High School Drop Out Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I finally got a job. However, it wasn't the job I applied for, it was a job they made for me... and it's for two months. As much as it was clearly explained to me about why I didn't get the permanent job, I couldn't help but wonder if not getting the job had anything to do with the fact that I haven't been ordained in the realms in intelligesia by those who guard the ivory tower.

Still, I'm satisfied. I've never worked on national campaigns before and I've had the fortune of meeting everyone from the respective provincial chapters during my "amazing feminist race" (see below). So I won't have to deal with that chick who hates her job and decides to take it out on the new hire.

By taking this job, I had to turn down another. It was with the City of Toronto coordinating a city-wide research project. I've never said no to a job before, I usually just take them all. In retrospect, I think it has a lot to do with the soft foundations on which I stand as a "young professional" without the "right" training- that is, a university/college degree.

Every day I go to work, dressed to kill because my mother always told me that if you dress poor, you'll be treated poor. Not to mention overweight chicks (seriously though, how accurate is that BMI anyways?) suffer from greater job discrimination. I arrive, and immediately I recieve compliments on the bright colour, cools bags or homemade bead necklaces I'm wearing which sends me in another panic. Are they questioning how I am able to maintain this "style" without a diploma or degree? How will I justify it? How will they recieve it?

After mentioning some of these issues to a friend, she told me that I'm overreacting and too self conscious. After all, I still had to submit a resume and endure one nailbiting hour in the grey room with that stale office lighting on the other side of that ugly 70's peeling 8ft. brown veneer table and respond to the same questions other candidates did.

She reminds of me the self-sabbatoge mentality, where people who spend most of their time at a job that they never thought they deserved checking email, making personal calls, and fitting job-related assigned tasks in between; a subconscious reaction in anticipation of being fired (because the powers that be suddenly realized that they chose the wrong person), which is then used to justify why they were fired when it happens. I need to be careful of this.

Yes, she has a point. Still, I can't get too comfortable in this cushy job because that's when you're most vulnerable. So I'll keep my guards up until my subconscious sabatoge sensations subside.