<p>I’ve got an interview or two in the pipes and some hopeful interviews in the near future, if all goes well.</p>
<p>mousegray: It’s been a bit overwhelming – I didn’t expect so many replies! But I really do appreciate all the advice and help. I’m simply trying to exhaust all my localized options first before I have to start inconveniencing people, because I really don’t want to have to do that.</p>
<p>Good luck, and keep working all the angles and exploring all the possibilities! :)</p>
<p>If you want to work in finance, you need to be at Penn so you can do OCR. Most firms–especially the ones that you seem interested in-- only hire through OCR. The offer rates are much much higher than if you just randomly send in your resume. You are already late for the fall season, but you might be able to get in for summer internships? It really seems to make sense to go to philly and crash with some friends while maybe working a minimum wage-type job. Maybe you could get some sort of work at the university? (research assistant or some such?) You don’t need all of your stuff, that can get sent to you once you finally have a real job. Being on the east coast also makes it a lot easier to go interviews in NYC, DC or Boston, since it would only be $10 bus ride or so.</p>
<p>If you want to work in finance, you need to be at Penn so you can do OCR. Most firms–especially the ones that you seem interested in-- only hire through OCR. The offer rates are much much higher than if you just randomly send in your resume. You are already late for the fall season, but you might be able to get in for summer internships? It really seems to make sense to go to philly and crash with some friends while maybe working a minimum wage-type job. Maybe you could get some sort of work at the university? (research assistant or some such?) You don’t need all of your stuff, that can get sent to you once you finally have a real job. Being on the east coast also makes it a lot easier to go interviews in NYC, DC or Boston, since it would only be $10 bus ride or so.</p>
<p>Have you considered the military? They offer many opportunities. A nephew is an officer attached to a budget office. He will be out of his four year commitment soon but will most likely reenlist. His greatest danger is a paper cut.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your living situation is in Austin (ie - does your relative realize that you aren’t eating more than a meal a day?) , but you need to get back to Penn/Philly. I would take on one of these online transcription jobs suggested here (and I believe there is some online co. which pays people to provide answers to texted questions) – those would be enough to scrape together money for a greyhound ticket pretty fast. Just bring 1-2 suitcases and leave the rest of your stuff for now. Couch surfing is a pretty common thing at your age and students/recent grads don’t really mind it too much. Once you’re there, I’d go straight to Penn’s career services and explain your situation.</p>
<p>There are 2 goals here – (i) a survival job for right now; and (ii) a professional job. A professional job could take some time. We’re already in late Nov. so you’ve missed a lot of OCR. However, I’m inclined to think that spring OCR will be better this year anyway – companies that don’t want to make hiring decisions right now will hold off and hire at the last minute in the spring. You can also pound the pavement locally in Philly as smaller companies/law firms tend to go back to Penn career services at odd times when they’re looking to hire just 1-2 people for a brand new position – it’s not an OCR process.</p>
<p>As for immediate survival – I graduated Wharton also and I fully believe that if you go to Career Services and the Office of Student Life and tell them what it’s been like for you (i.e. barely able to eat), people will NOT ignore you. They will help you out somehow – whether that’s a job in the cafeteria washing dishes or cleaning off equipment in the gym or some kind of in-kind set up where you help out some administrative office at Penn in return for a meal plan, they won’t let you starve. It has nothing to do with the university or your degree but with the people who work there – they will want to help. Once things settle down, you could pick up a more routine survival job – there are tons of smaller restaurants in center city so you can always try for jobs busing tables or waiting tables; also, the Gallery mall is huge, as is the shopping area near Rittenhouse, and stores are hiring seasonal help this year even though it may be fewer people than normal; the local Kmart and probably Freshgrocer always need people on the night shift to stock shelves. There are options, but you need to directly ask people for help in person.</p>
<p>Agree with ec1234 and aj725. Move back to Philly temporarily. It is important to keep close touch with Wharton career office and that is your best bet with finding jobs relating to your major.</p>
