Good thing I'm in school

It's been, wow, three weeks since I quit my job. I wouldn't necessarily say that I regret quitting, but this whole "making money without a job" thing is proving harder than I thought it would be.

I have yet to find part-time employment. Plenty of positions have opened up -- in the bakery around the corner from my house, at a local bar, various work-study jobs at school -- and I have applied, diligently, with a personal, individualized cover letter, to each. No one wants me to work for them.

Most of the school jobs, in their very kind rejection letters, blame my schedule for their anti-me stance: "Well, we would love to have you, but we're concerned that your schedule wouldn't allow you to devote as much time to the job as we would like." I almost understand this logic, except for the fact that these are work study jobs. They are designed for students. In fact, you have to be a student, attending school at least half-time to even be considered for the job; it is the first qualification. I'm not a full-time student, and, unlike most of my classmates, I am not student teaching this semester. All I have is time. If I cannot devote enough time to the job, who at this school possibly can?

The non-school jobs -- the bartending and the bakery staff -- don't even call me back or write kindly rejection e-mails. I acknowledge that I have no experience in these particular areas, but, you know, I'm a smart person; I can learn! Most of the kids working at the bakery are just that -- children. What makes them more qualified than me? Is it just because they're malleable and cheery? Well, yes, probably, but I LOVE baked goods. Does that count for nothing?

The bartending rejections I'm less upset about. I probably wouldn't be a good bartender. I don't like loud places, and I'm not particularly well-known for being good-natured around the drunk and obnoxious. Also, I worry I'm not sexy enough.

Female bartenders always seem to be tousled and pretty and a little hard-assy, like dominatrixes who went into early retirement, before getting too hard looking. For one bartending job that I applied for on craigslist, I had to send in a picture, so I put on some chapstick (that's how I get tarted up) and did my best sassy bartender face for a quick pic on my computer. Just before sending, I felt like I had to add a post-script to my application e-mail, just to let them know, that, "oh, sorry, I took this at my kitchen table at 9 in the morning, and I'm happy to take some aesthetic pointers or make my look more of a 'type' or something." I never heard back from those people. Bars don't like nervous ramblers. Nor do they like girls with short hair who do not know how to apply eyeliner.

I've always had trouble finding jobs. I started at my horrible job after college because it was the only place that I could even score an interview. I eventually decided to go back to school because two years of searching for different jobs turned up nothing. I have no idea what the problem is, really. I blame my cover letters, which I hate writing because they're so awkward and self-promotional and always end up sounding the same even when you take the time to write a new one for each job.

It's weird to me how difficult it is to convince a bakery I am an intelligent, trainable person when Columbia University had absolutely no trouble believing such a thing, even when I applied late and had to call and beg them to look at my hastily-written essays. I suspect I am not qualified for anything except attending school, which, unfortunately, is even less profitable than working part-time with a bunch of high-schoolers.