Extrication

I really put myself out there and applied for three jobs this weekend, and it’s ironic because I rented three movies on Friday afternoon. I checked out The Wrestler, Sex and the City and Stephen King’s The Mist from the library. I was anticipating having a kicked-back, lazy weekend full of cuddling, stuffed-crust pizza and Freon (because it was hot yesterday and today). But on Friday evening I still had to apply to one more job to fulfill my obligatory “3 jobs” requirement for unemployment. You see, the people down at the unemployment office don’t really care what you do (we’re all adults, right?) as long as you are applying to at least three jobs per week. And in this economy, applying for three jobs per week isn’t going to yield immediate results, but at least it provides the structure to keep you thinking like a soon-to-be employed person.

Anyways, I was really looking forward to Mickey Rourke’s performance as a guy whose not-afraid-of-getting hurt lifestyle has left him with bum knees, a Vicodin addiction and an estranged daughter (at least that is what I think the plot of The Wrestler is about). Plus, the movie won some Oscars, so it is a must-see for every person who has ever almost had an article about being a cinematic phillistine published. I checked out Sex and the City two weeks ago and didn’t really watch it. I left it playing in the background while taking a phone call from someone in Los Angeles, but I remember there being some good Tn’A sex scenes as well as a brief shot of a showering guy’s semi (for the sake of symmetry no doubt, because why would viewers of a movie that’s mostly geared towards a female audience only want to see naked women?). Since Sex and the City was a visually appealing flick, I was interested to figure out what goes on narratively in the film. Finally, Stephen King’s movie about a mysterious mist in a supermarket seemed good after having just watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening a couple weeks ago. There is nothing more scary than a mysterious killer which may or may not be invisible and is capable of pervading everything within and around you. I think there is already something like that in real life, it’s called tobacco. Plus, having spent more than 6 years employed as a jack of all trades at a supermarket, I am eager to see if there is anything more scary about a grocery store other than the psychosis-inducing Musak.

So there I was, all ready to enjoy my weekend as if I had worked hard all week, when suddenly I decided to go online and get applying for that last job out of the way. I didn’t glance at the jobs listings for long before my eyes landed on a librarian job at MTV. According to MTV’s website, the position duties and responsibilities entailed, “The processing, tracking and coordination of media raw stock requests into company database,” and, ”the arrangement and distribution of raw stock to MTVN user community.” The job required a bachelors degree, customer service/library experience, and computer literacy and writing/communication skills – all of which I have. Furthermore, the job didn’t look like a promotional job open only to MTV employees, so I went ahead and applied.

Still, I had my reservations. For anyone who is thinking this might be a dream job, I’m tempted to ask what could be so fun about sitting in a stock room all day loaning DVD’s out to clients? I suspect working in a video store would only be slightly less glamorous, except in this job your patrons would be media conglomerates instead of suburbanites. Still, since MTV mostly works with D-listers these days, I don’t think I would be distributing a lot of “raw stock.”

The ease with which my qualifications seemed to fit with the job’s requirements prompted me to apply for the job despite any lingering doubts I had. It felt like I was applying to the position simply to fulfill unemployment’s mandatory “3 job” requirement, and I didn’t like this. I don’t want to go about the job search in a half-assed way, as that is what the unemployment police probably suspect people will do. They think we are all a bunch of sneaky bastards who view being on the unemployment dole as some sort of extended paid vacation. And this week I unexpectedly found myself giving in to that tendency to just sit back and do the minimum in order to earn my weekly benefits.

