The CV Store | Your first step to a better career

This short article describes a personal experience of a student graduating from university without any job prospects, and a developing fear due to loss of fulfilled goals after graduation. The article then goes on to describe how they chose to take control of their destiny by searching for their dream job while also overcoming that fear.

When I was 20 years-old, I got very lucky. After filling out a 15 page application, I was accepted through my university’s Study Abroad program to live and learn in southwest England for a year. The experience was amazing and life changing, and after a year of tea, crumpets, and British humour I returned to the States with fervour to travel. I decided that after graduating from university I would work for a year and save up enough money to start a job abroad, and then pack my bags and go wherever my hard-earned money could take me.

Unfortunately, before I had the chance to graduate from university the recession hit. After searching for five long, humbling months the only job I got an offer (or even an interview!) for was a part-time data entry clerk position that had me working for minimum wage in a dimly-lit corner cubicle, surrounded by depressed co-workers and microwaved lunches.

Working in this environment, it was all too easy to let depression sink in. I started waking up every morning with a knot in my stomach that maybe I would never be able to find a job that allowed me to save up money to travel abroad. Even with a degree I couldn’t make ends meet; heck, I could barely afford my mobile phone bill and loan payments and I wasn’t even paying rent, I was living at home with my parents! I saw all my dreams and plans about traveling the world shattered, and spent the year of my life following graduation with living in the shadow of the constant, nagging fear that I would never become the person I wanted to be.

Luckily, while wasting away my hours in front of the computer screen at work, or lounging around in my PJs scouring the Internet for jobs on the weekends, my mind would wander off ever so seldomly to those amazing days I spent in England. While the chance at living abroad again seemed incredibly out of reach for me, I also wasn’t willing or ready to accept the fact that I’d spend the rest of my life living with my parents. Despite the fear and low self-esteem I had been building up over the past year over the hole my life had become, I decided to take control of my destiny again and scour the Internet for my real dream job, one that let me work and live abroad.

Lo and behold, I found just what I was looking for: a year-long contract in France. All it took was some revived hope and confidence in my dreams and abilities (and a bit of elbow grease), and once again I was packing my bags to cross the Atlantic. It’s been well over a year since I first found that dream job listing in France, and saw my fear dissipate and my dreams renewed. I’ve been living and working in France for the past seven months, and while life hasn’t always been easy (or lucrative) for me back in Europe, I’m living out my dream, which is payment in and of itself.

Sure, it probably sounds really corny, but taking control of my life and resisting the urge to live in the fear that I might never be good enough to follow my dreams has made the fact that I live paycheck to paycheck in France the most well-paying and worthwhile job I’ve ever had. And all it took was a little faith in myself again, the strength to overcome my fear and pass over the threshold into the self-fulfilling prophecy of happiness.