but we're not worrying about it). Rhicka is right (she usually is). Nothing is set in stone. I can apply for places without knowing what comes next. I have four months to do job stuff before my program ends, and maybe something else comes along that I want to do a little more. That doesn't mean that I can't try for the stars now.

Speaking of reaching for the stars, I'm still waiting on some other stars I reached for to see if I made it to them, but in the mean time, we listen to Rhicka and don't freak out.

Also I'm finding I should never start these blogs to much in advance cause the craziest things happen when I do. Come see me on my next adventure: The Young Witch battles a wasp with her coworkers.

My boss took this picture while Alissa, Alexis and I were using a pole to get the wasp off Alexis' jacket.