I like being a student. But I'm not so keen on being poor — man, do I need a job. I've got a couple I might ring up about tomorrow, but I'm not terribly keen about either of them. Dan tells me my standards are too high, and I know it's true — I wouldn't be applying for either of these jobs if I hadn't forced my standards down somewhat. Most of the jobs out there are retail, too — and I have zero retail experience. Not an auspicious beginning.
The other problem with retail is that most jobs require you to give up your weekends, and I treasure my weekends. Apart from my temp job over summer, my last three jobs have all had me working weekends — that's four years of weekend work. Enough!
And the degradation, the humiliation. I didn't mind my brief stint at the bar — except for when I had to serve Ang's mum, or my old boss — but I don't really want any of my mates — or worse, old workmates or schoolfriends — to walk past and see me as checkout chick at K-Mart or serving burgers at McD's. I've been there, figuratively speaking, and done that. I've had four years of crappy jobs. And then, briefly, a temp job I enjoyed. It's just raised my standards unreasonably. :-(
This morning, I sorted through my bookcases, found a grand total of nine books that I was willing to sell, and listed them on TradeMe. The shame, the humiliation — reduced to selling my personal belongings (note sarcasm!). Actually, seven of the books were just double-ups of other ones I already had, and the other two were crap — one of which was Shakespeare. I refuse to have Shakespeare in my bookcase.
Yesterday I underwent a similar pain — in tidying my room last week, I cleared out two bags full of clothes I haven't worn in years and am not likely to wear again, and yesterday I dropped them off at clothing donations. It makes me really sad — a lot of it I didn't care about, like my Canteen bandanas — but there were some clothes I loved there too. My bright pink floral V-neck top, which makes me look as flat and as pale as physically possible (it brings out the red in my nose), but which is such a lovely pattern. My shiny purple trousers that zip up to my hips at the sides — trousers I haven't worn in several years and wouldn't be seen dead in these days; but I saved up for those trousers and loved them and wore them so much, years ago. All of those clothes were ones I bought years ago, but loved. Awful, but...
I loved those old clothes of mine.
Oh well. Hopefully someone else will love them now. Or possibly buy them for a fancy-dress party.
And I now have all my exam results for my three exams from this semester — an "A-" for my second-year paper and two "A"s for my first-year ones. I'm happy — and that's another task complete. But these are all the easier tasks, so far. I still have so much to do.
In other news, Dad's definitely moving to Kuwait. At the end of July, probably. The good news is that, because it's not for a few weeks, I'm flying down in a couple weeks to see the family for a few days, before Dad takes off for a year. It's just...weird. But good, in that I've more or less had time to adjust now. They're paying for all of Dad's flights; so he's arranging the local flights so that he'll get stop-overs to see Anna and me. At least, he better be. I'm trusting Mum to make him.
And I still have my "rewards" to look forward to — I pre-decided on a reward to buy myself for every "A" grade I got — so I'll soon be getting a new top and two new pairs of jeans, which is great. I haven't quite figured out how to pay for them yet, but that's all OK. Maybe tomorrow I'll wander into town with my CV instead of just hunting through the ads. Go me — lowering the standards, and hopefully finding I'll enjoy a job I wouldn't normally have gone for. Stepping outside my comfort zone! It's all good. :-)
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