Damocles be damned

I'm yet again under threat of losing my job. Nothing really new there, I guess, given that I'm pretty much up for review every two months anyway and have been for the past year and a bit, but I'm looking for something new now. Losing a third of my pay cheque in about six months has hit me fairly hard. Even worse, it's knocked a fairly large hole in my plans for the next year. Hell, I might not be able to keep up my plans of a trip a month, after September. In fact, September, with my flight home, may just be a one way trip if things don't improve soon.

I know, I gripe about this a lot. Well, not just about this. But with the cheerful whistling coming from C's room next door as she strums her guitar, it occurs to me that not only is this constant fear of losing only the second job I've had for more than two years not healthy, it ought not to be necessary. I'm fairly sure that a teacher with a similar level of professional confidence and competence to me would not be having anxiety attacks because of fear that they won't be able to afford rent if things keep up. I'm also pretty certain that when they try to take matters in hand and head for the job ads, they don't get told by every single one that there are no jobs out there for a person of their experience, when they've got about five years post-grad experience under their belts. How many people can say that they've spent seven years at university to come out without being fully qualified, and not having failed a subject? Mind you, how many then go straight back for part time study because they didn't exactly enjoy those seven years?

I feel like I'm in an old Billy Joel song I remember hearing once. The graduation does hang on the wall, sort of, but if anything, it's made me unemployable for anything else. I even got an email rejecting me from a job as a PA in an architects office, because they didn't want someone in the role who would be looking to move to anything else. Another rejection told me I wouldn't be considered because my experience was all wrong. It was a secretarial/admin role, both sides of which I can and do perform on a daily basis. But the four degrees in the qualifications heading seem to make people think I'd be too bored to stick to a job like that. What they fail to understand is that I spend half my working life bored to tears anyway; have you ever done research on the technical specifications of an aluminium panel? Ever read a building regulation? It's not all glamour in the world of architecture, let me tell you. Clearly, people either don't read the bit on my CV where I explain what my jobs have involved, or they don't believe me when I mention the mundane, daily tasks.

Maybe it's more like a Bruce Springsteen song than a Billy Joel. After all, Billy Joel's hero was always looking for something better, an up-town girl; he was wondering why Allentown was dying. Springsteen's don't look forward. They look back to the glory days, the times when they were running free and the point where it all went wrong. They reminisce about the times when they didn't have a dull, boring fate hanging above their heads. I remember a time when going to university was going to get me a better life than my grandparents, none of whom finished high school, could have dreamt of. Where did going to university and getting myself a decent qualification go so bloody wrong?

There's a Greek legend about Damocles, a courtier who swaps places with his king, Dionysus, for a night, to enjoy the power of his position. It's only as he is sitting in the place of honour at the banquet that he notices the great sword hanging over his head by a single horse hair. Well, I swapped places with an educated person for a night. Now I've got to deal with the enormous bloody sword hanging over my job. Well personally, given the choice, I know what I'd tell Dionysus to do with his sword, and it isn't to hang it by a hair.