Hi Internet People,
Okay, this past week I have been rethinking some of my life choices. Not like super extreme life choices, but some of my more recent choices. So if you don’t already know I currently work at a video store. What you might not know is that I’m kind of over qualified for the job. Like a lot of people I went to college with goals and plans for my future and those plans changed. I had thought for years, as far back as freshman year of high school, that I would be a professor. I wanted to work at a college and teach history. I went to college with that goal in mind and got a B.A. in History.
Now in order to teach at the college level you need to get higher degrees. I was able to get into a Master’s program right after my four year degree. Now I will admit that before I started this program I was already having second thoughts. I love acting and performing, but had always thought that I could never do it professionally. I was told at one point that I was too short to be a leading actress, I’m 5’4″ almost 5’5″, and was never able to make the cut for plays or musicals that weren’t connected to my school. I just assumed this meant that I wasn’t cut out for acting and focused on being something I thought I would be good at. I applied to history programs at various colleges, including one for theater history, and wound up getting a degree at a local college, that my dad actually teaches at. I loved the school and was able to be involved in choirs, plays, and even got to perform in New York City as a junior. When I graduated I still thought yes, I need to focus on history.
I went to grad school and started working on my Master’s and even though I met amazing people, I hated it. Many of the professors seemed to care very little about their students, they spoke down to women in the department, and it was a struggle for me to even find something to write my thesis about based on what the professors in the department focused on for research. I did have some great professors, but the overall poor level of support or care from the department and the university led me to want to leave academia forever. I did love my thesis though, it involved discussing Victorian detectives and crime in London in connection to modern television shows. I watched hours of shows and read tons of sources, many of which I was allergic to, and found ways to discuss my research with everyone. I was so excited to say that you could use television shows to teach people about history, but only my adviser, my department chair, and a few others even cared that I had done this work. After I got my Master’s I realized I had no job prospects and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after realizing that I didn’t want to be involved academia anymore.
I moved home and lived off of my savings and when I found out the video store was hiring I thought it would be a nice way to earn money and figure out what to do with my life. I have been enjoying my job, but the last few weeks have been exhausting. I know everyone has bad days, but it just feels like no one cares. I have been doing what feels like twice the work of my fellow employees with no recognition for my efforts. I have gotten scheduled for terrible hours, forced to cover extremely long shifts because people have constantly been writing days off, have had my schedule changed at the last minute, and am just exhausted by all of it. I recently learned that the minor promotion I received gives me no real benefits, just an extra quarter an hour. I think I need to make a change. I was recently told to apply somewhere else and was even told by two employees there that they would put in a good word for me. That’s great, but I wonder if I should make a bigger change.
I’m half tempted to just say if you want to hire me just let me know, but that seems a little weird for a blog post. I just think that maybe it’s time for me to do something big. I want to do something I’m proud of, make something of myself, do something that will make me happy every day. I just want to do more with my life. I love writing for The Nerdy Girl Express and making YouTube videos for my channel and I won’t stop doing either of those things any time soon, but I would just love to do more. You can find me on Twitter, @kleffnotes, and I run The Nerdy Girl Express Snapchat, thenerdygirlexp.
Talk to ya tomorrow,
Katherine
kleffnotes 