Earrings are a girl's best friend.

I wanted to show Amoena my new earrings. My mum gave them to me when she visited last week. She always tells me that my ears are the smallest in the world, so I shouldn't use heavy earrings that could stretch my tiny lobes.

Whatever. Mums are like that.

This is the best shot I could get with my camera phone. Well, it's really a phone with a built-in camera, not the other way around.

I just woke up so I look like crap. No one should see my face this up close. At least I spared you from half of my face, though you can probably guess what the other half looks like.

In other news, I finally transferred all the photos from my cellphone to my laptop (thanks to my new Deltaco Hi-Speed 7-port usb hub!), so expect more photo-ridden posts in the future.

Oh and if you also read Sleeping Artist, please note that the feed no longer works. I have absolutely no idea why that is. I've tried a lot of things and I've asked around, but so far no luck. I just don't have the energy right now to look into it so I apologize for the inconvenience.

My life as a lungfish.

That meeting with the career counselor was definitely worth it. We talked for nearly three (3! yes, 3!) hours, and she was a really nice and fun person.

I shamelessly hurled millions of questions at her and felt like I got very useful answers. She told me that the employers can be just as confused and ignorant about the recruiting process as the job applicants. Somehow I didn't see that coming at all.

For instance, she said that many employers write these daunting requirement lists because it's easier to imagine the ideal candidate instead of a realistic one. Usually the people they end up hiring don't fulfill many of their requirements. Lesson: salt, salt, and then a little more salt when eyeing up those lists!

She also told me that my work experience at the uni looks impressive, even if it's been a part-time job. It shows (in her words) that I can commit to a project, and long term too since I've had several projects over a couple of years.

Moreover, she said some people can be impressed by the fact that I've worked for uni. Myself I tend to think that it's not difficult at all to get some small project like that since I'm a student there, so I don't think of it as very impressive. The biggest ones I got because I practically forced my help on one teacher when he complained about not having time for his project.

Well, I suppose those projects don't really fit my idea of applying for a job, since I never had to do that. They didn't help me at all in learning those skills outside the university.

Even so, my main worry was that my cv gives off the impression that I've been extremely lazy and that I'm unwilling to work. Of course I can be lazy, usually when I don't like what I'm doing. If I do, on the other hand, I'm a workaholic. Maybe that's my saving grace.

I felt such relief after talking to her. The high lasted for about two days, and then the good old paranoia and anxiety kicked in again. But no matter how I feel, I refuse to forget all those tips and information I got. The job market no longer seems quite as intimidating as it used to.

Meet the maker? Nah.

For the first time in my life, I've written a CV. I've never needed one before because I've only written open job applications. But now I needed to create one because I'm meeting a career counselor tomorrow.

Kind of funny if you ask me. Well. My CV looks surprisingly purty after all. It looks nice that I've been working for the English department for three years now, even though it's only been perhaps a couple hundred work hours at best. The time span is deceptive. I like that.

It sounds impressive too, "coordinating, updating, classifying and compiling corpora". My two conference presentations give a nice touch too. And then there's the translation job for Auringon lapset. No one can tell how much or how little work that was.

That's what I hate about applying for jobs. I feel extremely dishonest. The key in getting a job is basically to productize yourself and your skills. You need to give a good sales speech. What can you offer to your prospective employer?

The problem is, nothing I've done or anything I know or can do is useful. It's absolutely ridiculous that anyone allowed me to give presentations at linguistics conferences. I mean, come on, I can't even handle the basics of English grammar! What is a participle? I don't know. What's a mood? An aspect? What's the point of case grammar? I don't know. It all still confuses me, after years of studies. I've hardly ever been sane enough to actually care about my studies, most of the time I've been drudging through so I can get my study grants. My formal qualifications are full of air.

My language skills are not particularly impressive. I know the basics in many languages, but only English I'm happy with. Even so, I'd like to be a much more fluent English speaker.

And then there are those elusive skills that every employer seems to want, no matter what the job. Even a cleaner should be active, social, positive, superhuman, motivated, blah blah blah.

I'm not a social person. That cancels out about 90% of job openings. I'm not motivated. I can't help it. I can't really say I want to live for very long. So it's kind of hard to be motivated about working, especially in the beginning when you have to learn how to do it at first. I just don't have that extra energy to try to do my best. Sometimes I do, but that's about 5% of the time.

No one should employ me. I'm more trouble than I'm worth. I hate lying, but that's what I have to do if I want to get any kind of job. It's disgusting.