Tailoring Who I Am for Who You Need Me to Be

TAILORING WHO I AM FOR WHO YOU NEED ME TO BE, 4/15/06
I never thought I’d be here; it was never part of the post-collegiate plan. But I ended up in Florida nevertheless, in a small beach town, struggling to find work that offered an intriguing challenge and a livable salary, both of which were nearly impossible to find.
I’m here by choice, but only to a degree. I chose to support my fiancée, to stay with her, to follow her. “I can do what I want to do anywhere,” I said. But each day that passed made me wish a little more that there were more microbiology jobs in Atlanta—we enjoyed life there—or at least somewhere that offered the variety of goings-on that keep life interesting.
(Not that there’s anything terribly wrong with where I live. I hear some people even like it here. And there’s nothing wrong with that, either, if you like the beach, and seedy bars and restaurants, and sand, and an overabundance of sunlight. Just don’t expect much more than that here.)
The biggest difficulty in finding work was not the lack of experience, which I’d been fully prepared for; it was fear of flight. Every company I talked to was afraid that I’d stay only so long as it took me to find a better job. Those companies that didn’t require an undergraduate degree were afraid I’d leave as soon as I found something in my field. So I resorted, at last, to temp agencies and to taking my degree off of my resume. It seemed silly to have to disavow higher education, but the advice came from locals who’d had the same trouble but, sure enough, it got me in the door. The same company that hired me as a temp kept me on permanently in a position as a project director for a state-funded program, even though I had no experience in that field. The temp position I left behind was later denied to several candidates with college degrees on the grounds that their degrees over-qualified them. Strange but true!