Hello All,
This is my first blog and my first blog entry, so bare with me. My name is Ebony Kendrick. I recently moved from Washington, DC to Fords, New Jersey, south of Newark. Needless to say it has been a very drastic change in my life but then again the last two years of my life have been one drastic change after another.
Two and a half years ago I graduated from The Ohio State University with a Master of Arts degree and set off to conquer the museum industry in Washington, DC. I had done two internships there while in college and was moving to DC to start another internship that I hoped would turn into a job and if it didn't I was sure that I would be able to find a job at a Washington-area museum with out much of a problem.
So the first few weeks were very crazy. I lived with a woman who was a friend of a friend of my mother's in Alexandria, VA. It was June and there was little A/C and pipes that didn't work. Taking a shower in a stranger's basement and then having to dodge up two flights of stairs was a challenging experience but it was well worth it because I figured hey at least this is part of the story it will get better from here. And it did.
Work at the museum was going very well and I had a boss that trusted me to get the job done. so I was able to work at my own pace and I even got my own cubicle before long while the other interns who were still in college, had to work at a desk. Then I was told we would be restarting our exhibition from the beginning. This was my chance to prove myself. I did hours of searching for primary sources and reading through articles to find the information that we needed in order to restart the exhibition. When it was all over I was well received by both my boss and her boss and I felt good and that I had the skills to do what it was I actually wanted to do: be a museum curator.
So June became July and before I knew it a lucky find on craigslist.com turned into my first apartment and it was in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill no less. Life was getting better indeed. I moved into my tiny, tiny 350 sqft apartment. But I soon realized that I did not have the salary that I needed in order to support myself or my tiny, tiny apartment. So I had to get a second job. I found a job at the coffeehouse around the corner from my house. I remember thinking that this would be a perfect fit because I would be able to get there after work since it was right off the metro and then be able to get home in five minutes. And this would only be temporary because I was gonna get my first real job at a museum in no time so it would be fine.
Well I worked through the end date of my internship and was fortunately funded to continue for two more months. So I was working two jobs and seven days a week. This was not what I had imagined my new DC life to be but I was intent to make it work. So I worked the two more months at the coffeehouse and the museum. Then I was able to get a contract with the museum but it was temporary not permanent like I had hoped which meant I had to continue being a barista.
I worked that way until March of the following year when the exhibition team that I worked with was told the Friday before Easter that the department we were co-sponsoring our exhibition with did not want to be our friend anymore. So just like that it was over for me. My extension of my contract would have come from funds provided by that department.
Well I took it in stride (I think). I applied for jobs in the morning as I became one of the thousands of people who occupy coffeehouses as their own home away from home offices. In the evening I would still work as a barista. I was able to have interviews for several jobs but unfortunately was not chosen for any of them getting the response, lack of experience.
In August my work at my current coffeehouse was frustrating me more and also not providing me with enough income. So I changed over to another neighborhood coffeehouse where I worked about 36 to 39 hours a week for not much more than I made at the other coffeehouse. But I was rewarded with friendships and dependability that I didn't have with my former co-workers who liked to give me TMI accounts of their partying exploits and liaisons and come into work hungover only to feign illness and tell our boss who also was hungover most weekends that they didn't feel well and needed to go home.
I was content for a time and just accepted that I was going to be a barista for a while. But I didn't give up on museums. I kept applying for jobs and I kept calling my museum contacts. Well I was able to have a successful connection that led to a six month contract doing research for an upcoming exhibition at another museum in DC. Only there was not going to be enough money to be able to stop being a barista so it was back to two jobs once again but at least I was going back to a museum where I would be able to keep my skills sharpened and meet new people and hopefully find a full time museum job.
The museum job was a great change. The administrative assistant became my best friend in the office. We went through so much together and she helped me to know how to go about talking to the people in power in order to get on their radar about possibly becoming a future permanent employee. My supervisor on the other hand was a little more difficult. She came from a family that worked in museums and right from the beginning we had no established relationship. It was difficult to predict her moods and it was challenging to do some of the tasks she asked of me because of having to work my second job in the afternoons. But nonetheless I kept positive because I knew that in the end it would be better for me to comply and hopefully get a job than to expose my true feelings.
My museum job which I hoped would be extended was not and I became extremely overwhelmed by the two jobs so I quit the barista job in August of last year in order to focus on the museum. When the museum didn't work out and I couldn't become a barista again I moved to temporarily stay with my dad in New Jersey. I applied for a job at the museum that I had just left and was in Jersey to wait it out. The job I applied for was exactly the job that I had just finished a contract for but for much more money. I was a shoe in, right? Wrong.
I found out the week before Christmas that out of over 200 applicants I had made it to the top but I was not high enough to qualify for the final candidate pool. So it seemed that New Jersey had become more permanent than I had hoped it would be and as a testament to that fact I am moving my things out of my DC apartment this week.
2010 is a chance to start over and I think that this is a new beginning for me. Let's hope that from here on out there is more positive things to blog about.
The Twenty-Something
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