Missing Piece

It's been about 9 months since I've graduated and I'm still stuck in the same rut that I've always been. Not that working at Studio Movie Grill is bad (that's a terrible lie). It's just that I don't feel like I'm making any progress towards my career goal. I don't want to be stuck as a waitress forever, but that's what I have to do right now in order to have money in the bank.

To make things a little bit worse, I decided to sever my time at the internship I was at. Interning at the company I was at seemed like a waste of time because 1) I wasn't making any money, and 2) the projects were so simple that my skills seemed wasted. What do I mean by simple projects? I mean doing projects like making brochures using a company-made template, making videos using other company's content and then slapping on a logo at the end, and imitating other company's materials and slapping the company logo on that. Not only is there no challenge in that, but it's also immoral. On top of that, I was working independently and not really learning anything new from anyone.

It's just frustrating to think that I might not be good enough to do any better than I am now. I'm looking at my portfolio at this point and wondering what I'm doing wrong. Am I missing something that employers are looking for or am I just not able to compete with everyone else in this industry? I'm thinking its the latter. Maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. And this is where my self-esteem falls further because graphic design is the only thing I know, and if I'm not good enough to do that then I'm good for nothing. That's depressing.

Integrity and Company Values (More Like Me Venting a Month of Frustration)

So the past month I've been working hard at my poolside waitress job while trying to look for a full-time job. Something I've learned: it's hard to find a company that has integrity or upholds the company values that they claim they have.

I feel like a lot of the companies that I've been interviewing with the past month somewhat lack integrity. They falsely advertise the types of job positions they are looking to fill. I look for a marketing job and I end up at interviews for sales jobs. I understand that marketing itself is a kind of sales position, but this is the very questionable stuff. Like, I had 3 interviews for places where they are selling "$475 worth" of Texas Rangers tickets for $40. Clearly a sales position even though all of them touted a "marketing assistant" position.

Then there's the job that I'm at right now. The company claims to put their employees first, but so far I'm having trouble believing it. I asked for an early shift tomorrow so that I can get out in time to attend a mass for the one year anniversary for grandma's passing. They scheduled me for 2pm which roughly translates as I won't be done until 8. I also asked for Wednesday and Thursday off, but I was still scheduled for both days but I have Monday and Friday off. I texted my shift manager about it and then the pool manager personally called me to tell me that I was wrong for that. I admit that the way I went about it was wrong, but it would not have been a problem if they had even remembered that I had asked off. On top of that, they only sent out the schedule 2 hours ago and this is the schedule that starts tomorrow. They always send out new schedules at the last minute. If they sent out the schedule at least half a week in advance, there would be more time to sort out these problems. So in the attempt to make it so that I have those requested days off, they revised the schedule so that I would only be working for one day this week. It was supposed to be Tuesday, but lo and behold, they scheduled me to work on Thursday. Now I'm in a frantic scramble to try and switch with my coworkers instead of going through the management team again. It's not like this is the first time they scheduled me on a day that I requested off.

Don't even get me started about my paycheck. Over the past 4 weeks, I found that I'm missing over $200 total. Employees first, indeed. I just can't seem to catch a break with these waitressing jobs.

Anyways, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a job opportunity that Azim referred me to. I'm not to optimistic about my chances, though, since I managed to bomb my phone interview yesterday. I just really want to dig myself out of this ditch.

Selling Yourself Short: Placing a Value on Freelance Work

Using crowdSPRING as a guide for freelance design pricing...

So I'm definitely in a pickle right now. Recently, I've managed to pick up a potential client and I'm trying to figure out the pricing for my services (no, not those kinds of services). For me, putting a price on my skills has always been a challenge. Up until this point, I've always sold myself "cheap" designing t-shirts and posters for free. Of course, that's because my projects were almost always for my youth group. I had two clients before that wasn't related to my youth group. One had requested a poster design for a youth rally, and in return for my help I received a $25 Target gift card and a tin of brownies. The other project was a logo design for my cousin's tax and bookkeeping services firm. For that, I earned $50 in cash.

The difference between this new project and my projects before is that this is going to be an established company. What it is is a Western themed bar and grill in Houston. Any logo that I create will ultimately be copyrighted and be associated with the company for(almost)ever. Since the person that asked me to do this job is a religious brother, I'm a bit reluctant to charge too much. My friend says to ignore that fact and treat it as only a business thing, that I shouldn't sell myself short. So what is a good price for a logo?

On top of the logo design, he asked me to help market and advertise the grand opening of the restaurant which is set to open early next year. I mainly consider myself a graphic designer so I feel uncomfortable even trying to set up advertising strategies. But then again, I got a marketing minor for a reason. Ugh. This is going to be wayyy outside of my comfort zone. Time to put my business classes to use.

UTD Job Fairs are Pointless for Me

So in the light of my very recent rejection from the Disney College Program, I decided to hit up the UTD Career Fair with my good buddy Hien. Turned out to be a huge waste of time for me. Not that I'm surprised by that fact or anything.

Now, this isn't the first time that I've been to a career fair on campus. The last time I went, it was a lot less crowded. But huge crowds aren't the problem. The problem for me walking into any of these career fairs is the lack of variety in jobs or internships. What do I expect? UTD is a school focused on business and engineering and computer science. Of course there's mostly going to be job listings for program designers and business managers. Being a graphic designer, it's hard to find a niche in any of these job fairs. For artists, we have to rely on building connections elsewhere like on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. Meanwhile, business and computer science majors can just walk into these career fairs and boom! Opportunities everywhere!

My time spent at this job fair wasn't completely wasted. I did hand out a couple of copies of my resume (a couple being only 2). I handed one to the lady from Michaels (like the craft store) for a summer internship next year. Not exactly what I was aiming for, but if I have no job by the time summer rolls around again, I'll take it. The second resume went to a company called Reynolds and Reynolds. What they do is that they provide marketing and business solutions for automotive retailers. Luckily for me, they did have a graphic design internship even though it wasn't listed on the job fair's program. The only thing about this internship is that if I get accepted I'd have to relocate to Houston. That's not too bad, but I wouldn't have anywhere to stay.

So in essence, UTD needs to learn how to expand and accommodate these job fairs to not just business and computer science majors. That is all.