Mistakes are a part of life and making them is okay and bound to happen. This is the mentality I eventually developed 2 years after losing a job I cared about.
People now assure me that it’s not as big of a deal as I made it to be considering it was an on-campus job at my school but even today, it’s something I think about. I’m only 23 and I have many career aspirations and am determined to make them happen. Just because I lost a job in college doesn’t mean that is a pre-determinant for how the rest of my professional life will turn out. It was only until recently that I finally became okay and at peace with the fact that I had lost a job and how that aspect of my life doesn’t have to influence the rest of it like I permitted it to. In our twenties, I know it’s typical for us to be extremely unforgiving and hard on ourselves but I’m telling you from personal experience, that it will be okay. Mistakes will be made, jobs may be lost but don’t let that weigh on your life as much as it did on mine. In the end, it ended up being okay for me and in fact, I enjoyed my senior year of college a lot more than I expected. For me, the key was to be proactive. So, at the end of my junior year, I applied for 2 new jobs in the place of the one I lost and ended up loving those more than the job I had been let go from. Repeat to yourself – it’s going to be okay.
Among several reasons, one of the reasons I lost my job was because I let the discomfort I felt on staff and the animosity I felt by my supervisor impact me in a very personal and visible way. Admittedly, I was not good at hiding how I felt. One of the reasons I felt some hostility was because from the start that on-campus job was not my first and foremost passion nor was it always my first priority. I was a college student after all and I was trying to make my four years the most worth while by doing as much as I could.
I was the President of two organizations, had another on-campus job that I was a lot more passionate about considering it was directly related to social justice and service learning, had an internship to get exposure and experience in the nonprofit sector, and was getting involved with my major and expanding my learning outside of the classroom (part of being a theatre major at my school was actually being a part of the productions my college put on). I was also keenly aware of how much student loan debt I had taken on and only dedicating myself to one thing in college with that amount of debt hanging over my head didn’t seem right or to have equaled out. I wanted to get involved with my college and city community as much as possible and unfortunately a lot of the time that meant my on-campus job came second. I could tell that my fellow staff members didn’t like that and pretty early on I picked up on the fact that my supervisor didn’t approve of it either. After several meetings of trying to reason with my supervisor, it seemed like my points weren’t being heard. Even more so, I left those meetings feeling significantly under-appreciated as a staff member and college student. I hadn’t abandoned my job, I was still fulfilling my responsibilities to the best of my ability considering my demanding and sometimes overflowing schedule, and I still cared about the job. But that wasn’t enough.
And it only magnified from there. My passion for my major took the front seat for a while and no matter how hard I tried to balance my on-campus job and the main reason I came to school in the first place…things weren’t perfect and I ended up making mistakes along the way.
Although most on-campus jobs at my school were quite forgiving of the fact that we were full-time students, trying to pursue our major as successfully as possible, and attempting to immerse ourselves in our passions, I didn’t feel that way in my on-campus job. I began to feel significantly unaccepted, highly criticized for trivial things, and most of all – I felt like I was always under a magnifying glass with my supervisor waiting for the next time I showed up 5 minutes late to a shift, accidentally inconvenienced someone, asked for help, or didn’t answer my door. College students are going to make mistakes. Humans are going to make mistakes. And unfortunately, in my job there wasn’t any room for me to make them. The discomfort and constant nervousness I felt in my job became overwhelming and often distracting – it even started to interfere with my academic work. And no, my on-campus job and my supervisor are not the main ones to blame, I also take responsibility for not making my on-campus job my main priority, not being extremely passionate about it, being outspoken about how I felt as an employee, or not always leaving hours in my schedule to dedicate to it. Again, I made mistakes and I am open about making them. But this post isn’t really about the reasons why I got let go of a job. It’s about the aftermath and the resilience that is necessary in order to overcome it, grin and bear it, and move forward with your life with success – even if that means a few failures along the way.
Nobody is perfect at their job all of the time. I looked at the staff members around me who were immensely passionate about their job and who would carve out so much of their day, week, and month to do this one specific job. I observed some staff members who made this job the one and only thing they did at college aside from classes. And I didn’t see myself doing that. Mirroring that didn’t seem like me. I couldn’t muster up the willpower to quit the other things I loved and came to school for just for this one job.
Although this made me feel extremely guilty at first, I eventually realized that I can’t shove a puzzle piece into a spot it doesn’t belong in. And that was essentially what I was doing with this on-campus position. If I didn’t feel appreciated or valued by my supervisor then maybe that is a sign that I should leave. Was it unfair for her to treat me that way even with the mistakes I had made or things I didn’t prioritize as much? Absolutely. But there are battles to pick and battles to win, and that wasn’t one I was passionate or eager enough to pursue. Although I deeply cared about the people I met while working this on-campus job, I knew I could still have a relationship with them despite the change in job status. After probably one of the unhappiest semesters I had experienced in college, I finally realized that I didn’t need or deserve the stress and anxiety I felt from my on-campus job. Even if some of that stressed stemmed from ‘doing too much’ at school, I was too young to be that unhappy in a job. Additionally, in order gain more control over the schedule that was ‘too much’ and lessen the load of my often packed and overloaded schedule, eliminating one big part of my schedule could be advantageous, healthy, and less stressful.
And it was. After losing that on-campus job, I felt like I could breathe again. And that’s certainly not to say that I didn’t care about the people I worked for, assisted, and worked alongside – there were so many that changed my life in such positive and rewarding ways. And there were also so many moments where I genuinely did love my job. But when I examine and reflect on the the job overall, it wasn’t consistently providing happiness for me and it caused more harm than good in the end. Removing one big piece out of my college schedule was much more helpful than I had originally predicted and in the end, it turned out to be okay.
Was I embarrassed to lose a job at first? Sure, absolutely. I hated explaining to people why I wasn’t working that job anymore and it was difficult for me to fully come to terms with the reasons why I didn’t have the job anymore. Was I immensely hard on myself for a long time because of the loss of my job? Absolutely. There was a time where I was so unforgiving and unkind to myself that I had convinced myself that no one would hire me as a post-grad. Who would want to hire a college student who made mistakes? I thought my job performance in that one (out of the 8 or so jobs I have had in my lifetime) job had the strength and impact to determine my professional life in the future. And that is not the case at all. I ended up getting a post-grad job at the end of my junior year and have been extremely happy in my current position ever since.
So no, I’m not proud of the fact that I lost a job in college. But I will tell you what I am proud of. I’m proud that I bounced back. I’m proud that I was immediately proactive and didn’t wallow or sulk about the loss of a job and mistakes I had made. I’m proud that I applied for 2 jobs in the place of that one and worked it out in my schedule where they didn’t ever conflict. I’m proud that I eventually came to terms with the fact that I did lose a job and that it was going to be okay. I’m proud of the person I became afterwards. And if this has ever happened to you, please know that you are not alone and that in the face of failure and mistakes, you have bright opportunity to turn it all around and make yourself proud too.
The post I’m Not Proud I Got Let Go From A Job, But I’m Glad I Did appeared first on Twenty Something Living.