Most of these fru fru kindly responses are not incorrect. But your basic purpose as a human is, first and foremost, to not be a burden on society or on others. So despite your displeasure at the prospect of working a job you hate (waa waa!) you must fulfill that purpose. You support yourself.
Then, you figure out how to support yourself by doing something you like. If you cannot figure out how to do something you like FIRST, and then become employed in that field, you do whatever you can until that revelation comes to you. Love it or hate it. Consider it your punishment for not cultivating good planning and goal setting skills.
This harsh wisdom comes from my own place, at your age, of not knowing what I wanted to do when I grew up. Then, suddenly, I was grown, directionless, depressed and basically an idiot with an IQ of 150. Worthless as a human.
My direction came from a couple of simple facts/ideas:
1) I couldn't survive on $287 dollars a week in the Northeast of the US without living in a slum.
2) I had two years before I was marrying my minimum-wage-earning boyfriend (that's $4.80 an hour for those of you who weren't alive in 1985) and needed to figure out what career I could graduate in, in two years, where I made more than $287 dollars a week as a file clerk.
3) I refused to end up like the people I worked with. Either completely dependant on a husband with a decent job that could be downsized in the blink of an eye or just barely scraping by.
4) I knew I was literally capable of doing anything if I applied myself.
I looked close to home, so to speak, and saw students in the radiology department of the hospital I worked in. Men and women that were braindead compared to me with one exception: They had a goal and I didn't. It made them geniuses and me the aformentioned idiot.
So I signed up for the program, not because I would particularly enjoy it. Not because it was my lifelong dream to shoot ionizing radiation into innocent human flesh. Not because I loved human beings all that much and wanted to "help" them. Not because I exuded compassion toward ill people. But because it fit my criteria. Two years. Cheap and convenient for me since I could keep my part-time job and still go to school.
My tuition was $316 a semester at the community college. My books were $492 a semester. I was too old to latch onto mommy's health insurance even though I was a full-time student so I had to pay for that out of pocket. My car payment/insurance took the rest of my money. My sister, who worked with me at my part-time job basically fed me for two years when mommy didn't. I lived at home. Worked every day that I wasn't at school.
I graduated with honors, took the first job I was offered and never said no to a single thing that they asked of me. I was the supervisor of my office within one year. The operational manager of the practice within five years.
I went from making $287 a week to 60K within ten years. I now have an economy-proof career that allows me to do all the things I want and like to do when I am not working. There are more fun things I could be doing, there are way less fun things I could be doing. Like working a skill-less, low paying crap job and whining about it.
But when life does not hand you your direction, you have to just suck it up and do what you can.
The more time you waste whining, the harder it gets.
Jennifer  |