"And there was a kid with a head full of doubt"

How to sum up trying to find a job in a single phrase: It sucks. If you want to feel like a worthless, invaluable, waste of space and life-- just try looking for a job and that will be accomplished faster than three clicks of your mouse.

And someone needs to improve this whole online process. I consider myself to be a somewhat intelligent human being and I went to a respectable university but I get stumped at some of the stuff on these career oriented websites. Considering all of them promote how "easy" it is, I have struggled trying to decide which of these predetermined areas, industries, and categories I fall into. I'm just saying, break it down a little more, please.

After a lot of hemming and hawing, yesterday I entered the rat race of trying to find a job. And I'm essentially feeling like the rat that broke her little paw getting out of the gate and I'm limping behind everyone else racing ahead of me with their interviews, briefcases, and smart business suits. Well, that might be giving me too much credit. I'm more like the rat that is cowering in the corner, crying and resisting the urge to call her mommy. I can't believe I compared myself to a nasty rodent not once, but twice. What is my life coming to? Nothing, that's what.

Now it's my own fault, I'll be the first one to admit it because I did very little to prepare myself for "the real world" in college. Especially considering I want to write or edit, you know, something that requires experience and skill. Well I lack those apparently. I didn't have an internship (Sidenote: I mainly blame this on my high school. I got lunch with my friend EC at the end of the summer and we talked about how our school did not prepare us at all for college or the real world. No one promoted internships, or work study programs, or anything of the sort. I didn't even know what an internship was until Lauren Conrad said she had one with a clothing company on the second season of Laguna Beach. At least that show can say they taught someone something new) and I didn't try to write for the Red and Black or Stillpoint or UGAzine. I respect the students who did and balanced school, more power to them. But after doing poorly in a math class my freshmen year, I spent the remainder of college desperately trying to bring my grades up so school became my main focus. My last four semesters of college I was either taking 18 hours (which you're not suppose to do. The cutoff is 17) or taking four english classes (along with an elective) at the same time. That being said, I had a bit of writing and reading to do for myself. Honestly, it became a joke. Anytime my friends called me, they would just ask me how Jittery Joe's was and how the paper was going because I was there every single day working. I know, I'm making excuses but really, consider them to more so be explanations (...of my current failures).

I've signed up for Monster, CareerBuilder, DAWGlink, and Idealist over the past two days. But it's the old chicken/egg situation: I need experience to get a job but I need a job to get experience. So..... how do I go about fixing this? Cause I searched internships for over an hour today and.... they don't want college graduates. They want underclassmen. And all of them are unpaid. I'm not even above an unpaid internship at this point, I just need something. And then you look for jobs (where there aren't a lot of postings for writers or editors just so you know) and there is always a catch. Well the catch is usually in the form of "must have at least two years of experience in [fill in the blank]" Well.... what do I do if I don't?

Back at the end of July when I went to talk to my Career Advisor, she told me to not look for just any old entry-level job like being a receptionist or administrative assistant. Oh no, no, no. She said that wouldn't further me in my area of interest. True, but is sitting here sifting through numerous websites and finding nothing furthering me? I don't think like it is. She told me to look for an internship. Thanks for that super advice (see previous paragraph).

And it's not like I'm giving up or saying that two days of searching obviously means I am never going to find anything (as much as it feels like that), I just think colleges should require students to take some sort of course about this sort of thing or be more understanding about balancing internships and coursework. Cause while I was wasting away writing my 36 english papers for my classes (give or take one or two), I certainly wasn't preparing myself for the future. Oh how I'm kicking myself in the butt over shooting myself in the foot now.

All I know is: I am unprepared, I want to cry, and I must be highly entertaining to my fellow patrons at Panera because I drop my head on my table, rub my eyes resisting the urge the cry, and scoff or act incredulous when another link doesn't work or leads me to another dead end, a couple times every hour. Oh also, don't be an english major unless you want to teach. Otherwise, you're screwed.