<p>aj725: Yes, he realizes, but it doesn’t mean he is responsible for making sure I’m eating enough. The other problem is that I can’t just leave my stuff here. The 30-day thing is dual-pronged: He made it clear from the beginning that this was a temporary thing. Furthermore, he’s also moving soon (a fairly recent decision), so I can’t just leave everything here. I’ve got clothes and my desktop computer… I think I can sacrifice everything else if I absolutely have to, but I’d still need to ship my computer/monitor. I am kicking myself so hard right now for not just staying in Philly. It cost me most of what I had left just to ship my stuff here and get a plane ticket. I would have stayed in Philly but I didn’t have time to go apartment hunting (I had class and work, while also searching out fulltime employment with no luck) – everyone had to leave the on-campus housing by a given date (which coincided with my final for the last class I finished up)… there just wasn’t enough time.</p>
<p>I’ve got a phone appointment with Career Services so hopefully that turns out okay.</p>
<p>I am bit confused. Didn’t you say few weeks ago that you have a job in Chicago @ 50K/yr?</p>
<p>It ended up falling through.</p>
<p>If you aren’t out of Austin by Dec 16, let me know. My husband will be in Austin with a car for that weekend and then coming back to Nashville. We can get some of your stuff to Phila after Christmas via my son if necessary. (won’t have a ton of room, but could handle a computer and a few things)</p>
<p>How much stuff do you have? I have definitely sent boxes by regular US mail before – opting for the cheapest variety – and it hasn’t been too expensive; it takes forever but the boxes do get to where they’re going. Also, I have definitely seen people traveling with their computer tower before – inconvenient but they can be hand-carried on a bus. Are you in a suburb of Austin? I’m not sure what the city looks like but in the NE, even in the most residential suburbs, every town will have 2-3 strip malls so there’s always a chance of being hired by a grocery store, convenient store, Target etc. – it often involves walking a mile along a road to get there but people do it. But if you really can’t find anything and have no transportation, why not take up one of the online jobs suggested here with the goal of saving up for bus tickets and postage for your stuff, and maybe post some signs in the neighborhood for yard work or babysitting. Often there are seniors in a neighborhood who complain that there aren’t young people around to do odd jobs at reasonable costs – they’d be more than willing to pay a few bucks to have you do some yard work, change some light bulbs bc they can’t climb ladders, maybe decorate a bit for the holidays. The things you’d be saving for aren’t really that expensive so it really won’t take you long. Then you can start pounding the pavement when you get to Philly.</p>
<p>I wasn’t implying that it was your relative’s responsibility to make sure you were eating enough, but I would think that most people – if they had a relative staying with them and realized the person couldn’t afford to eat – they’d do what they could to help (ie offer whatever was in their own kitchen) unless they were in impossible financial straits themselves.</p>
<p>MOWC: I sent you a PM </p>
<p>aj725: I’m actually not so much in Austin as I am in the far outskirts – it’s miles and miles to get anywhere. I’m not anywhere near the city, or I suspect a lot of these issues wouldn’t be a problem. </p>
<p>My friend back in Philly said that he would agree to cover shipping (I agreed to pay him back when I had work), and I could stay with him for a few weeks while I built up enough to figure out housing elsewhere. For most apartments it’s pretty much security deposit + first and last, as far as I’m aware (I’ve always lived on campus so I am not familiar too much with the process). Other problem is that I need to get work in Philly, which I’ve found to be hard, since they require me in person for interviews, so odds of already having a job by the time I get to Philly are slim. I’m hoping I might be able to work for Penn or something and just find SOMETHING – maybe I can try to set it up through Career Services. I’ve always been able to get work in Philly in the past, but it was usually always through the school. I worry that now that I am no longer a student, it won’t be as easy, but perhaps I’m grossly misinformed.</p>
<p>As for stuff, I’m probably going to wind up ditching most of what I own to save on costs. I’ve got enough room for clothes, but the computer + monitor is the main issue.</p>
<p>I’m going crazy right now – I don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>Finding temporary work at this point is going to be a pain because I’d have to not only get the work, but it’d probably take a few weeks before money comes in anyway. By that time, I need to be out regardless – if I’m quitting a job, it’s usually customary to give two weeks’ notice. That’s a month span right there. Either way, nobody’s taking me. I’ve applied to so many random places locally, and if I try to apply in person, they direct me to their website to apply, but then I get no response.</p>
<p>The other firms that I am interviewing with locally are taking so long to get back to me, and it’s time I just don’t have. </p>
