Read Online Graduates in Wonderland by Jessica Pan - Free Book Online
Authors: Jessica Pan
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Stewart of breaking things. They may not work, but they definitely look nice when sheâs done with them.
I canât believe Rosabelleâs shower curtain drama took precedence over this, but are you really leaving Astrid? Well, at the end of the day, itâs your life and you have to do whatâs best for you, not her, as long as you donât overtly go out of your way to hurt her. I am thinking about this the way I approached leaving my jobâÂas much as it was terrible and hard and horrible, you have to just have faith that something better will come along and it will.
Living with Rosabelle has also been so different post-ÂcollegeâÂBusterâs so much more important to her now, and with her real job, sheâs so unavailable. Time is just more precious now...or maybe weâre all just changing.
My advice: Donât live with a couple. Especially a couple of assholes.
Love love love,
Rachel
DECEMBER 3
Jess to Rachel
I thought performance art was miming. Maybe you didnât get the first job because you spoke at all. But congrats on the second one! Thatâs great news!
Iâm back in Beijing and arrived still looking for a job. I think itâs depressing that most people our age want exactly what I want: to be journalists. They really need to stop making TV shows and movies about the thrills of being a reporterâÂitâs setting up entire generations for extreme disappointment. A friend put me in touch with someone who graduated from Columbia Journalism School two years ago. She wrote me a really nice e-mail about how she was taught by Pulitzer Prizeâwinning reporters and how she landed great unpaid internships at magazines and how she started her own pie business because she couldnât find a paying journalism job in New York.
I wish everyone would stop telling me to start a blog. Meanwhile, I canât just sit around doing nothing.
I applied for another job that seemed vaguely related to public relations. I put on a boxy blazer and stupid work pants that swish when you walk and went to the interview.
The job was at a small, private Chinese PR firm run by a really aggressive woman, Blair. For the interview, she left me inside a boardroom and asked me to write five hundred words on what it means to be effective at public relations.
Um, what?
I know nothing about PR except that it involves pointy shoes and pearls, so I had printed out a lot of information on successful PR campaigns so that I could review them on the ride over. I made sure the door was closed and used my cheat sheets on my surprise essay. It felt like a teacher was going to walk in and suspend me. Afterward, Blair glanced over it, looked me and my blazer up and down, made sure I was fluent in English, and hired me on the spot. Then she ushered me over to some Chinese girls in the office, named Candy and Coco (these are the kinds of English names cutesy Chinese girls pick for themselves).
Blair sat me down and told me that her firm was making a pitch to represent the biggest music and arts festival in China and that I would be responsible for editing the Chinglish for every document in the office. She gestured to a mountain of paper. And I would be paid by the document, which, if I worked extra hard, would end up being the equivalent of six hundred dollars a month.
My first reaction, inside my head, was, âHmm, no, thank you.â But Iâve been unable to find a job for so long that I decided to go with it.
Instead, I said, âSure!â and then had a silent, secret heart attack (I clutched at my blazer but no one noticed).
I turned to Candy and Coco and asked them how long theyâd worked here. They started last week. I remembered seeing ads for a vacancy at this PR firm nearly every month, so Iâd figured that they had a lot of employees, but from what I can tell, it just has three people. Three different people every week.
I thought about your old boss
I canât believe Rosabelleâs shower curtain drama took precedence over this, but are you really leaving Astrid? Well, at the end of the day, itâs your life and you have to do whatâs best for you, not her, as long as you donât overtly go out of your way to hurt her. I am thinking about this the way I approached leaving my jobâÂas much as it was terrible and hard and horrible, you have to just have faith that something better will come along and it will.
Living with Rosabelle has also been so different post-ÂcollegeâÂBusterâs so much more important to her now, and with her real job, sheâs so unavailable. Time is just more precious now...or maybe weâre all just changing.
My advice: Donât live with a couple. Especially a couple of assholes.
Love love love,
Rachel
DECEMBER 3
Jess to Rachel
I thought performance art was miming. Maybe you didnât get the first job because you spoke at all. But congrats on the second one! Thatâs great news!
Iâm back in Beijing and arrived still looking for a job. I think itâs depressing that most people our age want exactly what I want: to be journalists. They really need to stop making TV shows and movies about the thrills of being a reporterâÂitâs setting up entire generations for extreme disappointment. A friend put me in touch with someone who graduated from Columbia Journalism School two years ago. She wrote me a really nice e-mail about how she was taught by Pulitzer Prizeâwinning reporters and how she landed great unpaid internships at magazines and how she started her own pie business because she couldnât find a paying journalism job in New York.
I wish everyone would stop telling me to start a blog. Meanwhile, I canât just sit around doing nothing.
I applied for another job that seemed vaguely related to public relations. I put on a boxy blazer and stupid work pants that swish when you walk and went to the interview.
The job was at a small, private Chinese PR firm run by a really aggressive woman, Blair. For the interview, she left me inside a boardroom and asked me to write five hundred words on what it means to be effective at public relations.
Um, what?
I know nothing about PR except that it involves pointy shoes and pearls, so I had printed out a lot of information on successful PR campaigns so that I could review them on the ride over. I made sure the door was closed and used my cheat sheets on my surprise essay. It felt like a teacher was going to walk in and suspend me. Afterward, Blair glanced over it, looked me and my blazer up and down, made sure I was fluent in English, and hired me on the spot. Then she ushered me over to some Chinese girls in the office, named Candy and Coco (these are the kinds of English names cutesy Chinese girls pick for themselves).
Blair sat me down and told me that her firm was making a pitch to represent the biggest music and arts festival in China and that I would be responsible for editing the Chinglish for every document in the office. She gestured to a mountain of paper. And I would be paid by the document, which, if I worked extra hard, would end up being the equivalent of six hundred dollars a month.
My first reaction, inside my head, was, âHmm, no, thank you.â But Iâve been unable to find a job for so long that I decided to go with it.
Instead, I said, âSure!â and then had a silent, secret heart attack (I clutched at my blazer but no one noticed).
I turned to Candy and Coco and asked them how long theyâd worked here. They started last week. I remembered seeing ads for a vacancy at this PR firm nearly every month, so Iâd figured that they had a lot of employees, but from what I can tell, it just has three people. Three different people every week.
I thought about your old boss
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