Square One

As I have discussed before, I am a man who likes to have a back plan. Not through lack of optimism but merely because it is better to play it safe.

When I emerged wide eyed and eager, fresh from my masters I thought, find a graduate marketing job, but should for any reason that prove too difficult, find agency work to get some of that much needed experience.

You can chronicle my back up plan to that, and then the next. The question I am asking today is just how many back up plans are needed?

After a plethora of options were exhausted I came to volunteering. Far from ideal but would provide me with that much coveted, impossible to achieve, experience. I contacted the volunteering website and was provided with the opportunity to meet with a charity with regards to aiding them with their marketing plan.

I mentioned last week that the meeting showed me how I lacked the practical in the marketing, but apparently it also highlighted to the charity how they didn't really know what they needed in way of a volunteer. Thus this morning I have received an email informing me they have decided to close the volunteering position until later in the year when they have laid the foundations of both the project and presumably therefore the role they wish the volunteer to carry out.

Square one

I could liken the hunt for jobs to snakes and ladders sometimes. (ignoring the fact that in snakes and ladders no snake actually goes back to square one) Firstly you roll the dice and advance tentatively along the board, there are different combinations you can roll to advance, each representing a different potential path. You may even get the chance at a second roll, avoiding the ladders unluckily of course. The fact is you always find the snake that returns to square one. If you could just get past the second row then even if you fall again the worst you can ever fall to is square 6, but as a graduate its square one, repeatedly and when on square one there is always that likelihood of finding that first looming snake with each roll of the dice.

I need to get past that snake. The easiest way is with ladders. One such ladder is contacts, and its possible that I may have just found one that will help me leave square one once and for bloody all. Until then I will just have to keep the rolling the dice and hope I find the right combination that gets me past the snakes and into the rows above.