Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Anniversary
I realised just now that it was about ten years and one week ago that I entered the realm of the gainfully employed and started my first job. Since then I've been continually employed to date, now in my third job in that time.
I graduated from university in the summer of 1997. Returning home with no clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life I lasted about a month before my parents forced me to go and sign on. When I did so the job centre had only one library-related job on it's books (or rather in it's database), librarian at a girl's school in Surrey. I went to the interview and, much to my surprise, got the job. I was signed up in my new job before I'd received my first dole check, and ended up being on the dole for all of about a fortnight. We already had the family holiday booked and, because I'd been interviewed at the start of August my new employers allowed me to start a week late. So we went on holiday, Princess Di snuffed it in the early hours of my twenty-first birthday and we came home on the day of her funeral. I had a flat, unfurnished and lacking central-heating, but wasn't able to move into it until after my first week of work, so I had a week of commuting in a massive slingshot, Maidstone to Victoria, then back out to Wallington.
Those years were pretty wretched, I managed to lose contact with all my friends from university and didn't really find any to replace them. Getting a job in North London three years later was a real turning point, but that's a story for 2010...
I graduated from university in the summer of 1997. Returning home with no clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life I lasted about a month before my parents forced me to go and sign on. When I did so the job centre had only one library-related job on it's books (or rather in it's database), librarian at a girl's school in Surrey. I went to the interview and, much to my surprise, got the job. I was signed up in my new job before I'd received my first dole check, and ended up being on the dole for all of about a fortnight. We already had the family holiday booked and, because I'd been interviewed at the start of August my new employers allowed me to start a week late. So we went on holiday, Princess Di snuffed it in the early hours of my twenty-first birthday and we came home on the day of her funeral. I had a flat, unfurnished and lacking central-heating, but wasn't able to move into it until after my first week of work, so I had a week of commuting in a massive slingshot, Maidstone to Victoria, then back out to Wallington.
Those years were pretty wretched, I managed to lose contact with all my friends from university and didn't really find any to replace them. Getting a job in North London three years later was a real turning point, but that's a story for 2010...
Labels: personal history
