All righty then. Here I am, hoping to hop back into the ring and become once again gainfully employed. I like to work. I like to have the structure in my day. I like developing work  friendships. You know, the day to day, How ya doin’ kind of give and take relationship. I have made a couple of really great friends over the years whom I’ve met at various times where I’ve been employed. I like the money. I actually need the money. I’ve been working off and on for forty years. I’ve had part time jobs and full time jobs. I’ve been fortunate enough so I could afford to make choices about when and where I worked, but that’s changed.

When my children were young, I stayed at home. Later I went back to school and got my Masters degree in Psychology. I guess I’m mentioning this because I want to make the point that I am experienced at seeking employment as well as getting hired. Also I want to point out that I’m goal oriented and a hard worker. It takes some effort to jump into pursuing higher education while raising a family and running a household, at forty plus and something.

So the kids are really and truly finally grown and here I am, ready and willing with marketable skills. All this should be good, right?  I am thinking, substitute teaching, adjunct faculty work,  assistant to the director of  an program of some sort. I’m open and flexible and willing to try new things. Three quarter or half time maybe. I write. I’m not a stranger to keyboarding. I navigate around the Internet and have the mental stamina to research information for hours on end. I mention this to point out I am not a newbiet on line cyber interaction.   

Then, this week I met the online employment application. When I finished I had an eight page form completed. So I’m thinking, “How conveneint,this is great, I have all this information in one place online. I can copy and paste this into other applications!” Wrong.

Nope. Can’t do that. Sooooooooooo, today , I went back on line and onto another employer’s site, where a particularly tempting position is awaiting some lucky candidate. And, I’m hoping it’ll be me. They also provided a state application form. They wanted the application filled out on their site and so did it all over again. Two and a half hours later I was attaching a resume and I thought, “I’m almost there!”  Noooooooo.  This application required a writing sample and supplied the topic. Okay. I like to write. So, I go onto my word processing program and I create exactly what the site asks me to produce. It is a 250 word writing sample. I have it constructed to the 250th word. It’s exactly what I want to say about the topic. I am pleased. The grammar, spelling and punctuation are perfect. Then I proceed to print it out for reference . I then go back to the employer’s site and type it into the little writing sample box. When I finish and press the “save and proceed” button, the page does not proceed. It bounces back to me with a message written in red words accompanied by a yellow explanation point. “Your sample cannot exceed 1200 characters” it screams mocking me. There was no mention of characters! They specifically stated words! At this point, I am thinking maybe welfare and food stamps is a route to pursue. But I stay the course. I go back to the word processing program and the word and character counter tool. This time I pay attention to the characters and notice  another potential pitfall. There is option ”A’, that being, characters with spaces and option “B’ characters  no spaces. Now I’m having a Daffy Duck sort reaction to frustration because  I have 1123 characters without spaces and 1350 with spaces. What do they want?! I am angsting over this plus and negative space hurdle. So what finally happens is I go back into that little space where I have to type in my writing sample and type it in I do. And yes. Of course, it is too long, but the program doesn’t let me know by how much. I end up hacking away at it and pressing the save and continue button until the thing finally fits. I have deleted some of my best phrases and over corrected it until I’m not really sure it meets the subject criteria anymore. At this point I am just hoping. It certainly fell short by my standards. I sent the thing off finally and have the confirmation number to prove it. Now I wait and see if I get a response. If I don’t,  I’ll blame the writing sample or the maniacal individual who constructed the program. If I am lucky enough to get an interview? The first thing I am going to want to explain is that writing sample.