Dejected: adjective, sad and depressed; dispirited.

After two interviews in Paris (€€ for plane/train!) and a Skype interview with the States, I didn't get an interesting job in Paris for an American study abroad program.

And it looks like I won't be able to try for any of the civil servant jobs at a University this year either.

I'm not eligible for very many types of civil servant concours. There is one position that's actually at the campus for a work, but I would be competing with a colleague who already does the job. Concours are not always open positions, and actually are frequently for positions where there is already someone doing it but as a contract employee. Besides the fact that I'm not super motivated to "steal" the job from my nice colleague who's already doing it, I've heard stories about concours being "flêché" (the jury is influenced on who to rank as the best candidate) or even invalidated when the person already doing the job does poorly on the concours. There are some interesting jobs in International Relations in Grenoble and Lyon, and they require doing a 3 hour written exam in French ('Ecrivez une note de synthèse à partir des documents').

And then there's the case of all the paperwork I didn't realize I needed.

Even though I have a Master 2 from a French university, I had to mail off a request from ENIC for a confirmation of the level/validity of my Bachelor's degree. Normally this costs 70€, but there are some mentions that if you are doing it for a concours you don't have to pay.

And I don't have a traduction assermenté of my Bachelor's degree because it's written in Latin. I long thought there were no official Latin-French translators, but I came across this one today. The application deadline is fast approaching and I won't have it in time (plus I hate the idea of having to pay to prove my diploma).

One of my colleagues had her application refused last year because she had the relevé de notes de Bac but not the Bac diploma. My high school degree is framed in my parents' living room, so I hope I won't be needing it...

I also have to try to see the head of HR to get her signature on a list of jobs I've had in the public sector (copies of the contracts is obviously not enough).

The hardest to accept in all this is that I could have been better prepared for the civil servant application process. The University has classes for employees to help them prepare because it's so complicated. But because I was really busy preparing an audit when the classes were taking place, I didn't do them. My boss has had a hands-off approach to me since I manage pretty well with everything else I do, but it's hard to know what I should be asking him since I don't know what I don't know concerning the concours.

A colleague has recently announced she will be leaving and her job was posted on the University website. Her position is classified as Catégorie A (highest of the three, though each catégorie has multiple levels) and the gross salary is 300€ more per month than me. I just about choked when I saw it, especially since my catégorie B position is only 50€ gross more than catégorie C per month. In terms of workload or responsibilities there definitely is not 300€ difference between what I do and what my colleague does.

I feel frustrated that there are all these opportunities around me, and despite my efforts and small successes, in the end I'm left empty handed. It's time for a stroke of luck to come my way.