Employed at Last

Attention angry mobs of unemployed Australians:

I TOOK ONE OF YOUR JOBS!

There really aren't herds of unemployed Australians, so I don't feel bad for making that joke.  Who's laughing about shipping away their prisoners now, huh, UK?

Yes, folks, I have gained employment.  And as an added bonus: It's in my chosen field and utilizes my Master's Degree!

I am so, so pleased and eternally grateful.

I am a temporary resident of Australia, and it seemed like I was only getting nibbles of interest from applications for temporary jobs.  So, I focused my search exclusively on temporary jobs at the three universities in town.

I won't mention which university I will be working at, or my exact job title, lest my superiors find this blog and witness my affinity for using words like "barftastic" and "craptacular" and immediately render me unemployable.  But you better trust and believe, this job is the bomb.  Dot com.

I'm a little hesitant to admit just how many jobs I applied to and interviewed for in total, in case it makes me look like a neo maxi zoom dweebie for not being able to get a job immediately in a good economy.  In my defence, though, I was being very picky, and had a quite narrow job search.  Gaining employment after ten weeks + 1 day after landing in this country (where I have no education or work experience and zero contacts) isn't too shabby, right?

Like I eluded to earlier it's a temp job, for one year.  I will be covering for someone out on maternity leave.  I want to start that fetus a college fund or something because if it wasn't for his/her existence I would not have this amazing job opportunity.  I love that frickin' fetus.  I wish it all the best in its birth and subsequent life.

This job really came up at the perfect time.  I was starting to panic big time about my situation (Did I go to grad school for nothing?  Will I have to dance for dollars to pay my student loans?  Are there even BBW strippers?)  Also, the stupid TV network stopped playing Jeopardy! every day which was my main intellectual outlet.  It's sad but true.  Home girl needs to get out of the house!

(Side note: I cannot deal with Alex Trebek sans moustache.  Grow it back, dude, you're killing me!)

I would like to take this opportunity to send out boat loads of good karma to the other people who applied/interviewed for this job but lost out to me.  I know that awful, crushing feeling of getting your hopes shattered but I'm sure there's something just as awesome out there waiting for you somewhere else.  You never know, you might wind up on an exotic new continent, working the job of your dreams with the most supportive partner ever in the near future.  You'd be lucky to be as fortunate as I.

For the past few weeks I had "upgraded" my status from Job Searching to Officially Unemployed.  I won't start the job for a few more weeks, so in the meantime I'm not sure what I'll identify myself as.  I can tell you one thing I won't identify with, though!  Desperate and poor.

Because poverty doesn't look good on me.