<p>I do have a phone appointment set up with Penn, but again, it’s more than a week away. </p>
<p>Finding work outside of Texas is near-impossible without being in person for an interview, so it’s unlikely that I can get work in Philly without going to Philly first, and it would likely mean sacrificing the existing interviews I have in Texas.</p>
<p>In the meantime, food and money are very very short, transportation is difficult, and I have to start paying back all my school loans here in a couple of months. While all this is going on, my mother has the stones to basically let me know about all the cruise vacations she’s going to be taking this year. I can almost guarantee this situation would not exist right now if my father were still alive.</p>
<p>I’m not strong enough for this. This is harder than the summers when I was working 100 hrs/week. Even though college was extremely hard for me with all the extra crap that went on, at least I had the security of housing and a fairly steady cashflow from my on-campus workstudy jobs. Now it feels like I am devoid of power, options, and time – I’m constantly breaking down. I know this forum isn’t the place for all of this, but I have nowhere else to vent. </p>
<p>It just makes no sense to me. There are jobs I applied to months ago that haven’t even gotten back to me. It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with my resume. I’ve got lots of work experience and a huge list of financial, technical, and language skills – and yet apparently it isn’t good enough. It’s not like I’m bad at what I do – hell, even in OPIM, what took everyone else two weeks in VBA took me one day/one sitting with a perfect score. I nearly aced everything in my Derivatives course, which is known as being the hardest Finance class they’ve got. I work well alone, and I work well in teams. I’m just as good as any other Wharton grad – so why am I having the worst luck in the world when it comes to this stuff?</p>
<p>I’m a student who works for the Technical Communications Program at Penn. If you want, I can read over your resume and give you some pointers.</p>
<p>You are having a lot of trouble because you are not on the traditional track. Most wharton grads get jobs in the fall of their senior year through OCR, where they actually read resumes since they offer a large number of first round interviews on campus. Most of the entry level finance jobs are on a very academic year schedule, since they are basically large training programs, and by graduating in August you threw yourself off-track.</p>
<p>Don’t ditch your stuff, have a garage sale and sell your stuff except for you computer and monitor and a suit. </p>
<p>Watch the Pursuit of Happyness. Swallow your pride. Take the help being offered to you by members of this board. Take the help being offered by your friends. Many people see this as paying forward not as charity. You will have the rest of your life to return the favors to the universe. You’d be doing the world a favor if you end up in finance and stay on the straight and narrow and don’t become the next Bernie Madoff. </p>
<p>Everyone has a story to tell, this just happens to be yours. College is a safety net and I’m sure being out is a huge slap in the face. Being up in Philly probably allowed you to forget about the troubles going on at home.</p>
<p>You can do this, many have, many on this board have, I myself have. It seems your tendency to brickwall people and beat up on yourself is what is mostly getting in your way. That must stop. I hear the pain in your last post, I know this is painful and it doesn’t seem fair. Trust me when I say, you will come out of this a stronger person. This is a temporary transition. It’s been three months since you graduated, in the big picture, that’s not a long time.</p>
<p>Seriously, take the help being offered. I think it is a sad irony that your dad died in a car accident and left your life in turmoil and now transportation and a car seems to be your biggest problem. Sometimes life really is rather cruel. Or maybe, it’s an opportunity?</p>
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<p>Could someone wait that out until the following year if they are inadvertently off track? </p>
<p>I am thinking that there could be something proactive that the OP could do in the interim. </p>
<p>The best ideas on this board have pertained to him staying with pals and going to the school and just seeing what the heck is up in the here and now. Why not scrounge for scraps during a big old economic recession from hades, eh?</p>
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<p>That’s the truth. ^</p>
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<p>^ This is a red flag of sorts for me. ^ </p>
<p>And, I hope you one day find someone to speak with all live and in person like about a thing or two.</p>
<p>Unless if your mother is like the mother in the movie “Precious” or something you should really try and speak with her. I cannot imagine a mother letting one of her children flounder about like this.</p>
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<p>I can’t say this better tham MamaDrama so I just quote her.</p>