ugh. when are we going to have jobs??? mr.mari is a fully qualified nurse, i have a degree, between us we have years of experience and yet somehow......we are unemployed.

i will accept that at the moment we are still being a bit picky (i.e i refuse to work for £6 an hour or whatever the minimum is, and mr.mari is still avoiding nursing in a care home in case it affects his career) but honest to god.............i just want one of us to have a f*cking job so we can move house and get on with our lives

I'm sure you'll get sorted soon Mari, I'd continue as you are and remain picky for as long as you can. You're both highly qualified so I'm sure you'll get something soon x

Isn't there anything on the nhs x

nothing char, at least nothing in this side of scotland, mr.mari has applied for all of the band 5 jobs but there is a recruitment ban on until some point in the future - they are only filling jobs which already exist and are made vacant

I know how you feel. I didnt return to my retail job after mat leave with Caitlin because I knew if I did I would never get out of it again. I didnt want to leave Caitlin for min wage and let my SW degree go to waste. I ended up volunteering 20hrs a week and it was the best thing I ever did, eventually leading to band 4 relief work there and eventually the 3month band 5 SW post. Id never have got those opportunities had I returned to the shop.

Some people may not agree with me 'choosing' to be on benefits for a year or 2 but it was the best thing for my family in the long run.

The job situation is shite atm, especially if you do have a qualifications if that makes sense. Could either of you volunteer or do PT courses to up your chances? The job centre may be worth speaking too if you out of work long term. They helped me get my volunteer post and I was surprised that they got me into SS like I wanted.

what did you do with caitlin while you were volunteering? one of the problems is we need to move house (although my mother isn't pressuring us - yet - it isn't our house and we need more space than 1 room), so we need to be earning.....i was hoping if mr.mari does find a nursing job to either do some courses or at least do relief work but we don't have any childcare.

ugh i am so f*cking grumpy today.

mr.mari's gran has offered to pay my first years fees to set up a sing and sign franchise but again it's a problem of elijah-free time because i can't do it with him and don't yet know if mr.mari will be working shifts/normal hours or WHERE he might be.......sulk sulk.

Well I suppose I was very lucky with childcare. The job centre actually paid my mum and Stu's mum £70 a week between them to look after Caitlin for the 1st 13 weeks (Bloody gits took it off me too - while I got £15 a week IS top up for working lol). Was because I was classed as a 'single parent' as Stuart wasnt living here FT. They would have paid up to £120 a week to a nursery or childminder. It was a back to work scheme though as Id been on IS for a bit. Basically they wanted my butt out to work which suited me fine as for once they listened to the type of work I wanted to do.

Tbh my mum and MIL would have done it anyway. Im lucky that generally MIL works mornings and my mum works afternoons so between the 2 of them they were able to juggle Caitlin. My mum is great building flexi etc during the last few months so she could take Caitlin 9-5 a cpl weeks while I did training courses.

Could you/Mr Mari find somewhere to volunteer on a flexible basis? St Johns? (Is that a crappy idea lol?)Eg you work when you want? I picked my own hrs in the childrens home. I did generally have a pattern but would swap about as needed.

Could you get any HB to help you on your feet when you 1st move out of your mums/speed things up a bit?

i think theoretically we could get hb but in terms of having deposits/need a car for when mr.mari is working/money to physically move its tricky - also because we aren't sure which city he is going to get a job we don't want to go to one and end up with him working in the other

i think that's really the issue with all of it - not knowing where we will be. we were tempted to just go 'alright, chances are we will be in dundee lets just get going' but actually i think that would have been a mistake as he's had as many applications in perth and aberdeen. sooooooooooo yeah volunteering is a good idea but still don't know where?! (although mr.mari is going to do some volunteering at a drug rehab centre he visited on placements as hes really into addictions nursing).

why is it so effing stressful??? mr.mari's nana has offered to look at my degree to see if i can 'un-degree' it as i didn't sit my honours. i was so desperate to leave st.andrews. anyway so if i could do that i could do a year to make up my honours and that might be a bit more useful at least to do a post-grad vocational course - what effing use is an academic degree????? none!

ooh that was a bit of a rant anyway, yes i think i have thought of every probable solution to getting going and keep coming back to well, one of us needs to find a decent paying full time job and then we can make a run for it then..........im.so.impatient

Do you have to stay in that area? Is there any possibility of moving elsewhere to look for jobs. I know that's not neceassrily the easiest thing but might be something to consider

at the moment we want to stay in the east of scotland (quite a big area!) but if it becomes absolutely necessary we will look at moving

Its such a shame because in my area we are desperate for mental health (drug rehab) nurses, and are always on the look out. We recruit a lot of nurses through agencies, because then we get to 'try before we buy' - lol xx

that is another way to go lisa, he is a general adult nurse but can still specialise in addictions without the mental health training - at the moment really we are still hoping for 'best case' as its only been a month, so hoping to stay somewhere we know, mr.mari to work at least 27 hours a week and if i can for me to work part time too and to have a house...dont ask for much

so for now he isn't applying for agency and nursing homes because really unless we do get desperate (rather than just p*ssed off), it isn't good news for your career.

