(no subject)
Nov. 3rd, 2003 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4I usually dream about being late for work, but this time I dreamed about being late for school. And other garbage. In the dream I woke up late so I knew I was going to be a bit late for school, but somehow didn't manage to get in until 10:45. (That was the end of morning break at the High School.) When I got there I couldn't find my French textbook and I knew I hadn't done the work anyway, and I wondered about trying to do the work really quickly and be even later to the lesson, but I knew we also had Music later, and I hadn't done the work for that either, but in the end I found the French textbook in the back of my locker, and ... I don't know what I decided in the end, because the dream shifted.
In another bit of the dream I was trying to write a Perl script to do something handwavy with SGML records (so, just like every day at work, then, only it was a bit clearer in the dream). The computer I was using was a giant clunky thing with a green screen. I was typing the SGML records in by hand to start with [I have actually been keying in some stuff that I'm trying to webbify at home, so maybe that's where that came from] and every time I'd finished typing in a record, the computer would switch to Windows and some kind of pointy-clicky record-input software, and I had to keep asking the other person in the room (I've no idea who they were) how to switch back to DOS because I wanted to be able to write bits of Perl at the same time. I wish I could remember the Perl -- I didn't seem to be having any trouble with multiple hashes, just with this bizarre Windows/DOS problem.
Then I dreamed that I was trying to organise some sort of school concert, or show-type-thing, and I was trying to find some music that was suitable for everybody but the only piece I could find that might do was a huge ornamental copy of the score, with folded-over pieces of tissue paper in lots of different colours, which I'd done for some Art project and now couldn't remember how it was all supposed to fold up; and then I was trying to play in a string quartet but I couldn't find my bow, and I found it just in time but the other three members of the quartet were all clustered really tightly round one music stand and I couldn't see the music, and one of them said "We're never this crowded when we play around the piano", and I suggested they spread out a bit around the stand, but they weren't listening. Then some of the other people taking part in the concert-type-thing started bringing food and stuff and putting it on the stage, weird arrangements of food, like eggs-and-bacon in a mug (that's the only one I can remember, but they were all weird), and I realised it was some kind of Harvest Festival or something, so I started trying to co-ordinate where people were putting their food as well, but they kept just putting things down any-old-how, and I wanted it to look purposeful, but I couldn't keep track of all the food that was coming in.
The only other bit I remember is that I was in bed with somebody and he was doing all sorts of silly things with bits of coloured string which were supposed to be fun, and he kept making silly jokes, and I was saying "Can't we just cuddle or something?" and "Can you stop being so silly please?" because I was feeling miserable and not in the mood for silliness, and every time he'd say "Yes, of course" and then do "just one more" silly thing, and I was crying because he wasn't taking any notice of what I wanted, and I think I woke up round about then.
So anyway, I went to sleep with a headache, probably a result of spending most of the evening crying and the rest of the evening arguing with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sion_a; and I woke up still with a headache, and now I'm in work with a headache, and achieving approximately nothing except updating this journal.
In another bit of the dream I was trying to write a Perl script to do something handwavy with SGML records (so, just like every day at work, then, only it was a bit clearer in the dream). The computer I was using was a giant clunky thing with a green screen. I was typing the SGML records in by hand to start with [I have actually been keying in some stuff that I'm trying to webbify at home, so maybe that's where that came from] and every time I'd finished typing in a record, the computer would switch to Windows and some kind of pointy-clicky record-input software, and I had to keep asking the other person in the room (I've no idea who they were) how to switch back to DOS because I wanted to be able to write bits of Perl at the same time. I wish I could remember the Perl -- I didn't seem to be having any trouble with multiple hashes, just with this bizarre Windows/DOS problem.
Then I dreamed that I was trying to organise some sort of school concert, or show-type-thing, and I was trying to find some music that was suitable for everybody but the only piece I could find that might do was a huge ornamental copy of the score, with folded-over pieces of tissue paper in lots of different colours, which I'd done for some Art project and now couldn't remember how it was all supposed to fold up; and then I was trying to play in a string quartet but I couldn't find my bow, and I found it just in time but the other three members of the quartet were all clustered really tightly round one music stand and I couldn't see the music, and one of them said "We're never this crowded when we play around the piano", and I suggested they spread out a bit around the stand, but they weren't listening. Then some of the other people taking part in the concert-type-thing started bringing food and stuff and putting it on the stage, weird arrangements of food, like eggs-and-bacon in a mug (that's the only one I can remember, but they were all weird), and I realised it was some kind of Harvest Festival or something, so I started trying to co-ordinate where people were putting their food as well, but they kept just putting things down any-old-how, and I wanted it to look purposeful, but I couldn't keep track of all the food that was coming in.
The only other bit I remember is that I was in bed with somebody and he was doing all sorts of silly things with bits of coloured string which were supposed to be fun, and he kept making silly jokes, and I was saying "Can't we just cuddle or something?" and "Can you stop being so silly please?" because I was feeling miserable and not in the mood for silliness, and every time he'd say "Yes, of course" and then do "just one more" silly thing, and I was crying because he wasn't taking any notice of what I wanted, and I think I woke up round about then.
