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I thought it important to share this story with all of you, so here it is.

After graduating from college with a BA in International Relations, I was the only Honor student who still didn’t have a great job lined up, or any job for that fact. I was one Honor student out of five, and there were only five Honor students out of almost 750 students in my major. How then, did some of them have jobs but not me?

After graduating I had one week to send out resumes, cover letters and references to job postings that I thought were up my alley. The whole time, I kept affirming to myself “I have so many prosperous job offers. Prosperous and prestigious job offers are flying at me.” And so I kept applying: the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations, various others, and of course, the UN. I drew my line at the UN, at this point I was so burned out from applying, and more importantly, I really really really wanted the job at the UN more than anything else and had a funny feeling I would get it.

But first, an interesting story about that. I’m sure you all know the famous quote Nelson Mandela spoke of: “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.” Well that’s kind of what happened. Though it was the last job I applied for (and even then, thanks to my dad for pushing me to do it), it was the first job to interview me and offer me a position. And deep down I knew it would work out, but the question is, why did I wait so long? I could have saved a lot of time panicking about not having a job had I trusted my gut instinct and applied earlier. It really summed up the whole Mandela quote, I was truly afraid of succeeding and getting a job, and somewhere inside I knew the UN would hire me - that’s why I stopped looking for jobs after applying to the UN. Remember? That’s where I drew the line on the job search.

So ultimately I landed the job at the UN. Well it was more like a 6 month intensive internship program at the World Federation of UN Associations- but I had access to all these amazing meetings/conferences at the UN (not open to the general public), I was making global contacts, networking with the top-dogs, learning to be more creative and picking up skills that I didn’t have before. Of course in the meantime, I had forgotten about all the other jobs I had applied to, but that didn’t mean that I had stopped affirming. I still wanted “prosperous job offers to fly my way.” And they did.

The Woodrow Wilson Center got back to me about two weeks after I had started my position at the UN, and I mananged to do an interview with them and then defer a Fall position to a Spring position. And following that, the very next day in fact, the American Council of the United States got back to me with an interview offer as well. As my father says: “When it rains, it pours,” and that’s exactly what happened.

You wouldn’t believe it now, but I am currently sitting in my office area at the UN writing this post. August tends to be a slow month for the UN, and well, I had some free time on my hands and decided to use it wisely and share a little wisdom with you all. Wisdom that got me here in the first place.

I will be interviewing with the Atlantic Council of the United States sometime next week, and my plan there is to take a position with them in the summer. With these three job experiences lined up before Graduate School in Fall 2008, I couldn’t be more set. And it’s within your reach too, and you can’t let others dissuade you or make you think otherwise. Honestly, there were times when I couldn’t understand why I was not getting the response I wanted from the organizations I applied to, because frankly, I thought my resume and cover letter were pretty damn good. And I wasn’t going to change my mind; I had worked hard and had the grades and the work experience to show for it. I kept believing this and knew that ultimately, when the universe deemed the time was right, the job offers would come- and they did!! And they didn’t just come in one by one, but they literally flew in - and they still are. Furthermore, they weren’t just any job offers either, they were prosperous and prestigious job offers, just like I had affirmed- of course though, they were prosperous and prestigious from my point of view, they are the jobs that I imagined when I thought about what prosperous and prestigious meant to me. So make sure you get your wording right, know what the words mean to you and the kinds of images and feelings they conjure for you, because this is what you are ultimately bringing into existence.

And on that point it is time for me to get back to work at the UN. The first of many prestigious and prosperous job experiences flying my way.