For the 6 months after being laid off, all I wanted, and rather badly, was a job.
I wanted a job so I could feel stable again. So I could have health insurance. So I could put more money away in my CD. So I could fly to NYC or SF to visit friends, or just plain go shopping.
But aside from the emotional implications of having a job, which mainly meant gaining stability back, what we were talking about was the money. I wanted a job for the money. Because money meant that I could do things, pay for things I wanted, but maybe didn’t necessarily need.
But ever since the week of May 4th–the week I became a grad student again–it’s not the money that I want. The stability that I need to function, I will lean on my family for.
Now, all that I want, that I desire, and obsess over, is a grade.
Yes friends, now, all that I want is a C or better in my Quantitative Analysis course. That’s all I want. (I got my Organizational Behavior class covered, yo, it’s like a given that I’ll get an A in that class. I love it too much to get anything close to a B.)
Isn’t it funny how life changes overnight? Now, I couldn’t really give a shit about money, or getting a job.
Funnily enough, despite the fact that I stopped applying for jobs about a month ago, last week I got called back for a job interview, for a job I’d actually be pretty damned good at doing. But walking out of that 4-person panel interview, suddenly I got a bit disgusted.
Two of the four panel members were kind of rude and stiff. (Later, a fellow classmate of mine told me that she had a similar experience interviewing for the current job she has, totally rude people, and that she thought she didn’t get it.) All I could think as I went back to my car was,
“How could these people be so rude! As if that job was as important as my Quant grade?!! Don’t these people get what’s truly at stake?!”
[I know it was totally irrational, but that’s why this is being written on my blog, and not anywhere else.] The point is, I just realised my brain made a fundamental shift–I didn’t want to deal with their emotional bullshit, because it only served to aggravate me when I had “bigger” things on my mind than their interdepartmental shite.
This blog entry is written neither to illustrate how stressed out I am, nor to illustrate how irrational I’m becoming. Au contraire, I’m almost being an anthropologist examining the innards of my own brain, a brain that is slowly taking on a cultural shift that I myself am almost not in charge of. It again illustrates how being laid off was a mixed blessing, because at the age of 28, I feel I’d much rather be concerned with my Quant grade, than some arbitrary job that will probably end up being a dead end.
Regarding the job, now I wonder what I would do if I were offered the position. Six months ago, I would have jumped on it. Now, I’m not so sure.
And if Murphy’s Law has any say in it, just you watch, I’ll be offered this job.
pas de deux 
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