Hi y'all. Here's my quandary. I was "unemployed" for a year and a half after finishing my first bachelor's degree at 27. I just turned 29 yesterday. I applied for an Americorps volunteer position with an NYC agency, and started working at my host site in early November.
I hate it.
I've never worked a full-time 9-5 office position in my life. A few 20-30 hour/week internships, semi-full-time jobs with scattered hours throughout the week, but never the same torturous routine day after day. I was ready to quit after the first two weeks or so, but I don't really have that luxury. I need to pay for tuition, rent, pay down student loan and credit card debt, etc. The position also comes with a lot of perks, covering transportation, and I will earn a $6,000 education award for completing 1700 hours of service at the end of the 10-month term. There's also the $1250 monthly living stipend which really helps.
But I really dislike working at this agency for a number of reasons.
As I already mentioned, the torturous routine. My six or so hours of sleep are fitful and I wake up filled with dread. I'd try to get 7-8 hours, but who have tons of other things to do in the evenings. The commute is annoying and soul-sucking. Then I get to the office. It's a city agency, so quite drab offices and cubicles, crammed onto one maze-like and claustrophobic floor. The employees are "fake-cheery" middle-class types, and here I am, the odd, quiet black guy (the office is surprisingly diverse, so that's not really a problem). I have two female supervisors, and trying to keep up with/placate both of them is proving to be impossible. I make my main supervisor so uncomfortable at times she can barely string together a coherent sentence. The three people I work next to (four cubicles crammed together), I barely talk to, but any interactions there are strained too. The whole department sprung a birthday celebration on me yesterday by surprise (which was sweet, but standard), but I managed to fumble that occasion as well.
Here's the thing. It could get worse or it could get more manageable with time. I'm buried in work all day anyway, so I really just plug in my headphones and plug away. But it's also a very social office and I'll be expected to participate in things, and of course, that's nerve wrecking. And there will be a lot of events and outreach stuff coming up. A part of me feels bad for disrupting the rhythm of the office, that things we're probably "better" before I came along, but that's my SA speaking.
Anyway, I'm barely functional at this point, but it has gotten very (slightly) more manageable the past couple weeks and might become even more so. But with all the duties the Americorps/volunteer service places on you ("professional development" monthly meetings i.e. circle jerks, filling out time and activity sheets, endless documentation, having to complete crazy number of service hours) then the workload and office politics at the actual work site, it might just be too much for me. I got by pretty well doing research studies most of this year, and I'm looking into freelance stuff right now. Also taking classes towards a second bachelor's and eventually grad school. I could always go back to a less stressful lifestyle, at least I'd have time to sleep, poop, write, think, and maybe get into therapy and really work on my multiple neuroses/afflictions.
Anyway, TL;DR. This is my SA story. I wish life wasn't so ****ing impossible at times. Maybe we just need to make things easier for ourselves and stop placing so much pressure on ourselves. Life in America, I guess.
I hate it.
I've never worked a full-time 9-5 office position in my life. A few 20-30 hour/week internships, semi-full-time jobs with scattered hours throughout the week, but never the same torturous routine day after day. I was ready to quit after the first two weeks or so, but I don't really have that luxury. I need to pay for tuition, rent, pay down student loan and credit card debt, etc. The position also comes with a lot of perks, covering transportation, and I will earn a $6,000 education award for completing 1700 hours of service at the end of the 10-month term. There's also the $1250 monthly living stipend which really helps.
But I really dislike working at this agency for a number of reasons.
As I already mentioned, the torturous routine. My six or so hours of sleep are fitful and I wake up filled with dread. I'd try to get 7-8 hours, but who have tons of other things to do in the evenings. The commute is annoying and soul-sucking. Then I get to the office. It's a city agency, so quite drab offices and cubicles, crammed onto one maze-like and claustrophobic floor. The employees are "fake-cheery" middle-class types, and here I am, the odd, quiet black guy (the office is surprisingly diverse, so that's not really a problem). I have two female supervisors, and trying to keep up with/placate both of them is proving to be impossible. I make my main supervisor so uncomfortable at times she can barely string together a coherent sentence. The three people I work next to (four cubicles crammed together), I barely talk to, but any interactions there are strained too. The whole department sprung a birthday celebration on me yesterday by surprise (which was sweet, but standard), but I managed to fumble that occasion as well.
Here's the thing. It could get worse or it could get more manageable with time. I'm buried in work all day anyway, so I really just plug in my headphones and plug away. But it's also a very social office and I'll be expected to participate in things, and of course, that's nerve wrecking. And there will be a lot of events and outreach stuff coming up. A part of me feels bad for disrupting the rhythm of the office, that things we're probably "better" before I came along, but that's my SA speaking.
Anyway, I'm barely functional at this point, but it has gotten very (slightly) more manageable the past couple weeks and might become even more so. But with all the duties the Americorps/volunteer service places on you ("professional development" monthly meetings i.e. circle jerks, filling out time and activity sheets, endless documentation, having to complete crazy number of service hours) then the workload and office politics at the actual work site, it might just be too much for me. I got by pretty well doing research studies most of this year, and I'm looking into freelance stuff right now. Also taking classes towards a second bachelor's and eventually grad school. I could always go back to a less stressful lifestyle, at least I'd have time to sleep, poop, write, think, and maybe get into therapy and really work on my multiple neuroses/afflictions.
Anyway, TL;DR. This is my SA story. I wish life wasn't so ****ing impossible at times. Maybe we just need to make things easier for ourselves and stop placing so much pressure on ourselves. Life in America, I guess.