u/Gooners_For_Ukraine

I recently started working in a financial aid role in May and I think I’m at my breaking point. Initially I was ecstatic to get this job since I had been job searching for months at that point and was reliant on doordashing to stay afloat. I knew going in the reputation finaid had but it was kinda an any port in a storm situation and I felt like I actually really clicked with the leadership during my interview process.

Initially things went well, while I did feel in over my head I also understood that finaid is very complex and takes up to a year to get the hang of things. However at the 4 month mark I honestly feel like I’m behind where I should be, and I get the impression my supervisor is starting to get a bit fed/impatient up with me.

But honestly the big thing is I feel like I’m not built to handle are the types of customers we deal with in Finaid. I’m a fairly conflict avoidant person, and this feels like the absolute worst profession for me to be in. I’ve worked customer service before, but I’ve never had a job where I gotten so regularly cussed, shouted and cried at before. If I know I am going to be scheduled on the phone lines for a day I basically am convulsing with anxiety the evening and morning before. And when I am an anxious like that it becomes a self feeding cycle since I can’t focus when dealing with customers and am more likely to make easily preventable mistakes/blunders which just makes things worse.

I don’t have another job lined up and decided to renew my lease in this small college town when I accepted the job (And I know quitting at 4 months then getting hired somewhere else at the university is unlikely), so I just feel incredibly trapped right now. Part of me is just considering telling my supervisor I am quitting when we have our monthly evaluation on the 15th. Even if it means going back to scraping by financially by doing just DoorDash.

I’ve been doing YouTube on and off for a few years now and have at this point a ~100k sub channel. A lot of my friends and family are supportive of me which I am thankful for. However in the other end of it I can’t stand how some people suddenly think they are experts on it when the topic comes up and give either the most obvious or dumb advice. Stuff like “did you know you can get paid to do sponsorships”, “if you upload more often you will get more views”, “You should make a video on a topic that has nothing to do with the kind of content you usually make”

The new one though, and what I get especially from anyone over the age of 50 is about A I. I make a very specific style of content that it just wouldn’t be able to replicate faithfully/to my standard. But that doesn’t stop me getting “You know, instead of spending tens of hours on every video you could just put in a prompt and it will make it instantly for you”. Like I know they genuinely mean well, but it is just a frustrating experience every time I have to have that convo. Trying to explain it doesn’t work that way feels like talking to a brick wall sometimes.

My white collar job runs 8am to 5 pm (With a mandatory unpaid 1 hour lunch break). There is an option to do 7am to 4pm (which about 25 percent of our office takes) and honestly great for them since they can work on a schedule that fits to their natural sleep schedule.

Yet if you want to come in 9am to 6pm, that is not allowed. Similarly you can’t cut down your lunch break down to just 30 min to come in at 8:30 since it would violate the union contract. (I am not anti union, and get why the 1 hour lunch break rule is in place with our contract. It just sucks for us who physically can’t fall asleep before 2 am and would like an extra 30 min of sleep)

I really do like the job I do and the very generous benefits it has, it just is frustrating as hell to see early risers get special accommodations, while if you propose similar terms for night owels it gets shot down on the accusation of being “lazy”

A few months ago I started working in an administrative role at the university I graduated from a year ago. I am struggling with it a bit since I do feel a little held back by living in the same commuter college town as a graduate, while some of the other guys I graduated with moved on to big cities. It is just I literally did not have much of an option because I had been on the job search for near a year at that point and this was the first offer I got that my degree was actually applicable to.

What I kinda struggle with is there is just less to do here as a graduate as I can’t exactly be day drinking at a frat house as a form of entertainment on my weekends like when I was a student. This town is geared towards students and farmers so it is just hard to meet new friends and people in my position. Especially since it is summer things are especially dead around here so I just get home from work and drink, play video games, go to work the next day at my job that I already struggle with. I genuinely think I am getting somewhat depressed/lonely here and am not sure what to do with myself.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

For a Ukrainian living in occupied territory do they still owe taxes to the Ukrainian government or are they granted some type of exemption? Obviously residents of occupied regions can’t be expected to pay them now since logistically that infrastructure is severed, plus it would put them in danger with the occupation authorities if they tried. But after the war is over and territory liberated, is there any expectation of having to pay back taxes?