I was told before coming to Australia not to view any of it as a failure. People told me that if I only lived here for six months, a year, and needed to return, that in no way would that be a failure. I would have experienced, learned, gone out on an adventure all on my own.

I don’t think anybody truly considered that I wouldn’t find a job. I know I didn’t. But here I am at the end of March, five months after moving to Australia, and I’m still unemployed. For perspective, let’s take a couple months out of that picture- my first month I spent in the country, I stayed at my family’s farm. I don’t regret that month for a moment. In that time, I built a relationship with my family down under. I made memories at the farm, explored the surrounding area full of wineries, and established myself as an Australian citizen living in Australia now (I can’t express how officially-Australian I felt when I received my medicare card).

We’ll discount another month for the holidays. Christmas and New Year’s I spent at the farm again, and what employer is looking to hire at the end of December anyway?

So we’ll say three months. For three months I have applied and applied. At this point, I’ve probably applied for a few dozen jobs. I’ve applied for Administrative Assistant/Supporter Relationship Officer/Support Worker positions in countless not-for-profits, entry-level clerk positions in law offices, casual sales representative positions at several bookstores, Front Desk Officer/Guest Services positions at hotels. Can you see how I’ve gradually lost my starry-eyed quality? I’ve hit road blocks. I’ve learned.

Australia has a system that’s heavily dependent on technical schooling. They have something called technical and further education (TAFE), which in general has my full support. What it means for me, however, is that even the simplest jobs in my mind require various certifications. You want a barista job? Great! Go through a course at TAFE and get your certification. This means a few things: Australia has excellent coffee service, and it’s easy enough for those who know they want a job as a barista to receive some great training for relatively low cost and without much trouble. For me it means that I can’t just be hired and trained at a coffee shop.

This kind of certification has presented roadblocks in more ways than one. Most of my work experience has been in childcare. If I were to work in childcare here, I wouldn’t only need First Aid certification, background check, and experience, but also a Working with Children Check (WWC) and a Certification III or above in Early Child Development. For someone who has lived in Australia longer than I have, this would be no problem. It takes only about three months to get this certification at a TAFE. For someone who’s recently moved here and is living off savings? It’s a little more difficult. I reached a point one day when I felt like hurtling my laptop across the room and yelling, “Is it at all possible for me to actually work in this country?!”

On top of these obstacles, I’ve found that near-all Administration Assistant positions, even at not-for-profits, require anywhere from one to three years’ experience in a similar position. One organisation was looking for someone with five years of experience as an assistant. I’ve applied for a lot of those jobs anyway, hoping and praying for a shot at an interview.

I have learned along the way in this journey that Australian resumes are different from American resumes. Perhaps this should have been a no-brainer, but it wasn’t for me for a while. They are different enough that I feel like several opportunities were wasted before I knew and changed my resume to match what employers are actually looking for in this country. I forgot to treat Australia like the separate and different country and culture it is. I’ve been consulting someone who works in Career Services at my university (they help alumni too – yay!), and she confirmed that for someone straight out of university, it’s best in the U.S. to have only a one-page resume, with experience listed in order of relevancy and narrowed down to fit in the single-page format. In Australia, one-page isn’t nearly enough information for a potential employer. One’s resume must be at least two pages here, and it is common for someone more experienced to have a three- to five-page resume. And that’s only the beginning. I’m grateful that I learned about this difference, that I even received a bit of advice from a contact I made through a friend of my parents.

There’s another problem I’ve encountered. They say it’s all about who you know. I’ve contacted friends of my parents, friends of friends of my family, and several alumni from my university who work in the non-profit sector in Australia. I haven’t heard back from any of the alumni. The other contacts want to help, but can’t really. Without me constantly ingratiating myself in their lives, I feel I’m forgotten about. I’m feeling that frequently lately.

I’ve found quite a lot of isolation is involved in moving out somewhere new, somewhere terribly far away (quelle surprise!). Since I don’t yet have any sort of new social circle to become a part of (at work, church, etc.), I feel like my social interaction is limited to the family and family friends I’ve met in the area and to my loved ones in the States. Unlike me at the moment, those people do have their social circles, their lives which they are currently developing. And apparently I’m just not comfortable with asking for more from them for my sake.

I’m incredibly glad that my peers are moving forward. They’re working in their first big-time jobs, some of them getting promotions, and working hard for everything they’re getting. I wouldn’t wish them to be stuck, as I am. I want to see them happy, but sometimes it can be difficult when I feel like one of those wind-up toys that is wound up, keeps running into walls until it dies, and is wound up again to repeat.

The hardest thing in this situation is the voice in my own head. The voice that is saying I’m not doing enough, not nearly enough. That I’m disappointing everyone who has believed in me. As lonely as I feel, I know that there is an amazing group of people back in the States who care about me. They ask my parents about me every time they see them, ask how they can pray for me. Usually I find that so reassuring – empowering, even. It’s like I have a little army behind me. On occasion, however, I just see them as dozens of people who are told on a weekly basis that I still haven’t found a job. That I’m still stuck.

The people who love me most of all hate seeing me in such a position, so they have ideas, recommendations. All these thoughts that might be just the thing to get me a job. After a while those ideas sound to my ears less like helpful tips and more like accusations. They feed the voice in my head saying I’m disappointing the people I love.

My pride might be the wall my wound-up toy-self keeps bashing into. It’s taken so many knocks, what with the constant rejection and loneliness, yet it kept me from relenting and looking for service industry or retail work for so long. ‘But I have a degree!’ A shrill little voice keeps whining in my head (with all the mentions of voices in my head, I might start to concern people with the idea that I’m not only unemployed – I’m schizophrenic!). That pride seems to have finally been checked, as I got my Working with Children Check so I could join a babysitters website. So if I’m really lucky, I’ll be able to return to the job I held when I was 13! That sentence has a slight aftertaste of salt… Perhaps my pride isn’t completely checked yet.

Full disclosure: I have found that like clockwork, every month, I am blessed with a hormone-induced meltdown. My efforts feel hopeless. I’m paralyzed with the fear that nothing will change. And my inner-voice is at its cruelest. I’m in the midst of one of those times now, but somehow it gave me the courage to finally write down these thoughts that have been ricocheting around my brain for so long… And actually letting them out. Hopefully to let them go.

My mum has asked me multiple times to write something up for those who are asking how to pray for me, but I can’t do it. Nothing has changed, you see. I still want what I wanted five months ago: a job, leading to a new place to live, leading to a community. It’s all the same as it ever was. So that’s all the prayers and well-wishing I’m asking for: change. I desperately need something to change.