^ he is also eligible for the 'guaranteed job' scheme through the nhs as of may so there is that...its just a VERY long time away, and we would just be sent wherever there was a vacancy

mariheartselijah wrote:

why is it so effing stressful??? mr.mari's nana has offered to look at my degree to see if i can 'un-degree' it as i didn't sit my honours. i was so desperate to leave st.andrews. anyway so if i could do that i could do a year to make up my honours and that might be a bit more useful at least to do a post-grad vocational course - what effing use is an academic degree????? none!

Ok this bit totally lost me! How can you undegree yourself and why the heck would you want to? Are all degree's not honours? Do I have an honours degree? What the heck is an honours degree? The title of my degree was Bsc (hons) SW. I got a 2:2 and we all sat the same exams, no one did extra to get hons in my memory... the ones that went the extra mile got 1st's... is that the honours??? I didnt pay too much attention at uni, regret it a bit now as I know I was capable of better.than a 2.2.

Whats your degree in btw?

I was wondering that. I thought all degrees were honours unless you got less than a third and then it was just a pass degree. Scotland is different though because its four years so perhaps you do your degree than an extra year to do honours. I know my sister is doing hers in bits through open uni and she's done the degree and now has to do more for honours

hmmmmmmmm perhaps the scottish degree system is different - the rest of our education is so it probably is

you asked, are you ready for this??????

ok so a normal degree is 3 years here and an honours one is 4 generally. i did 3 years and really wanted to get out of st-andrews so (idiot) rather than transferring i opted to graduate early - this provided me with a Master of Arts (General) which is ungraded - you can only have an honours degree graded at st-andrews but they like to be a bit different so that may not be the same elsewhere........i guess it is a 'pass' degree but my subject results were actually between 2:2 and 1sts so that seems unfair!

anyway, so my degree originally was going to be psychology with linguistics, but i couldn't do the statistics, it was really insanely hard (baring in mind i dont even have gcse maths). so it was then going to be social anthropology with linguistics but i needed to move so graduated.

the subjects i have credits in are: psychology, linguistics, social anthropology, divinity, music, philosophy and english literature - most of which are psych, soc.anth and linguistics. i have a total of 360 credits sooooooooooo apparently if i cancel my degree (in some way, i am yet to discover) i can 'top up' my degree to a graded honours by doing another years worth of points/credits??? i need to find out how many points an honours is..

god its a bit complex! anyway, if i have enough linguistics points i am wondering if doing a linguistics dissertation and some other bits might give me enough for postgrad in speech and language therapy which is what i ORIGINALLY wanted before the st-andrews fiasco happened.

short version of all of that ^ i have no clue

oh, also nana-in-law (coincidentally a double phd in linguistics/phonics - weird) has offered to help me set up with a sing and sign franchise which is also quite an interesting idea, but maybe i would rather train with real makaton than pretend makaton : /

Yeah it is different. We just do three years which gives us an honours degree although if you start a degree, leave and then start a new one they'll sometimes credit you with what you've done. You tend to focus on one or two subjects as well so mine was History and Politics.

yeah you do tend to do the same 2 or 3 subjects here too, but i changed halfway through and just did some interesting stuff (english and music history) to make up a few credits

weird that i would have had 480 credits though at the end. i am reading about credit transfers but the problem is ive already graduated. st.andrews seems to be different from everywhere else in the way they run semesters/terms and their grading system (erm i dont remember mr.mari having a ski week in the middle of jan )

Sounds complicated. Is there some official body you can talk to that can advise you about the whole degree thing?

i don't know im waiting for nana-in-law to get back in touch, sadly she has no electricity still so can't read my email (tsk!!!) maybe the scottish qualifications authority can help if not

Holy cow, that's complicated! Have nothing hugely useful to add except we seem to have studied the same degree (psychology and linguistics) I teach english as a foreign language now but I used to work as a support/classroom assistant for autistic children attending a regular (not special needs) school, it was a fantastic job. so maybe another career avenue for you? You've probably thought if everything though . And that doesn't help Mr Mari. I can't imagine how tough it must be, not knowing what or where your job is going to be, it's such a gamble to make any decision. Wish I had more useful advice but just wanted to wish you good luck! xx

edited as i forgot to say When I was looking for possible jobs for when Noah's older there seemed like a lot of agency work for special educational needs teaching assistants, not sure what kind of training/qualifications you need, but there did seem to be quite a lot of that kind of work round here, despite here being the wild unpopulated depths of East Anglia Don't know if it would be right for you but just thought it might be useful given your degree. Good luck! x

^ i am also considering doing my tefl certificate though everyone wants me to be a teach and i can't think of anything viler!!! (except maybe being a bikini model : / )