Chronicles of the New Guy: The Hunt

Its march of your senior year, and graduation is fast approaching. You have looked into a few jobs here and there, but nothing really has made a huge impact on you and you really are starting to not worry about finding a job because you realize your senior year of college is at its end. Plenty of kids get jobs early on in the year, some around the winter, with the majority getting hired in the spring semester. Incessant Facebook and Instagram posts about the new job that they are totally thrilled about and cannot wait to shove down everyone’s social media throats. Admittedly, when I accepted my current position in May, I was one of those people (but just on fb, because who goes on fb anymore? That’s right. No one). So then it finally hits you right around graduation time that “oh shit” feeling finally hits you and you decide to go on a real hunt for employment. Hitting up those job board websites like no one’s business. Putting in your resume and filling out all the required information on your profile so that when it comes to a job you like – all you have to do is hit “apply,” and BAM you’re in their database. So you sit on these websites in your free time and apply to any job that sounds remotely close to what you think you just went to school for. Sit there for hours sometimes and not even realize how many you just applied to until the ticker at the top right corner of your profile says “81 applications submitted.” Graduation came and went, and now you’re back in your childhood room with mom and dad and after a few weeks of applying – some of these descriptions on a website start to reply back with details and suggest interview times. See? Not so bad! Why did all of those losers do it during school? I just got a bunch of interviews in a few weeks of looking! Now you’re on the phone a few times a week for preliminary questioning and maybe even doing some Skype interviews. Finally, these companies extend out the invite to come meet with them and interview. So you go and do your best and wow the crowd and after all is said and done… you wait until (hopefully) one of them takes a chance on you.

I want to sit here and tell you that it’s not that stressful and you’ll find one and it’ll all be okay one day and that life is great and yada yada yada. The hard truth is that those periods of waiting and not knowing if any of them will offer you a position are very stressful and I can remember many a night I stayed up late drinking with friends wondering if all of the jobs I wanted were even right for me. Don’t get down on yourself – those jobs need you as much as you need them. By now you’ve read enough to start to wonder what these entries will be about every week. Plain and simple: it’s about being the new person in the office. More detailed? Its about the sad, stressful, challenging, and isolating situations and scenarios that occur daily to the new person in an established place of work. The best part is, when you take all those elements and combine them into stories and advice – it all comes out to be pretty freaking funny (and awkward). I’ll take from personal experience, stories I’m told by my friends, and overall observances of daily life in the real world. Now that you have a grasp of what we’re dealing with here, I’ll tell you all a little about myself so you can see where I’m grabbing my workplace anecdotes from…

I work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA in Cancer Clinical Trials. Specifically, I am a Clinical Researcher for the Gastrointestinal Oncology group. Yeah, a tough area of work to be in, but I knew that signing up. In my group we work with all of the GI cancers (kudos to anyone who can name all of them) and because we are a trials office, we investigate conditions and study drugs for the GI cancers en route to a cure. Does the job get difficult? Damn right it does. Is it sad? Yes, patients pass away. But its that glimmer of hope and that will to live that honestly makes what I do worth it. Take everything I say in stride, because my situation is unique. I majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMass Amherst and graduated with Keno Radio’s own – Captain Fun. The jobs I applied to were mostly lab and clinical work with some drug companies mixed in there. But BIDMC took a chance on me, just like millions of others will be all of the kids that graduate every year. With that being said, now you have some background on me, and I’m sure I’ll be letting you all into my own adventures as my installments continue.

This is the Chronicles of The New Guy. Buckle up ladies and gentlemen, things are about to get weird.

-Andy