I’ve only been home for about three weeks, and I am starting to remember why I left in the first place. The U S of A is wonderful and free, beautiful and clean, but the truth of the matter is that there just aren’t any jobs for English majors that pay what a person really needs to live. By live I mean being able to own a house, pay the bills, and save for what is supposed to be an enjoyable retirement.

So far, in my three weeks of searching, I have discovered that my job options include flipping burgers, working the 3rd shift at the gas station down the street where I possibly could get shot, answering computer questions as a customer service representative at one of the fifteen call centers, waiting hand and foot on a boss as an executive assistant(that’s a fancy term for secretary), and working as a movie extra.

Now before someone screams, “Why don’t you be a teacher?!” – let me tell you why that isn’t as easy as it seems. After talking to about a dozen people or so(11 of which were completely clueless), I was finally told that in order to teach in the backward state of South Carolina I either have to go back to school and get my Masters or start the PACE program that will take 3 years of my life to complete. Going back to school to get my Masters is out of the question. At this moment in my life, you couldn’t pay me to go back to school. In fact, if someone said I had a choice between continuing my education and certain death – I am 99% percent sure that I would choose death. That is how much I flipping hate school. The PACE program is a possibility, but I don’t fully understand it and what all the requirements are. The one thing that I do know is that I would have to take some graduate courses – and well, that requires school and probably several more tests than I even care to think about. Before I decide not to take that route, I will keep that window open, but it isn’t one that I want to crawl through if I can help it.

So far I’ve given my resume to a travel agent. They asked me the typical question of whether I had any travel agent experience and I had to tell them no, but that I had loads of travel experience. The woman that I was talking to gave me a fake smile and said that she would keep my resume on file and if they ever decided to train someone that they would give me a call. That of course translates into: As soon as you walk out of my store, I am going to incinerate your resume and erase your image off the back of my retina. I’ll go back in a few days and double check. I guess anything is possible.

I’ve also applied for 5 random state jobs. I am pretty sure I am qualified for them, but it really depends on who else has applied and if the person scanning through the resumes thinks I’m special or not. I just applied for them today, so I’m sure it will be a while before I hear back from them.

The sad part about all of this is that I have actually had the idea of going back to China to teach English cross my mind. I know that there are probably several legit programs over there that I would actually enjoy participating in, but without a teacher and ESL certificate, the money I would make over there wouldn’t equal an American salary or a enjoyable retirement.

Just what is a girl to do? *sigh*

Well, I guess I will just either A) hope to win the lottery which I don’t have the money to play because I don’t have a job or B) continue to search through the classifieds on Sunday until something screams at me. Until then . . . you’ll just have to listen to me complain. 🙂