I’ll preface this by saying that I have both my bachelor’s and master’s in applied mathematics. I received a 4.0 for my bachelor’s. I always feared that I would end up in the situation that I would be one of those 4.0 grads who can’t find a job because I’m “too overqualified” for any job I apply for. While there’s likely some other aspect of it, I’m now living that joke, and it’s incredibly real.
I never had any internships because this is how my academic career went:
Summer after my…
Freshman year: thought I was going to transfer that fall, so spent my summer studying for a CLEP exam I never took while also working part time.
Sophomore year: thought I was transferring that fall, and had a mental breakdown when things fell through right at the very end.
Junior year: had panic disorder and couldn’t go one day without a massive one. I surely couldn’t hold down a job.
Senior year: spent the summer trying to finish my degree on-time.
First year of grad school: I was severely burnt out and needed a break. Wasn’t sure I was returning to grad school, and applied to a few jobs. Nowhere responded because I think my resume was done extremely poorly.
Well, I didn’t apply to any jobs until after I graduated in May 2018, and the responses were pretty sparse. What I wanted to do was go into software development because that’s what I found most interesting and I decidedly said, “That’s what I want to do.” I decided to not have something like a part-time job while I look because I wanted to be able to search for jobs full-time; if a company wanted me then and now, I could easily uproot and leave. Unfortunately, the job search has been worse than I could’ve possibly imagined. November and December were dry-spells with absolutely nothing. I had a few pre-arranged on-site interviews, but unfortunately blew the interviews big time; the panels interviewing me told me that I’d hear back somewhere on the scale of 3-5 weeks or even 2 months, and each time was a swift rejection the following Monday, as if to say “HE**LL no.” I’ve been in close contact with my university’s career center for help when it comes to stuff like making a resume and mock interviews and such, and they’ve honestly been no help, really. They just keep telling me, “It’s a numbers game. Just keep getting your resume out there and something will eventually come your way.”
I have experience teaching when I was a TA last year, but the job stressed me out so much that I developed some stress-related diseases and I lost part of the vision in my left eye because of the severe strain on my body. This past January, I applied to be a teacher to get my parents off my back about finding a job, but I backed out at the last second because the thought of teaching again soured with me; I don’t want to undergo the severe stress that being a TA did on my body, so I backed out at the literal last second. I’m pretty sure that I burned that bridge to teach in the school district right now, because apparently HR for the entire school district had to pull a ton of strings to get me hired so quickly. I applied for a ton of government jobs, but due to the government shutdown, I never heard back from some of them, and likely never will. The ones I did hear back from, one DID extend a conditional job offer, but I’ve been playing back-burner on them while I scope out a few other opportunities. Let’s just say those opportunities fell through.
Currently, I live at home with my parents, and I’ve attempted to get some no-skill jobs, but apparently I can’t even land jobs at places like Home Depot and grocery stores. My parents, friends, and even people on the internet are suggesting that I’ve got Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, which means I think I’m more competent than I really am at computer programming; i.e., Imposter Syndrome, but it’s actually true. My sister and her husband have suggested that getting a math degree was worthless as it really only sets you up to teach. I refused to believe that. I’ve also been told that math degrees are considered bottom of the barrel for employers when it comes to software engineering. I really wanted to believe otherwise.
I’ve gone to some job fairs, and when they ask me what I’m interested in, I tell them “Data Science and Statistics”, but it’s not really what I’m interested in. I don’t have any experience in those things at all. I’m just saying that so they’ll actually seriously consider me for a job because I’ll take any job to get out of this madness at this point. When I get asked, “You’ve got all this nice stuff on your resume. So why’s there such a large gap in your resume after graduation?” I respond with saying that my biological mother’s health tanked before I graduated, and I’ve been doing assisted living for her (which is true; she developed dementia and she can’t be by herself for too long, but she’s not my primary responsibility) but I’m not sure how I can keep using that excuse. I don’t know how to dig myself out of this mess, and it just seems like I’m in a sinkhole because it just gets worse daily.
I’ve tried to keep this short-and-sweet for readability reasons, so some stuff is not mentioned. The most important stuff I’ve covered. Thanks to anyone who has read this. Mainly, I’m looking for insight as to what I should even do at this point. I interviewed last week at a national lab. They told me yesterday that I wasn’t selected as a candidate, and after that, I got incredibly upset because that’s the hardest I worked on preparing for an interview. I’m beginning to feel like I need to start fresh somewhere due to the fact that I’ve ruined everything I worked so hard for up until now, and thus I’ve been thinking about just moving somewhere completely spontaneously and leaving everything behind, but I’m pretty sure that’s a bad idea. I just feel lost. EDIT: and yes, to clarify, I have applied all over the US, not just locally. That’s also something that my family and such suggested is that I keep applying to faraway places and that makes me less-desirable as a candidate.