I hope you never have to go to the unemployment office. However, if you do, you should know that it isn’t all that bad. I went in and they sat me down at a computer to fill out an online form. I did it and then stood up to see what I should do next, at which point several workers flocked around me.
“You shouldn’t have finished it yet,” they said sternly, and began to try to figure out what I had done wrong. After a bit they told me to go sit down and wait.
I waited for a while and then asked what I had done wrong. I had not in fact done anything wrong. I just wasn’t supposed to finish that fast.
After a while, a nice man came and told me the stunningly small amount they intended to give me for unemployment benefits if I was still unemployed in a couple of weeks, offered to go through the questions I would be asked each week when I filed, and gave me a list of websites for my job search. A nice woman then said that if my employer was closing I was a dislocated worker, and they could send me to school. However, I have a couple of degrees already, so she took it back.
She did send me to see someone at the Adult Education Center.
I mentioned to the woman there that I had California certification to teach Adult Basic Education, a Master’s degree, and 15 years in the classroom teaching ESL to adults. “Oh, wow!” she said. For a moment, I thought she might just offer me a job.
She then explained that in our state, people who teach adults have to have K-12 certification. I am therefore not qualified to teach for her, even though someone with a brand new B.A. who has never taught adults is.
I did not burst into tears until I got to my car.
I tell you, this crying is going to be a problem. I am a cryer, I have to admit. I cry over particularly beautiful music, sad parts in books, the commercial on the TV where they show the dog in the pound who says he is a good dog…
Mostly I can talk calmly about being unemployed now. I’ve done it several times. I have a meeting tomorrow with an SEO firm. They are not advertising for workers, but they are willing to meet and discuss what I might have to offer. If nothing else, I might get ideas. I do not expect to cry at them.
But the whole visiting dozens of places with my resume and a smile bit — I am not sure I can do that yet. Maybe I didn’t spend enough time wallowing.
I was sent to a ‘special course’ because I was termed long term unemployed (3 years) They told us that if we didn’t have a job within the next few weeks we would be knocked of the register and thus would have no income at all. (It was this course that ultimately led to me going back to varsity and getting my masters) It was not a good week at all. Two of us on the course were ex-Post Office, he a draftsman and I a technician, and we both had the certificates to prove it . I also had a BA. We were more qualified than the idiots who were running the course and we did not take kindly to their general suggestions that the members of the course should get more ‘training’. (And then we were told that we would not be eligible for the training provided because we were overqualified!) At one meeting just between ourselves and the trainers we were sheepily told that according to govt official policy at the time there were no unemployed ‘professionals’ so there was nothing in place to deal with the likes of us. As I said, it was a bad week, I alternated between being depressed and very angry. In the end the anger is more useful than the depression. Use it constructively and you might be surprised what results.
@sighkey – Yes. I just came back from a temp agency — the unemployment office gave me a list. The lady there was very kind, but she said there was no point in her wasting my time giving me a bunch of tests, because they didn’t have jobs for people like me.
@fibermom – Interesting isn’t it. They tell us all the benefits of having a tertiary education with certificates and degree letters after our name, but never mention the downside – that if, for some reason or another, we lose our place in the working world, there are no systems in place to catch us. No one wants to know because then they would have to admit that all the hype about the benefits of an extended education is really just a way to keep young people off the unemployment statistics by making them stay students as long as possible (OK slight old bitterness coming into play but I am yet to be convinced that the sort of education you and I have is an advantage in the long run. Of course that didn’t stop me from going ahead and getting myself an even more useless degree than the ones I already had 🙂 )
You know, if you had been in your situation over here, you could have applied for a PhD scholarship (20 – 25 thousand dollars a year for 3 years). You would have probably got the scholarship and could have wallowed in student life again for a few years. I was just speaking to a woman, the same age as you, who is doing just that. She got married at 21, had 5 kids, waited until they were all in their teens and 20s and then went ahead and enrolled at varsity. She got her BA and MA in quick succession and is now studying for her PhD.