I'm Bored.

And going stir crazy. Whyyyyy is there no one around to talk to these days? Mreh! My sister's not answering her phone. Pthththtthtpt.

I sent out some more applications, and of course, I could send out still more applications. Eh. I'm so over this stuff. The problem with applying to jobs is that then you want them. You don't want those stinky other jobs over there you have yet to apply to; you want to be instantaneously hired so that you don't have to do this stupid job applicating stuff and you can have one of these nice lovely jobs you have already researched and become invested in. Look, Craigslist says there are cheap little places that look nice over here! Clearly you must call me right now, interviewers, and tell me that I already have the job and that neighborhood x is better than neighborhood y, even though y has more places with picture listings.

Of course I know that I have to keep sending out stuff until I get something, because search committees don't actually work the way I have described above. One of the job books I read (on how to get a teaching job, but NCLB has basically made that impossible even for an emergency appointment without a credential) talked about the "interview funnel," where if you don't keep pouring job applications in the one end, you won't have interviews continue to trickle out the other end. Unfortunately I must have a defective funnel, for all that the applying to stuff is working for me.

Anyway, in the realm of depressing job-search-related crap I didn't need to hear about, here's a post by Dr. Isis on how she had an inside candidate and couldn't tell the pool of applicants. The economy is hurtin' people in the science and medical fields, too, Isis learned, and people with amazing credentials applied even though it was a temp. position. It was depressing all around, because the applicants thought they had a chance, when really, it was that Isis wanted to give more hours to someone and had to openly advertise the position to follow regulations. Sucks. And it brings up the question of how many jobs that get advertised are really viable jobs you're actually competing for, anyway?

In my various attempts to apply to college admin type positions, I saw Stanford did a very interesting thing: on one job description it said "this position has a strong inside candidate and prospective candidates are advised to be aware of this when they apply." Or some bureaucratic phrasing crap like that. This made me so thrilled! Imagine if this was acceptable practice everywhere! Ahhh, it would help so much with my stress levels. I didn't apply to that one, because there's no way they would take a "career changer" over their inside candidate, but if I felt I had the most amazing resume in that field ever, I'd slap my app down to compete with the best of 'em. And I sure wouldn't let that stop me if it was a professor type job in my field. But it's nice to know, you know?

And relatedly, California's unemployment rate is still at 12.5%, while in business, tiny companies are able to scoop up candidates far more qualified than they should be getting. People who ran multi-state or multi-national companies are now getting pulled into stuff barely a step above mom-and-pops, but "they're happy they at least have a job."

Ugh. It's a bad time to be retraining. I've been peeking around to see if moving into a multi-bedroom place with roommates and sticking at my part time jobs a while longer might be an option, but rent is the one place that's not budging these days. Ah, fucking houseflippers who are now trying to rent out their white elephants for 6 grand a month, you're fucking it all up for the rest of us!