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[Devling]

Having some fertile young lady issues thanks to post-suicide stress =/

Also, job applications.  I'm doing lots and lots of job applications, because fuck unemployment.

Are you the lady or what?

That's a good attitude.

[Pnx]

I'd assumed that "fertile young lady issues" was a euphemism for that whole bleeding out of the groin thing that happens to most ladies every so often.

[Devling]

I'd assumed that "fertile young lady issues" was a euphemism for that whole bleeding out of the groin thing that happens to most ladies every so often.

Or it could mean the absence of that.

[Vector]

Yeah, well that happened last week and now it decided it'd happen some again.  Whooo.

I'm feeling pretty depressed.  People keep saying that I seem distant and I have trouble following the thread of conversations.  I also have a really hard time feeling hopeful about the future, and am becoming less certain that I want to pursue a PhD.  People keep saying "Oh, you got such good GRE scores, now you can get in pretty much anywhere" but I just feel like more and more of a trained monkey that can take a test and do well but doesn't have any skill in anything of value.  Why hire me?  Yes, I'm smart, but I'm unstable and generally incompetent.  Professors say I'm one of Berkeley's best students but that's just so ridiculous.

I don't know.  It feels like my heart is trying to crawl its way out of my chest.  I feel like I need help, but I don't know what I'd do if I had it, or who to ask, or what to say.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If they want to believe you're better than you believe you are, why not let them? If your professors say you're one of Berkeley's best students, use it to your advantage.

I agree that standardized tests are mostly memorization-based lunacy that doesn't measure real competency, true, but most people don't see it that way. Their belief in things like the GRE can get you to high places, even if it is erroneous.

[Skyrunner]

That's pretty profound.

[Pnx]

You translated a book of Russian poetry, learnt origami, have gained a pretty advanced understanding of mathematics, and probably numerous other things I can't think of right now or just don't know about. These are some pretty major skills you're showing right there, maybe not ones that immediately translate into employability everywhere, but they're significant, and you can pick up more skills if you have to.

Seriously, don't be having angst about your ability to be a breadwinning functional human being.

That's my job, and I take it very seriously thank you very much.

[SalmonGod]

I think the important thing to realize here is you've very thoroughly demonstrated your ability to focus and succeed at very difficult work, and to train yourself to a high level of competency in just about anything you apply yourself to.  From what I've heard, this is actually how most employers look at college -- it's not so much about what you learn, as how well you demonstrate your ability to manage your life and succeed.  The only thing left is to figure out where you want to go with your awesomeness, and what your choices will require of you.  You're clearly talented and determined enough to succeed at whatever you want.  I may be risking bad advice here, but I don't even think you need to stress so much about how suitable a tool you are to be used by employers.  People will probably throw money at you for whatever you do, because you'll do it that well.  That's not something I would say to many other people, or to anybody with obligation pressures.  You have nothing but opportunity before you right now.

[Bauglir]

... but I'm unstable and generally incompetent.

Yeah, so is basically everyone else. I really wouldn't worry about it, except from the perspective of understanding what about yourself you can seek to improve, which is tangential at best to the job thing (makes good interview fodder, that's about it). They'll hire you for what you're good at, which is already a lot of things, and seems to turn out to be most things you throw yourself into. There aren't many options if the job opening demands an emotionally stable, omnicapable supergenius. Usually they get to pick one, maybe two, of those qualities, if they're lucky.

If you need to figure out what makes you a useful tool for an organization, it's less about what you can't do and more about what you can offer. As long as you're not so far below average that it outweighs everything else, you're fine - and if you can graduate from Berkeley, you meet that goalpost no matter what the particulars were. Just handing in homework consistently* on time demonstrates that level of achievement.

*Also counts if you didn't, but worked with your professors to arrange a satisfactory system. Point is, if you were able to get a passing grade, you put in the effort to ensure you worked within the system to a reasonable set of expectations, which is basically what they want out of you.

EDIT: As for becoming less hopeful about the future - don't worry so much about it as a destination to be reached perhaps? I don't know if that's a thing that's really relevant here, but trying to think less of the future when it comes to my plans for life, and more of an extension of the present into more of itself, has helped me when I start feeling nervous about having no idea what I'm going to do with my life. Redefining where I'm going to where I'm going to end up is sometimes helpful, as long as it doesn't become a "nothing really matters" mantra. Many things matter, but what I'm supposed to be trying to do isn't fixed.

[Sirus]

Three rejection emails. Looking for work freaking sucks.

[Reelya]

They feel worse when you've spent significant time crafting the cover letter or customizing your resume for them. Don't let rejection letters get you down. Basically, you can get together a whole lot of stock sentences and bullet points, and pretty quickly tailor your cover letter / resume for any particular job advert. Get it down to a mass-production cover letter system (improve the crop of stock bullet points each letter you do, pair the points you've written with headings for which job criteria they address), and you won't feel quite as bad per rejection.

