job hunting

Since deciding to move to Charleston I have applied to a ridiculous amount of jobs and sent my resume pretty much every where. To give you an idea just during the months of November and December I applied to over 50 jobs. Yea that's a ton! But I'll start at the beginning.

I dropped off an application for a secretary position at the police department on July 5th.  I got an interview with them on July 16th. I took a polygraph test for them on August 9th. In case you missed that is a 3 week space where I could have been doing other things for them such as the background check. On August 21st I received a personal history questionnaire which was pretty thick. I turned it back in on August 23rd. I had several email and phone conversations with the background investigator (mainly because she was incompetent and didn't seem to know how to read). All of my paper work from all of that was turned in to the Chief of Police to make a decision on September 6th. I had several phone conversations with the head of human resources about whether a decision had been made yet the last one being on Friday October 8th when she said she hadn't heard anything yet. The following Monday I received a letter saying that they had chosen someone else. Of course that means that the lady in charge of human resources actually lied to me on Friday. That made me rather angry. Over all it took from July 5th - October to make a decision, which is absolutely absurd. I found out later from someone I know that works in the police department that they chose someone else because I was way over qualified. Now if that sounds ridiculous to you you're not alone. Me and everyone I know believes that they had someone in mind that they wanted to hire but for some reason kept dragging me along. It doesn't take months to figure out if someone is under or over qualified for a position.

Anyways after aaaalllll of that nonsense I really hit the job hunting hard. I sent out me resume to every photographer I could find in Charleston. I applied to countless adds on craigslist, monster, careerbuilder, indeed, and many others. I applied for receptionist jobs at dentist offices, doctor offices, hospitals, veterinary offices, salons, spas, construction company's, schools, church's, day cares, hobby lobby, michaels, barns and noble, and anything I thought I could do. I got many email responses, of course most being a computer automated thank you for your interest but . . . blah blah blah. I even got some scam responses where they would say some like thanks for your interest in the postion but it's been filled however I am looking for a personal assistant. Please email me back with your full name, address, drivers license number, social security number, and phone number so that I can do a back ground check. HA I reported most of them to craigslist and gmail. I did go on several interviews which I never heard back from. Finally I got a call from a lady at Randstad. It's a temp agency. I had applied to a job they had posted for one of their clients. Well I had an interview with her and went ahead and signed all the paperwork to work for Randstad. So now I am an employee of Randstad. She sent my information to several different clients she thought I would be a good fit for. I had an interview with one of them. Didn't get the job though of course. lol.

Finally she called up on Friday January 17th and said that there was a position open starting on Tuesday at the College of Charleston. I said yes, of course. I started working on Tuesday at the College of Charleston at the School of Business in the Student Success Center. I man the front desk which is pretty good so far. It is a temporary job but I will be considered for the position permanently once things settle down and my supervisor at the school and her supervisor sit down and discuss what they want to do. I'm hoping that with me being there for a while and learning the ropes they won't want to bring a new person in and have to start all over again. So I'm working hard whenever they have something for me to do. I'm trying to show them that I'm friendly and personal and mostly that I can be an invaluable employee for their office.

So that's everything I've gone through so far in a short little post and where I am now.

1st experience riding public trasnportation

Let me share my lame adventure of my 1st day riding the Express Carta bus to and from work.

So yesterday I choose to try out the Express Carta bus instead of driving to work and having to park in a parking garage which costs $12 and that was the cheaper one! The Express Carta isn't the regular bus. It makes only a few stops and is mainly for people who work downtown but live in West Ashley or Mount Pleasant. I live in West Ashley. Now it's a park and ride type of deal which is really great. The stop in West Ashley is at the Citadel Mall which is probably a mile from where I live. So it works out great. Instead of dealing with traffic getting downtown and leaving downtown I just have to drive over to the mall, leave my car and hop on the bus. Another great reason to ride the bus is it's $3 a ride for the bus which is half of what I was paying to park downtown. Also I get to sleep in about 10mins later than when I drove myself.

So back to my tale of how the first day riding the bus went. I woke up yesterday morning, got ready and headed over to the mall. My bus pick up time is 8:05. I got there around 7:50 since it was my first day riding I didn't want to miss it. The bus showed up, I got on, paid my $3 and sat down. Everything went fine. I got off the bus at the correct stop and walked the 2 blocks to work. I felt pretty good about everything. Now the ride home was a little different. I walked back to the same bus stop that I got off at. That was my first mistake. I looked around wondering if there was a bus stop across the street that I should be standing at instead. Yes, the thought did occur to me that I should be on the otherside of the street to catch a bus going that direction. Unfortunately for me I didn't see one. Now the bus stop pick up time in the pamphlet thing I had said the bus would be there at 5:31, well it showed up at 5:15. I was a little skeptical but got on it anyways. And of course it was going the opposite direction I needed to be going. So I rode it all the way to Mount Pleasant, which is the end of the line on that side, West Ashley being the end of the other side. So at the last stop in Mount Pleasant when everyone else had gotten off the bus, I went up to the bus driver and told him what happened. He was nice about it and explained that the bus turns around and becomes that bus and drives the route back to West Ashley. That's exactly what I was hoping he would say. So I sat back down and rode the whole route back to West Ashley. The bus driver was really nice and even pointed out the stop that I will be at in the afternoons. Finally after a whole extra hour of being on the bus I arrived at the mall. Totally I rode 30mins in the wrong direction, another 30mins in the right direction back downtown (btw I was the only person on the bus during that time) and finally the 30mins from downtown to the mall. 

It wasn't bad or scary, just boring. I felt pretty stupid of course. At least it won't happen again and now I know where my bus stop downtown is.

The Move

For those of you catching up I have finally made the move to Charleston, SC. Chris and I moved in on Saturday the 4th. It was very hectic to begin with. I had an interview on Friday at 2, which of course I didn't get so it was a huge waste of time, and after the interview I drove to Albany to get all my stuff. My parents and I left at 6am on Saturday morning headed for Charleston. YES, 6AM! It wasn't totally horrible. We got the Charleston a lil after lunch and started unloading. My mom and I unloaded the easy things like the kitchen stuff and coffee tables. Chris and my dad unloaded all the furniture. Once everything was unloaded my parents checked into their hotel down the street and Chris and I unpacked some more stuff. We took them out for dinner to say thanks for all their help. Sunday my parents came back over. The weather was nasty out so they didn't want to go tour around Charleston so they went to the grocery store with me. Chris had to work. My parents left Sunday afternoon. Chris's mom and Tom came by Sunday night to check out our apartment. It was a quick visit.

Things have been really great our first week in our apartment. I've cooked every night and may I say it was pretty dang good. I've even made some banana bread which we've both gone crazy over. I still don't have a job but I have gone on some interviews. It works out well though because Chris has been working like crazy since it's the beginning of the semester and everyone is getting and selling the textbooks. So I've been available to deal with getting the internet hooked up, being at home for our landlord to come fix the hot water knob in our shower, go get grocery's, etc.

We're both so excited to be starting this new adventure in life together. Nothing in life is ever easy but things can always be wonderful when you're with the right person. Together we can do anything and we plan on doing everything. We're going to experience the world together.