To say my journey to finding a job over the past few months was discouraging would be an understatement. In my mind I thought that this is when all my hard work was going to pay off. I had excelled in my undergraduate career, received a placement in my first choice dietetic internship, and earned great evaluations from all of my preceptors. I started my job search with a strong resume and reached out to the hiring staff at many of the jobs to which I had applied. I was confident that I would get whichever job I set my heart on, as long as I worked hard enough for it.

Well, surprise to me! That’s not how it worked out. Just over a month ago was the first time I realized things were going to go a little different than planned. An email came across my inbox:

“We regret to inform you that we have moved forward with the search and have made an offer to another candidate.”

I didn’t get the job I so badly wanted and this was just the beginning.  I didn’t get my back up job …Or my back up, back up job. I didn’t get a job doing anything I thought I wanted to do as a Dietitian. I got my last resort.

This is now my second week working at my last resort. As I was leaving work today, I got an email about a job I had spent countless hours waiting around, with my phone ringer turned all the way up, hoping to get a call from.

“We regret to inform you that another candidate whose qualifications more closely matched the requirements of the job was selected.”

A few weeks ago this would have added huge twist to the roller coaster of emotions I was already riding through my job search. But, today it was different. Today I read:

“We regret to inform you this is not where you’re supposed to be.”

So often we are dissatisfied with where we are because it doesn’t match what we had pictured in our minds. We feel like we’ve disappointed ourselves, fallen short of being enough. In reality, there are times that the picture in our mind is not where we are supposed to be. Everything happens for a reason, all we can do is give our best. That’s enough to get us where we’re meant to go.

Keep your head up

K