The trick is for the cover letter to 100% focus on the listed points they've put in there: that's the screening criteria they use to filter down the initial monster pile of resumes. Put any "extra" stuff they "might" like below all the things that "tick off" the checklist in the advert: they'll only get that far in reading your letter / resume if you passed the first cursory "throw 90% of these 500 resumes in the bin" phase. At this stage, they are in such a rush (understaffed and too many resumes, and their own regular job they have to get back to), anything they immediately don't like the look of will be the excuse to bin your resume instantly.

They'll probably never get past your cover-letter, so it's important to just bullet point off shit that matches the criteria in as few words as possible. Forget writing an essay about how you're the perfect person - these people sometimes have five seconds to determine if you're in or out. Overly busy people who have to read prose will just think you're annoying, so in the bin your resume goes. Make it clean, easy to read, and brief, whilst covering every point in the advert.

Cold-calling generally works better than applying to adverts unless you're really lucky. Get in touch with the hiring person before they've spent money to place adverts. It saves them more time and money than you could imagine. Over the phone is where you can really sell yourself as an individual.

[Vector]

Thanks, fellows.  I'm sorry for my whining in here, seeing as it must seem really ungrateful.  I keep on forgetting that one of the main reasons why I'm taking time out before grad school is in order to screw around with outside projects while I'm still young.

Right.  Dream bigger, Vector.

[MaximumZero]

My TV is dead again, and I have no idea how to fix it. ;_;

[RedKing]

My TV is dead again, and I have no idea how to fix it. ;_;

When in doubt, punch it until it agrees to work again.

[GlyphGryph]

Spoiler: Rant about how it sucks to have some minor problem, probably not worth reading (click to show/hide)

Sometimes I get really fucking tired of living in a society that was clearly built for people who are not me. Being a minority fucking sucks. Even if you aren't the kind that are actively discriminated against, like a racial minority, consistently fitting into the 10% makes things hard. And sometimes I feel like if I was a racial minority, at least I'd have the chance of some solidarity. :/

But no, the simple social and economic force of "for the greater good/profit, we must dedicate 100% of our efforts to 90% of the population" fucking sucks when you rarely fall within that 90% (And there a lot of ways I don't). Regardless, the following bit might seem like a nitpicky thing to go off about, a minor issue, and maybe it is. But all the same...

The current trigger for thinking about this? Shoes! After several dozen years of pressure, a company has finally released a pair of climbing shoes that don't cause severe pain and increase the chance of injury for the 10% of the population to which I belong. And while that makes me happy, it still makes me sad too, that it should make me happy. Thanks to cultural pressures, 80% of foot problems in the US occur within my 10% of the population. We NEED to wear shoes, but the only shoes provided in most places are shoes that are guaranteed to cause structural damage to our feet or are, at best, a 'compromise' that doesn't do much of anyone any favours. I don't even like mentioning it, because medically it's termed a "condition", or a "syndrome", or a "disorder". Because clearly anything that occurs in less than 10% of the population, and is negatively impacted by the fact that it doesn't properly fit into "normal" society, is a disorder and a disease, right? For some reason, I doubt there's going to be a movement to reclaim Morton's toe the way there was for homosexuality. Not to say the prejudice against homosexuality wasn't a lot worse, but that's sort of the issue, isn't it? Part of what saddens me is that I don't even feel like I have the right to complain, because the issues are so minor in comparison. But its still real. It's the same /sort/ of problem, and it's disappointing to see us carving out "exceptions" for things while still using the broken system that created the problem as our foundation. Neither of them should EVER have been classified as a disorder - but apparently the only qualification for something to be a disorder is that it doesn't affect "normal" people. Divergence is a disease that needs to be treated in modern society - unless, like the Greeks, we've decided the divergence is the ideal. (Unfortunately, in our society, I don't have any of THOSE divergences)

But anyway, one thing has lead to another, and I've moved on from shoes to think about things more generally. Because it feels like I'm going through this pretty much everywhere, that things that are so trivial and simple for other people are trivial and simple because those things, the way they were shaped and constructed and designed, were done so with those people in mind! 99.99% of the attention and effort goes towards making things easier for 90% of the population - often at the expense of the other 10%. I feel like the way our society works simply isn't meant for "people like me". And I don't even have the option of conforming, because like with the foot thing, most of it is stuff I can't realistically change.

I was going to say more, go a bit further, but I realized I don't actually want to talk about the more serious shit that my mind went to after that, so I'll stop here.

Summary: Getting good shoes when you have Morton's toe sucks. Damn you, society!