They say that the job market is getting worse by the day. More and more people saturate the job pool and the odds for you landing that job are getting smaller. So you pound away furiously at your contacts, on the internet and other sources for leads...without much appreciable result. How do you avoid falling into a depressed state after some time passes?
It has been recommended to me several times, that the key to surviving a job search with your sanity intact is to search when it's time to search, but to not make that the only thing in your life. Family time is important as is personal development.
Personal development...
I have often heard that volunteering somewhere is a great outlet in times like these. Personally, I think you can substitute anything productive that you are passionate about.
Me? I love to learn. I have a wide variety of interests. I also have a secret dream.
I dreamed of going to MIT to study. For those of you that don't know, MIT stands for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is (to this day, as far as I know) THE premier university in the US for engineering, math, and the physical sciences. And they just made my day.
http://lifehacker.com/software/education/free-classes-from-mit-155699.php
I think I might have to take some classes from MIT...for free.
They have over 1800 course offerings with more interesting topics than I can shake a stick at. The only down side is that the texts used for the course are more often than not, not included in the online course materials, so you have to access them elsewhere. If you're internet savvy like me, however, you ought to be able to use the 'net to get information on pretty much whatever subject they are talking about or that the "homework" requires.
There are some other universities doing the same thing (http://education-portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html). I don't know about you, but I think this is probably one of the coolest things the academic community has ever done. It dovetails right along with the OpenSource software movement. That's a whole other post, however. Perhaps another time...
Note: As an aside, if you are looking for text material. A good place to start is Textbook Revolution.
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