I don't know what to do with my life.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, first of all, I am having trouble to sleep, etc etc etc, so my grammar will be probably close to unintelligible. Also, I will probably swear quite a bit. And complain. This is a rant, after all.
I don’t know what to do with my life. I am a designer. YAY. I was living in Eindhoven, Netherlands, studying at the technical university there in 2010. Came back to Brazil after I failed on the semester (mostly because 1/3 of the students (me included) did not adapt to the course at all, giving up from it etc etc). My brother, who was one of my only friends there passed away. So I came back to Brazil.

I finished my bachelor’s degree here in Sao Paulo. Worked for a few months on a start-up company that made fancy iPhone apps. I was going through depression on that time (it is a long story which I will not comment at all) and was unmotivated. Got fired one week after I got a place near by my work. Did some freelance work, spent time with myself, made furniture…

And now I am studying again - post grad degree in Product Design. The couse is… not what I expected at all. I have teachers that are honestly stupid. One of them, who was supposed to teach us about Interface Design ended up teaching us how to use HTML. He had to check on GOOGLE for basic commands. He also said that blind people can use computers with no extra output devices (such as SPEAKERS).

It feels like I am walking on pizza dough. The market for Design is terrible here - they want the designer to be a fucking C++, java, Delphi and Python programmer. And they pay less than minimum wage. And although I have an interesting curriculum… I seldom get responses.

I tried to enter the master’s degree at an university here, in Architecture. No penny. Only good thing here - I have a boyfriend, I love him very much. We have amazing sex. And I am taking sleeping pills and my antidepressants and this helps. but it still feels like I am stopped. Nothing seems to come out - I am without inspiration to write. I don’t knwow what to do. I am getting old. I want to work with Design. I want to work with research. I am developing a nice project that will become onde day a paper. At least my teacher says that. but… You know, each and every fail feels like a bucket of cold water. I am giving up on sending resumes, because it is pointless to apply for a job that asks for skills from 50 people. I won’t lie on my resume. Fuck, I dont want to learn freaking java!

I was thinking of going abroad again. Fresh new start. You know, live the dream. I would love to be in San Francisco. Or New York. But what if I don’t succeed? what if I turn into that ball of depression and sickness I was when I lived in holland? what if I don’t get a job? what if I don’t pass in any uni? My father is retired, I don’t want to be a burden or a huge cost for him anymore.

I am having migraines. I feel depressed. I can’t sleep well. I feel demotivated for everything.

FUCK. I feel like a child complaining over ice cream.

2

I am not a doctor, nor a career consultant. Nor particularly wise, just kinda old.
You sound, and state that you are, depressed. If this is in fact the case you need competent professional help. Since you’re taking antidepressants, I assume you have a doctor who prescribed them - if the meds are not getting your depression under control, maybe you need different ones. There’s a reason there are so many of them.

Not much good will happen career wise until depression is under control or at least largely managed. So this should be your focus.

Education is often an easy answer when you don’t know what to do. First off you are familiar with it - odds are you have been engaged in receiving education for well over a decade. Second, it’s comforting: effort and outcome are fairly closely linked (you study hard, you do the work, gaining you passing or better grades), very much unlike the real world. Third, it’s easy to get into: somebody somewhere is more than happy to take your money and call you a student. Not one of these is a good reason to go back to school - if you are going back to school for any of them, you are hiding from the world, and merely postponing having to deal with it.

Past a certain level (and I believe having a BBA surely qualifies), education makes sense if it improves getting a specific job, and if you’re in fact likely to get it - or if it will materially enhance performance in a job you can realistically get and do.
So that means the education is the result of working back from a strong idea of what it is you should be doing, verifying that that job exists, is what you think is, pays what you think it does, and is in fact available given such additional education

Or do what most people I know did - after college, they took a job, pretty much any job, and from there figured out the next step, often with some false starts. Eventually, it worked out.

First, though, get competent help with the depression.

3

Your destiny is to travel throughout the space-time continuum hunting deer.

4

Im not a doctor, but I was a patient. There’s usually two parts to depression: there’s a causal element, that revolves around lack of job and career, death of brother, etc which are real and valid reasons for being depressed. Then there’s the chemical side, the imbalance in brain chemistry that makes the depression become overwhelming, all-consuming, devastating.

Time and talk therapy can help with the causal depression; and medications can help with the latter. The medication doesn’t make the causal depression go away, but it does enable you to deal with it rationally. (And different medications work differently with different people, so there can be a good deal of trial-and-error involved.)

Go see a doctor who’s able to prescribe psych medications, that’s your first step. Good luck. And keep us posted.

5

I’m a wannabe graphic designer with depression as well. I too have been sending out resumes by the boatload and gotten no responses.

I finally got some nibbles from a tech agency, Robert Half Technology, through their Creative Group division, They gave me access to a skill portal, and I’ve been getting online training in HTML5, Javascript, CSS3, and a few other acronyms. I’ve been getting calls from recruiters as a result. Right now I’m working as a QA specialist, which is way below my skill set, but it’s work. I’ve let my rep know I’m looking for graphic design work. I probably need to keep reminding her, but you know how depression takes away that impetus.

See if you can get on with any recruiting agencies. Robert Half has a Brazil branch at www.roberthalf.com.br/. See if you can get access to their skill port and get training for the skills that are in demand. If nothing else, use lynda.com. Recruiters are doing searches for key words through LinkedIn and other job sites like monster.com. Put those skills on your resume when you complete the online training and you should be getting more calls.

Good luck!

6

Hey guys,

Thanks for the help. I will probably change my meds and try to get back into a few projects. But I won’t hunt animals. Vegetarian here.

7

There’s ya problem, lack of iron. OK that was a joke but only half a one, see a doctor and get your iron levels checked. My ex suffered from what she thought was depression but turned out to be iron deficiency when she become a vego!

But as said before I would strongly suggest some therapy, when combined with meds it works. Either on their own is not really that effective.

8

Please be realistic with the resume - an interviewer will see through the BS and your resume goes in the trash.
Classic: I was interviewing for a programming position - including a rare skill set.

I called one guy based on his resume - that skill set turned out to be “Well, I have this book”.
So do I, bozo - it doesn’t make me skilled in the language.

Enrolling in an “Intro to” course does NOT mean you can list the subject on your resume.
At best, you list it as “completed course work in ____”, or "am currently studying _______ at (name of school).

But yeah, the depression needs to get fixed first “bright eyed and bushy-tailed” is the only way to do an interview.