Be Excellent To Each Other

I've been out of work for 12 months now.

It's been "interesting".

Wouldn't recommend it.

:emo:

Do you get incredibly bored, or has your Law stuff kept you entertained?

I had six months off, and though it finally clicked towards the end, I was tearing my hair out for a good few months to begin with.

How has the law thing gone MaliA? Did you do the conversion course I'm starting in September as well? Can't remember if it was you or not

Law stuff went fine, it's very interesting.

To be honest, being at home all day gets boring quickly.

Not having a lot of cash sucks donkey cock, though, as I'd love to go on holiday, or spend some money on nice objects for the house.

So what's next? LPC?

More than likely.

No good - none of the kiosks work.

Woo! Have you found a firm to pay for it yet? Are you planning on starting this year or are you going back to work to earn some cash or something? What colour are your pants?

Ah, good stuff.

Notwithstanding that it may be difficult being a student for another year, I think I'd probably see a year's GDL as wasted if I didn't then *do* something with it, but YMMV, of course.

As for being bored, you'll spend more time in lectures on the LPC, anyway - it's almost a 9-5 job. And even if you weren't, I've got no bloody sympathy for someone being bored being at home, as I'm gagging for spare time, as there are a billion things I'd like to be doing rather than working. And none of them involve COD4. Or you could get a part time job, or volunteer at a local charity.

/your dad

Having to do that is, frankly, soul destroying. The whole system appears to be set up to really demean you.

What you do is once a fortnight you go into there, at an appointed time and sit about as they are always running late. when you get called, you go up and hand over your "Jobseeker's Diary". This lists what you've done in the past fortnight, in search of gainful employment. You need to write what you did, when you did it, what happened and what you will do next. So, typically it would be "Look at naturejobs.com; didn't find anything; look again tomorrow" or "Bought New Scientist; looked ad job adverts; nothing there; will look again" and so on. Turns out, you've got to do threee diffferent things each week. So my looking at 3 different websites every day for a fortnight, only counted as one thing, and I almost lost my monies.

Then, they get on their computer and have a look for you. "So, MaliA, you're a scientist, let's see...here we go, lab technician, £13-14k, 36 hours a week, in Reading." That was the best thing they ever came up with there. The cost of travel to reading wouldn't make the wage worthwhile, notwithstanding.

And then they ask you if you've done any paid work, or volunteer work in the past fortnight, you smile and say "no" and they stamp your book wish you luck and they'll see you in two weeks.

If you want to be away, you've got to get a holiday form, leaving full contact details and a promise that you'd look for a job whilst on holiday, otherwise, no money.

It's fucking shit having to do that, and it really pisses me off when people say things like "The unemployed should do community services" ands tuff like that. Fact is, they can't do a lot, as even volunteering means no money. So one has to sit around the house all day.

But look on the bright side - hot shot lawyer in a year or so, eh?

'Legally Blonde' was not a documentary

Hotshot *scientist* laywer.

There's an ITV series in that

*wibbly screen*

DR MALIA, QC!

SOLVES CRIMES WITH... SCIENCE!

With his assistant, the slinky female Dr Glenda!

(the hairy male assistant was recast after poor testing in the pilot)

I know of someone, a friend of a friend, who signed on between his BSc and PhD. As such he had no intention of actually finding work and just wanted to scrape some free cash for a few months. He was living in inner city Birmingham but grew up in the country. Accordingly, he signed on listing his skills as "shepherd". Oddly, the job centre didn't find him any matches in three months of searching.

*furiously schemes*

edit: Actually, if I just told the truth and listed "journalist", there'd be utterly fuck all jobs-wise on Teesside. Or anywhere!

GAZETTE!

Durr - his assistants would be the Legal Attack Vixens.

Urgh!

Brilliant.

To be fair, though, you could probably put down 'Retail assistant' as one of your skills, and the useless Job Centre still wouldn't find you any work.