2017 was kind of depressing for me, but there were some achievements too
Being unemployed for 8 months was terrible, so when I finally got hired in June 2017, you’d expect that I would stay for a couple months if only to save up for future travel plans. Things often turn unpredictable, and so I only worked two weeks at this insurance company. Technically I got fired, but when they told me they wanted to end my contract, I was more relieved than disappointed. Sure, even a boring office job gets the money rollin’, as is the purpose of this life.
Truth be told, I have already done these kind of jobs. You can say, it’s only a limited amount of time. In the future my dreamjob is waiting. But you cannot keep saying that. Time is of the essence here. Before you know it, ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
It’s not like I haven’t done any effort. My aim was to find a job where I could employ my one great talent: writing. Moreover I am fluent in both English and Dutch, and can translate easily. I hold a master’s degree in history from the University of Leuven, so it shouldn’t be very difficult to get a job in my field of preference, which is either journalism or in the editorial sector. And yet, in the months after my graduation I kept receiving rejection after refusal and denial. Always the explanations had to do with too less experience. It makes you feel very insecure. On top of that, your parents are worried, urging you to maybe educate yourself or follow a course in IT, cause then a job will be more probable than with just a master in history. But the problem is I’ve never really been interested in programming.
In the beginning you don’t want to take any job, cause then the whole purpose of a university degree would seem useless. Might have started working immediately after highschool, cheaper and more efficient. Of course a university education is more than a degree, you meet new people and some of them become your best friends.
But even a history degree isn’t just a waste of money. Sure, medical or law studies have a clearer outcome, and the job possibilities of humanities and social sciences are more vague, though not less numerous. Even when you don’t want to be an academic or a teacher, you still have enough choices left depending on what your strong suits are.
I wrote this text when I was unemployed during the summer of 2017, after I got fired at KBC Insurances. Luckily soon after I saw an advertisement on the website of Adecco, which got me started at Cirque du Soleil. I can happily say I‘ve been quite busy since August 2017. In September and October I worked as an usher, which is comparable to people working in movie theaters, who clean after the film or -in this case- show has ended. It was good to be working again and seeing the money come into your bank account. When the circus left town, I immediately started somewhere else, but this time I wouldn’t get paid. As an unpaid intern I was writing for the Belgian website www.mo.be, from October 30th until December 15th. Then I started applying again. But I also began preparing an article on the meat industry, for which I contacted two experts (professor Mario Smet and philosopher-activist Stijn Bruers). With the holidays advancing lots of journalists were taking days off, so it was hard getting answers on whether news outlets wanted to publish my article (the English version you can read here). I did receive some answers, but up to this day nobody has wanted to pay me as a freelancer.
To be continued. As we say in Dutch, de aanhouder wint. It’s dogged that does it.
