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Just getting it off my chest…

Emmalephant

I apologise in advance for the complaining and it’s totally fine if there are no replies, you don’t even have to read that, but I made a vow to never torture myself again by keeping everything to myself. The people here have been nothing but nice, thus I’d like to write something here.

I’m two days back into school and since it is my final year, there is much pressure on me. Last week I got my first reply to one of the applications I sent out (my plan is to be a trainee first and then study to have some kind of base beforehand) and it was a letter of rejection. That devastated me. I knew from the start that it is going to be easy to find a place in this specific field because most of the jobs are given away internally. Still, it scares me.

For the first time in my life, I don’t know what the future holds and that’s beyond terrifying. Additionally, I’m so exhausted by literally everything. Even leaving my bed in the morning feels unbearable but I go on nonetheless. I was never a fan of my birthday, but this year… I feel no excitement (positive or negative) whatsoever. Many activities I usually enjoy are just adding to the exhaustion right now, my body image is currently pretty bad and the sensory side of things is awful. I like to describe bad sensory days as “overdriven” and currently basically every day is “overdriven”, although nobody around me fully gets that. The answers of my parents are “stop crying”/“suck it up” and my friends are probably kind of annoyed by me. I can’t help it. Usually, I put on a brave face and continue to play the funny one of the group but I just can’t at the moment. 
Everything is loud, too colourful, chaotic and completely overwhelming. That happened once before and I fear that I might not be able to recover this time around. There’s just too much to do. In my current state though… I can please nobody. No matter what I do, someone’s always not satisfied with my performance, be it at school, at home, at the Red Cross etc.

To top everything off, I am not diagnosed. Everybody (including myself) is thinking and/or saying something along the lines of “there’s no reason for all of that”. Well, I might or might not be autistic. Either way, I am sure that what I’m feeling right now is not normal exhaustion, that’s something bigger (whatever that may be). And not even my enorm imposter syndrome can deny that completely.

The last time, I didn’t recognise the signs until far too late. Now I know what to look out for. That’s not solving anything but it’s a start. I feel stupid for writing and posting this but honestly? This forum is currently my lifeline. Thanks for being there.

Parents

  • It sounds a lot like burnout.

    Re your rejection - I graduated many years ago in the middle of a recession. I applied for well over a hundred jobs and kept getting rejected. I thought my studies had been for nothing. Then one of the companies I had applied to many months before got in touch and offered me an interview for the following year’s graduate training programme.

    I was successful and I have had a very successful career ever since.

    This is my long-winded way of saying look after yourself, you’re worth it, and there is always hope and new opportunities to succeed Slight smile

  • in reply to Deleted User
    Deleted User said:
    I applied for well over a hundred jobs and kept getting rejected.

    I think it will help Emmalephant to manage her expectations as she points out the job market in her field is incredibly tough and this reflects the wider job market.

    I used to average 200 job applications to one success when I was working in the UK and I had a great resume with loads of experience, but after having chunks of my jobs given significant recruiting responsibilities I started to see how a lot of this works on the other side.

    There is so much regulation on the hiring side that they need to be really careful in the selection process so they cannot be accused of bias or discrimination. The HR team were always running courses for management on their legal requirements and giving role playing classes on how to remove bias.

    This slows down the hiring process so much that half the time the people we wanted for the role were no longer available.

    Add the number of roles we had to interview for that were never going to exist but we had to advertise and interview for in order to keep the headcount for the next year and there was a frustrating high ratio of interviews to actual hires (maybe 80 interviews to 1 hire).

    With a lack of experience it will put you low on the list as a prospective hire so I would be looking to find ways of volunteering to get some when you feel better.

    But yes, a big chunk of "adulting" involves not knowing what is coming next and worrying about it.

  • in reply to Iain

    Thank you both so much for reading and answering! I’m applying on trainee-places as a paramedic right know to find out if I really want to study medicine or if this field is too social for me (if so, I’m most likely going to study biomedicine or biochemistry to go into research).

  • in reply to Iain

    I never really managed to cope with the anxiety, but did with the performance, eventually. I found that if I stood still at a lectern and tried to use a detailed script, I got the 'rabbit in the headlights' effect. I developed a method that worked for me. I would use lots of visuals, it helped to deflect attention away from me to some extent. I also moved about a fair amount - presenting a moving target, often looking more at my visuals than at the audience and using a pointer. I also moved to cards marked with just headings, rather than a script and when I looked at the audience I would tend look over the top my glasses, which made them an amorphous blur. The trick of looking at and delivering to one person, definitely did not work for me, as talking to one stranger is almost as bad as talking to many.

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  • in reply to Iain

    I never really managed to cope with the anxiety, but did with the performance, eventually. I found that if I stood still at a lectern and tried to use a detailed script, I got the 'rabbit in the headlights' effect. I developed a method that worked for me. I would use lots of visuals, it helped to deflect attention away from me to some extent. I also moved about a fair amount - presenting a moving target, often looking more at my visuals than at the audience and using a pointer. I also moved to cards marked with just headings, rather than a script and when I looked at the audience I would tend look over the top my glasses, which made them an amorphous blur. The trick of looking at and delivering to one person, definitely did not work for me, as talking to one stranger is almost as bad as talking to many.

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