Looking for a Job and the Seven Stages of Grief

I accepted an apprenticeship with the Apprenti program last week. Yay! I have been quiet about it because I have fourteen weeks of training to successfully complete before I start the job and get paid. I am sure I will do fine with the training, but I am a little nervous, just because it is new. I am taking a massive leap of faith that this will all work out, as are the people who hired me. I am grateful for this program and am looking forward to the change. After a week of looking at colleges for Claire-Adele, I am also looking forward to the money. I made a spreadsheet to analyze our cashflow for the next nine years with kids in college, and it looks way better with me getting a paycheck. Like "I can sleep at night" kind of better. I am still hoping for scholarships, merit aid or one of my kids choosing an affordable state school, but in all cases me getting a salary helps significantly.

This is the end of the long journey of trying to figure out what to do next as my job as "stay-at-home-mom" reaches its "Sell By" date. Along the way, I have met dozens of women wondering what they are going to do next. This past winter at a ski lodge, I ran into a friend who is a stay-at-home mom who is looking for a job. She saw that I was part of a "Get a Job" group and she asked me about my job search. Marianna was an engineer who later got an MBA.

"The group was fine, but looking for a job is horrible," I said. "It is impossible to get past any HR screening without having worked recently. There are a dozen people out there who are working today doing the job that the HR people are looking for. Why should HR bring in someone like me?"

"But you are brilliant, Lauren!" Marianna said. "You have a great education, and you worked in consulting! Who wouldn't hire you?"

"I don't take it personally," I said, "It isn't so much about me as it is where I fit into the system. I've also tried networking and using my connections. I am overqualified for about 60% of the jobs out there, and underqualified for 60%, which means unless some laws of physics change, I am not getting a job. They don't know what to do with my volunteer experience. Sure, I believe anything is possible, but I also don't believe in unicorns." [This is the short version. I ranted for an hour like a bullet train.]

Marianna didn't look at me like I was a Debbie Downer who wasn't optimistic enough. She looked at me as if I were speaking an unspeakable truth, and said, "That's what I thought."

"But I did find this technology apprenticeship program, and I am applying for it. I know I need new skills. This program will give me specific skills for a specific job," I said. "I think this is the only reasonable way for me to re-enter the professional workforce."

Marianna decided to skip the few years of soul searching and apply to the apprenticeship program. I was happy to save her an extended period of grief. She applied to the program and was entered into the pool of apprentices for companies to hire. When she was offered her first interview with a hiring company, her husband balked, in a loveable, romantic way.

"You are so brilliant, Marianna! You have a great education and great work experience! Who wouldn't hire you?" he said. "You could make more money and not have to start at the bottom!"

I had heard this same speech from Jack before. Five years ago, I was offered a job making less money than when I was twenty-eight but more money than I will be making in the apprentice program.

"You shouldn't get dressed and out of bed for so little money," said Jack five years ago. "You are awesome and could make so much more! At a better job!"

I sighed. It was great he had so much confidence in me, and yet at the same time, he completely failed to be supportive. In the end, the job didn't work out because the owner of the company decided the position would require more traveling than I was available to do.

Marianna decided to look for a higher paying job before she accepts the apprenticeship. She kept her spot open, but will first look for something else. She might have better luck than me. She got her degree in Seattle, and she has work experience here. My degrees and paid work experience were all in Chicago, so my network isn't as robust as some people's.

I told Jack the story of Marianna and her husband. He said they need to go through the "Seven Stages of a Middle Aged Woman Returning to the Workforce Job Search Grief."

