Baby steps toward the real world...

To recap:  I graduated with my MSW (social work) in May 2010 and promptly moved home to Chattanooga (as in, literally hours after the graduation ceremony). I spent the summer of 2010 working feverishly (sort of anyway) to finish my dissertation. After a lot of stress, migraines, and several tear-filled moments induced by the evil graduate school editor, I actually got everything submitted and graduated with my PhD (psychology) in August 2010. We had a great celebration, and I took the rest of August and most of September to decompress before getting serious about the job search. As for living arrangements, I was staying at my parents' very full house (complete with my mom, dad, younger brother, boyfriend, 2 dogs, and a guinea pig not to mention a fairly constant stream of house guests). The plan was to move to my friend Annie's house as soon as I got a job, which my ego and I thought would happen within minutes of submitting my first application. I submitted several applications for research positions with local insurance companies--no such luck. I submitted an application for another research position with a local non-profit org dedicated to public education--it was pretty much the perfect job. I submitted my application in September, was selected for a phone interview as a semi-finalist in October, and then selected for an all day interview as one of 4 finalists in December. The interview went really well, and they told me they would notify the applicants of their decision in January. It is now April, and I have yet to hear a word from them, which has been pretty frustrating. Despite trying to wait for that job, I have applied for quite a few other research, higher education, and healthcare-related positions. While in the process of real-job-searching, I have been teaching as an adjunct faculty member at my first alma mater, UTC. Last fall, I taught an Intro to Psych course and Applied Developmental Psychology. This spring, I am teaching Psych of Aging and Applied Developmental Psychology once again. I love teaching but it's a lot like volunteer work considering the pay works out to about <$3/hour. My applied course is reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell along with the original empirical articles cited by Gladwell. It's been a great semester filled with wonderful discussion, and I'm very pleased with how it's turned out. So, that's pretty much where I am right now with the physical location still being my parents' house (see next post regarding my irresponsible fall down the stairs that has prohibited full mobility since November). I am overeducated, underexperienced, unemployed, injured, impoverished, living with my parents...but, I am relatively stress free, migraine free, and fairly calm for the first time in a decade, so I am okay with my current station in what developmental psychologists call "emergent adulthood" (and I know what that is because I went to school for 11 years).