This incipient feeling of being a corner cutter caused me to shift gears. My priorities were suddenly reversed, and I lost any interest in watching the movies which I had brought home.  I felt how I did back in college when most Fridays were spent looking forward to a busy weekend of paper-writing, catch-up reading and cramming for Monday tests and quizzes. If this weekend of mine was rendered as a movie montage, it would include lots of horizontal pans of me hunched over my laptop or tugging at a jammed printer. These scenes would rotate along with shots of me tossing goldfish crackers into my mouth, watching tv or doing jumping  jacks. All the while Tool’s “The Pot” would be playing. Every time there was a shot of me doing jumping jacks the speed would be sped-up 2X in ascending order, and with each horizontal pan of me at the laptop the serious look of concentration on my face would deepen. Likewise, the busted printer frustration would increase from yelling to pounding eventually climaxing with me smashing the machine at the end in the way a drummer might destroy his bass drum after a band’s brassy performance.

I only applied for two jobs after the MTV job, but there can oftentimes be a lot of work involved in applying for a job. First, there is the research part. This can involve hours of culling hundreds of jobs, many which the job seeker has already seen before, and some of which are cleverly disguised scams. Then comes the resume-tweaking, the carefully worded cover letters, and applying to many jobs today usually requires creating accounts with the career branch of a company or institution’s website. This can be helpful for the sake of having an application of file if you ever decide to apply for another position with the employer, but it is also time consuming. Also, I spent extra time applying to the two jobs this weekend to make up for doing the minimum this week and cutting corners by applying for the MTV job (which, let’s face it, monkies with typewriters probably apply for these types of jobs).

The two other jobs I applied to were within my related fields of education and work experience. One was an ESL lab teacher job with CUNY’s Research Foundation, and the other was a writing job at St. John’s University in Queens. The former position entails teaching non-English speaking adults in computer literacy/career skills classes, while the latter would have me writing, “Content for various projects, including but not limited to, letters, solicitations, brochures, PowerPoint presentations, event materials, advertisements,” and alumni magazine pieces and articles.

For the ESL teacher job, I’m not sure if I put myself out there too much or not. In the cover letter I wrote:

Dear HR,

I am applying for the F/T ESL/vocational computer lab teacher position in the Begin Managed Programs (BMP) department. I came across the listing for this vacancy at the New York State Department of Labor’s Job Exchange website.

I do hope you take the time to consider my candidacy for this position, as I think I closely fit the qualifications you are seeking.

As my resume indicates, I have 1 year of substitute teaching experience in a diverse public school setting. While living in [redacted], NY between 2007 and 2008, I subbed on a per diem basis at the elementary, intermediate and secondary levels. [redacted], NY is a city with a high vacancy rate which has recently been injected with new life thanks to an influx of refugees and immigrants from all corners of the world. These immigrants flood the city’s school district, creating a cross-cultural learning environment for students as well as educators. On many days I was called to sub in ESL classes that contained students from nearly every continent, and the experience was enriching and rewarding.

A two-semester long tutoring internship during college in 2006 at [redacted]’s Refugee Center, prepared me for my subbing experience in the [redacted] City School District. [redacted] College (my alma mater) participates in Project SHINE, an international program which partners colleges and communities to help recent arrivals to the United States assimilate and learn English. My role as a Project SHINE tutor in ESL classes, working with adult learners two hours per week during college, facilitated my transition to subbing in a multi-linguistic school district after college. I was also aided in both endeavors by my ability to communicate in Spanish with native speakers when English failed. I studied Spanish for two years during college and have since continued to use it on frequent enough occasions that it doesn’t go to waste.

Finally, during my most recent job at the [redacted] Public Library which I held for a year and a half, I routinely assisted patrons with use of the library’s public computers. These patrons were mostly adults, and since ¼ of [redacted]’s population . . . was born outside of the United States, I often had to overcome language barriers while helping them. These computer users displayed a wide range of computer literacy. Sometimes I had to assist people with basic interfacing, and other times I would help someone with uploading photos or videos from a flash drive onto a multimedia website. More often than not, however, people needed assistance navigating the Internet, and I was always happy to help them do this.

My resume further lists my education, work history, skills and contact information. Thank you in advance for considering my application.

Sincerely,

Timothy F. Freeman

8/15/09

Cool stuff. I will keep everyone posted on how the job search unfurls.