1. Disbelief: They can't believe that a woman with a professional degree who stayed home with her kids for years can't walk right back into the workforce where she left off. 
2. Denial: Of course she has a great degree and experience...from ten (or more) years ago. Why doesn't it count?
3. Anger: This sucks. She has a fancy degree and great experience and is treated like chopped liver. "Why did I decide to stay at home with the kids? I never would have if I knew how hard it would be to get a job."
4. Bargaining: "I'll take any kind of job. I'll do anything. Or maybe I'll write a novel..."
5. Guilt: "Ugh. I should have kept a foot in the workplace. I should have gotten a part-time job along the way. Maybe I should have chosen a job that I could have done while I was a mom instead of consulting where I had to travel so much."
6. Depression: "I will never get a job. I need to write a novel so I have something to do. I am underqualified. I don't know why anyone would hire me. I don't know what I would do anyway. I'd be scared to start a new job."
7. Acceptance and Hope: Finally, a job appears. It is not the high-powered job that everyone imagined at the start, but it has a lot of advantages and opportunity. "I'll learn some new skills and meet some new people. I have nothing to lose. And, Yay! I get to go back to work!"

Faith and Patience in Science and Data

Oh the joys of protocol and milestone based therapy!

I wanted to write a little disclaimer on my website about my ACL repair. Very briefly that would be: My injury and recovery may be totally different from anyone else's injury and recovery as my "data input" is likely different than yours. You might be a young athlete or you might be an old couch potato. If you are reading this two years from know because you have a torn ACL, please note that the data--the research based protocols and milestones--may have changed. For example: a few years ago, continuous motion machines were in. Now they are not. Things change. Things perpetually change, and sometimes you will get caught in the middle of those changes, as I am stuck today.

But first, let me tell you a story. I graduated from college in 1991, and the job market was terrible. The US was at the tail end of a recession, and many of my friends didn't have jobs. In my final quarter before graduation, I didn't have a job. Instead of going on a full court press of looking for a job, I decided I'd enjoy my last few weeks of being a college student and worry about getting a job after graduation. I was in the Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) program at NU. One day about three weeks before graduation, I got a call from a strategic marketing consulting firm asking if I would like to interview. They had called the MMSS program and asked which students they should call about a job.

In the interview, my future boss asked me what I thought about data.

"Data tells you more about what you don't know that what you do know," I said.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"You can have data that says 75% of women like a product and 25% of men like it, but that is just an estimate. What the data is saying is that than men are less favorable towards to the product than women, not at that 'women like it' or 'men hate it.' The data in this case is a guideline that helps you understand something in a relative context."

He leaned back in his chair, and that was when I knew I had the job.

Fast forward almost twenty five years, and I am thinking about that conversation.

Today, I was faced with three different interpretations of the same data from three people I respect and admire. I had my stitches removed today and I had a PT appointment. I talked to Dr. Tex, Evan my physical therapist and Claire, Dr. Tex's physician assistant. In addition to my medical team, I am also getting insights and information from friends who have gone through an ACL repair. I talked to Kim yesterday whose had two ACL repairs, and Jack has a colleague who had his ACL repaired a few years ago. I have another friend who had her ACL repaired a week before me.

At my appointments, we discussed unlocking the brace so I can walk with a bended knee. We also talked about taking the brace off to sleep. All three people on my medical team agree with the milestone based approach, or as Dr. Tex says, "Earning my way out of the brace." If I can do certain number of exercises, then I can sleep without it, unlock the straight leg, and then get rid of it completely.

Where they disagree (and they do) is on which milestones I should meet for each reward, i.e., sleeping without the brace or unlocking the brace. I could be frustrated with the different opinions. I could say they are using a protocol based approach, so what is up with all of the differences of opinions? How can there be differences of opinions when there is a protocol? I can see that Jack's friends and my friends might all get different treatments because we are different inputs into the protocol machine.

Instead, I have faith and patience. I know that data tells us more about what we don't know than what we do know. We know that protocol A might be less effective than protocol B, but that doesn't mean the protocol B is the best protocol ever. And every few months, there are new studies showing this exercise is somewhat more effective than another. But overall, I know they are steering the ship is heading in the right direction. I know even if they disagree, the data and research shows that physical therapy and wearing a brace is significantly better than not doing physical therapy and not wearing a brace.