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 On 02/21/2017 at 10:19 PM by Julian Titus See More From This User » |
So, they are hiring for a new editor at Giant Bomb. For those who listen to Nerds Without Pants, you know how much I adore the Giant Bomb crew. I would LOVE that job. I think I could do that job. I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting that job.
See, I never went to college. I was lucky that I found a job that I loved when I was in high school (retail at an indie game store called Gamefellas), and I honestly wanted to make a career out of it. I had dreams of opening my own franchise one day. I never dreamed that we’d go under. But I was lucky to find a truly awful job that paid well, which I did for nine years. After that, I was lucky to get a job at an insurance company working for the former owner of Gamefellas.
But getting that last job was really tough, what with my lack of college and my skills being centered entirely around the service industry. Sure, you learn a ton of various skills working retail and such, especially if you go into management like I did, but they are difficult to put onto paper, and I know I undersell myself in that department.
I wish, more and more, that I had gone to college out of high school, or at least in my 20s. Not for the diploma, because I’m sure that whatever degree I ended up receiving would not be for what I want to do with my life. No, I wish I had gone for the experience. Being forced to live more independently, learning to socialize, having preconceived notions challenged, these are things that I could have used in my life. I’m turning 37 next week, but in so many ways I feel like I’m ten years (or more) behind the curve.
I’d love to apply for Giant Bomb. I think I have most of the abilities they are looking for (vast video game knowledge, podcast hosting, audio editing, writing, understanding E3), but I lack most of the social skills they want, and my Texas public school education doesn’t really equip me for working with college educated Californians.
Too old. Too old, to begin the training.
Let me be one of you!
I think you're selling yourself short. 1) there's a lot of transplanting to and from Texas and California, so while the cultures are vastly different, i doubt you'd all hate each other and 2) college is by no means the only way to open your mind and learn to socialize.
I'm sure you learned plenty about how the world operates working retail, and as an academic myself, not all of us are acting high and mighty all the time the way certain media would have you believe.
I think it's more the act of being around people that you share the commonality of college with, getting to know them and learning how to socialize. This is a skill that I never learned. I don't speak unless spoken to, and I tend to keep my head down and focus on the task at hand, which causes people to think I'm a dick. I'm not a dick, I just don't have the ability to strike up a conversation with you.
I'm the same way often times, though I do understand having fluff conversations to make you more likeable ... But being a waiter taught me that, not college.
Honestly, for me, college was just a challenge to get through more than anything. I've always learned more by just researching things I'm interested in than I have from class requirements. Working for Residence Life in undergrad made me more introverted than anything. Grad school was more about being willing to work an insane amount than it was being smart. My professor job is showing me I still really need to work on time management and organizational skills.
I'm also learning that I take English writing skills for granted, cause when my students write things that make NO sense and are grammatically awful, I have a hard time pointing out specifically why.
College is really what you make of it. We tell our students all the time they need to be doing more than we give them, cause what we give them is partly based on how long/big a project we can realistically get graded in a reasonable time frame.
College did nothing for me. I should've worked first and figured out what I wanted to do. As it was, I just read more books, wrote more essays, and then hadn't a clue what to do with myself when it was over. Desperation put me where I am just to make a buck.
Some people can do some pretty boring mental work just for the money. I can't tolerate it. Sometimes I think I've been over educated and that's ruined me. I don't mind physical work. I actually enjoy it even if it's tedious but I can't be somebody's mental robot. It's impossible for me. I've been thinking lately that I should just be a writer because I can only stand to work for myself. I'm going to try that hat on this year and see how I feel about it.
Oh yeah. You should go for that job. You'll feel good just trying to get it.
I completely agree with KnightDriver here. I should have worked first and figured out what I wanted to do before going to school. I wanted to be so many different things: a musician in a symphony, a gaming magazine writer, a translator, a web developer. I finally settled on web developer because my mother thought I would make a lot of money. I went to an expensive college because she thought it would help me even more. Well, the web developer program was completely new back then, so I only learned bits and pieces of what I really needed to know. By the time I was in my senior year, I knew I was screwed but what could I do about it? Nothing at that point. I just graduated, and then could not find a job to save my life.
I did end up with a minor in Japanese language. I should have majored in that and went into game localization. Instead, I have a useless degree that I do not ever use and I ended up in a career that is polar opposite. working for a nonprofit where I make not what a web designer makes. Let me tell you how mad that made my mother.
And I'm STILL paying on my loans, to top it all off. Sigh.
As for the experience, I lived in a dorm my freshman year. I had a terrible roommate and I spent most of my weekends at home. Sophmore year was much the same. By Junior year I simply moved back home because it was cheaper to commute. I guess I came out of that experience learning that you do not really know people until you live with them. But I paid A LOT of money to learn that lesson.
So to end my comment rant: listen to everyone here who is telling you not to sell yourself short just because you think you don't have the smarts. You have them, you just didn't pay tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper that says you do.
That's really rough! I'm sorry things went down that way for you. Maybe it's all the teen dramas I used to consume (Dawson is my dude!), but I was always jealous of the college life. Not the party aspect of it, more the allure of interesting professors, making friends, and learning things that would shape who I'd become.
I'm applying for the job. I'll be blogging about it in the next day or so.
Hey, it is what it is and I've learned to get over it all at this point. I did end up going back to school with my current job because I needed some more credits for my position. I took online courses while I worked. It was fast paced and the work load was heavy, but it was easy enough and I got it done quickly. It was very expensive, though; I'm really lucky I did not have to pay for it.
College is funny because when you do have a good professor, things are great. But when you have a bad one...man. All you can think is how you're paying all that money to learn nothing! High school doesn't prepare you for that reality.
I'm so glad to hear you are going for that job. We are all cheering for you!
Apply for the position anyway, or you might end up regretting that you didn't.
That's what popped into my head when I woke up this morning. I made the first steps to do so today. I need to work on my cover letter, and I want to make a video to submit, since so much of their content is video based now.
Yeah college is overrated. It didn't help me out at all.
Hmmm, I might be tempted to apply for that job, but if I had to move anywhere...Nope! Can't really move right now.
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