So anyway, I went to sleep with a headache, probably a result of spending most of the evening crying and the rest of the evening arguing with
sion_a; and I woke up still with a headache, and now I'm in work with a headache, and achieving approximately nothing except updating this journal.
(off topic agayne) On CVs
Date: 2003-11-03 06:17 am (UTC)Most UK employers use your GCSEs and school record to see if you set the foundations for being of some use in later life, or if you got your A Grade in Underwater Basket-Weaving. You can re-write your CV starting with Name, etc, then using keywords to describe your EXPERIENCE (e.g., academic librarian with further experience in programming...) and PRACTICAL SKILLS (languages, book-keeping, underwater basket-weaving, etc), then jump into your chronology, followed by AWARDS, then PERSONAL INTERESTS (not "hobbbies", why put yourself down like that?) and any organisations you have belonged to which seem respectable ("Goths For Anarchy" maybe takes a back seat here, but Greenpeace or the Lizards and Arthropods Chamber Music Quartet would do). Create a cover letter explaining what you might offer the organisation, use your language skills to indicate that you make great tea, and send it off. They might not have anything right away but they will remeber you. Follow it up with a phone call in a month and keep calling.
Year out: never explain, never apologise. Just account for it. "The over-achievement culture at Oxford, as I saw it, seemed to me to be an essentially frivolous exercise, and I wasn't sure I wanted to continue participating in it, so I took a year out. During that year I did [list activities]." The End. Your De**ess**n is none of their business and it doesn't define you for all eternity. F**k it.
Re Belbin, I would guess - and it is only a guess - that maybe you just haven't applied for the kind of jobs which might want to use them or Myers-Briggs. If you were in the milieu which needs to use a variety of assessment techniques for its candidates, rather than one which is restricted to a narrow-ish set of intellectual and technical skills, you might have heard of it. That's not a personal comment, BTW, just a surmise. Small companies don't usually need to use either of them, either because they have no career structure anyway or they "know their people" too well. Ha!
I once dreamt I was going to sit my viva on a Saturday afternoon but had only written 2.5 chapters (of 9). My moral tutor said "go home and write as much as you can between now and 2 p.m." --- and my 'home' had been turned into a seedy East European brothel and there were no desks or even so much as a table. And no peace and quiet, either. I woke up believing myself to be scribbling away on the shelf by the payphone. :-)
:-)
Katherine
Re: (off topic agayne) On CVs
Date: 2003-11-03 07:14 am (UTC)Not to mention the fact that if I put all that crap in it'd be half a dozen pages long! Nobody reads CVs which are that long!
Yeah, okay, what I really want is for somebody to write my CV for me, so that even if I do get a job I can feel like I've cheated, and feel a failure for not even being able to write a CV...
Not really keen on the idea of applying on spec to companies who aren't advertising jobs, either -- a) I don't think I can muster the arrogance required to tell people "I'm so fantastic that you should employ me even though you don't want to employ anybody"; and b) it seems particularly daft with charities and NFP companies -- surely they're unlikely to have the funding for random jobs if they're not advertising them? I suspect they're more likely to reply saying "Dear insert name here, Have you considered volunteering for us? YOU could change LIVES by giving up just FOUR HOURS of your time!"
Your dream made me giggle, though. I hope you're not offended by that. It's just such a quintessentially dreamlike dream, but with ADDED BROTHEL. :)
Scoo-o-o-oooo-o-re!!!
Date: 2003-11-03 09:04 am (UTC)Your CV isn't at all bad but it doesn't do you justice, either - you manage to conceal or play down a shedload of Good Stuff.
Example: "Unpaid" is a self-deprecating and Not Smart first word to use in one of your job descriptions. Say what the job enatiled (as you do) and then, in parentheses, add (voluntary).
Pretend it isn't you, and then edit the s*d as if it belonged to someone you like, as a School Exercise: "change all these sentences from negatives into positives". You don't have to be Brutally Honest all the time; average non-histrionic honesty will do for every day useage. Be brutally honest in the privacy ofyour own home.
My geology prof (who was drop-dead gorgeous and stunningly intelligent and so suffered from Undergraduette's Syndrome every term) had a sign taped to his desk: The best thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother. But there are a lot of ways to love; it is very much a matter of will-power; and if he is doing the right thing by not dumping his kids and their mom then he is at least doing the right thing, no matter what he and you have going on, which may or may not be a new chapter. As you say, in the meantime, you need to get on with being better to yourself and doing what you can to achieve your goals of raising a family (with or without him, that is all yet to be) by getting yourself sorted in a job which doesn't destroy you.
Get on with editing that young woman's CV - it's a grammatical exercise, not a psychological analysis, you can do it with one hand tied behind your back!
best wishes, as ever
Katherine
Sending CVs on spec isn't "hire me 'cos I'm wonderful" it's "hire me because you need to know I'm out here and have these skills".
no subject
Date: 2003-11-03 10:48 am (UTC)I struck lucky; the lady I spoke to had studied theology back in the day and was so keen to help me she gave me her email address and invited me to contact her again for some more input, which I did.
CfBT don't operate in Cambridgeshire, but a quick Google or two gave me this which may be of use.
I am exhausted and have to go out shortly, so I haven't looked at your CV, but I will when I am not dead tired and feel I can be useful about it.