Let me preface this by saying that I'm feeling like I'm in a big time crunch right now for two very important things: finding a job and finding a place to live. My lease expires July 31, and I don't want to sign a new lease without at least one job offer, leaving me just a little over a month to find a job. I have not started applying yet, which is starting to making me nervous, although I'm not behind schedule yet; I have been working nonstop on my portfolio, getting feedback, and interning 30-40 hours/week plus commute at my city's biggest agency, where I've been since January. I think I can finish my site and get some more feedback this week and begin applying to jobs next week. I've been searching recruiter sites as well, to hopefully help speed up the process.
So here's my dilemma. I'm gone 10 hours of the day at my internship, and most days in the past couple months, I've just thought, ".....What am I doing here?" I feel like I could make much better use of my time improving my site and teaching myself valuable skills and programs at home. What I'm doing on the clock has not been extremely beneficial to me in the long-run. It's not what I want to do, and it's not even anything I can really put in my book. I've been able to add two things to it, and I've been there since January. I'm a designer/wannabe art director, but I've done a lot of miscellaneous things at this internship that have nothing to do with art direction and a few things to do with design, but most of it is very basic or involves me editing past designs or tweaking Keynote files to make them look "prettier." Now while I'm glad I've dipped my toes in presentation design, and I have learned a handful of things from my mentor dude, who, when he's not talking to me for thirty minutes straight about his family, can teach me something beneficial–I am not really feeling like it is worthwhile, fulfilling, or worth the time there considering the other priorities I have going on right now, like having to find an actual job.
Now I would be set on staying if I felt like there was a decent chance of them hiring me. But the way my boss talks to me about the future, like when I ask her about her post-grad life and where she started out, does not seem like she is eager on hiring me or planning on it. I've told her where I want to live and work, and she says "with your skillset, you could so go there" and things like that... there's an animation designer position up for grabs, but she's not training me for that and I don't have time to teach myself animation, as much as I have been wanting to. She says things like "I'm looking for someone who can do animation right now" to me when I talk about my job search. And my actual work AT work has not been beneficial. I'm doing an extremely irrelevant project this week and probably at least half of next week that is accomplishing absolutely nothing for my career. And at this point where I feel like I'm in such a time crunch, I would rather spend those 50 hours on my site and applying for jobs, instead of doing things that are not benefiting me whatsoever. Like I said, it's my city's biggest agency, but I already have the name on my resume for 6 months at this point. How do I know if I should cut it off? Even the days that I do feel fulfilled and accomplished, I have a hard time finding motivation to stay if there is no chance of being hired on.
Would it be worth it to spend that time towards applying for jobs? I want to nail interviews and really do research on agencies so I want to have time for that, plus I want to keep improving my site since that's like a non-stop thing. The only really big thing holding me back is one of the agency's best CDs has offered to work with me on some art director stuff in the summer. I don't know when or what it will be.
Any insight or advice is vastly appreciated as I'm extremely stressed out and conflicted from this whole situation.
Submitted June 13, 2019 at 04:56AM by bananapancake_ http://bit.ly/2WA0XAf
No comments:
Post a Comment