Big Little Books: 50 books to read before you die

Hello people reading my blog, it is time for another post.  Today, the subject is a little bit different. It is about reading. I used to read A LOT, of everything. Books, magazines, newspapers you name it. Anyways, I literally stopped reading out of the blue a few years back, probably when I started consuming TV Shows. I say consuming because I am at about 36 episodes of different scripted series each week. And that cannot simply be called "watching".

I started reading again when I bought myself a tablet two years ago. I have moved quite a bit in the past few years, it has become harder to transport books with me as they are heavy, and take a fair amount of space. So plane fares and my bank account do not agree with my reading needs. I do not give a damn if you are one of those purists who believe that an e-book is a sacrilege. It is either that or I simply do not read at all. So F off with your useless prejudices, I have heard enough of them.

I won't lie, not being able to own physical books breaks a little bit my heart every time I think about it. I know that when I will be able to buy them again, it will mean that I will finally have found Home. But we are not there yet. In the meantime, I thought a tablet would be a good compromise.

I have read some books in the past year, tried the listening thing (which is definitely not reading by the way, but that is another subject that maybe will be treated later) and I am happy to rediscover the joy of imagining the setting and characters of a story along with learning new words, new meanings. To celebrate the end of my studies I allowed myself to buy a single hardcover book. It felt like the Amazon delivery guy was bringing me the most precious treasure. Long story short, I found myself in need of a bookmark. That's a lie, I did not NEED one. As usual, after meeting a friend next to a mall, I ended up in the bookstore checking everything from stationary to travel guides. I did NOT go in there with the intention, or the money for that matter, to buy. 

My treasure. I added pillows ...

In the course of a shelf full of kids' colouring books, there it was. Hanging on its hook, just waiting for me to pick it up. The 50 books to read before you die bookmark. When I saw it, I thought "Well, that's a goal I can reach". Obviously, the books in question are mostly classics that any person who has attended school long enough has at least heard of, if not read some of them. The people who know me are well aware that I am not a big fan of classics. I have a hard time getting into the stories, getting familiar with the characters, etc ... However, I attach a great importance to these stories as they are not only entertainment anymore. They are part of humankind History and they probably exist to relay a life lesson, knowledge. So, yes. I bought that bookmark and I intend to read all these books, hopefully before I die. I would definitely like to reach the end of that list before I am ... let's say 35. I have ten years to read books that I might not entirely enjoy or comprehend but are most likely food for my soul. My marketing teachers would be proud, I just set a S.M.A.R.T objective. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based. 

... and stones. Because apparently, this is what you are supposed to do on a blog. That is the bookmark by the way.

Without further ado, here is the list of the fifty classic works from the world's great writers mentioned on that etched stainless steel bookmark, bought for 3.99£ at WHSmith, that you can also find on eBay (yeah I know, I just sounded like those people trying to sell you something very early in the morning on TV, just deal with it):

Title	Author
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy	J.R.R. Tolkien
1984	GEORGE ORWELL
Pride & Prejudice	Jane Austen
THE GRAPES OF WRATH	JOHN STEINBECK
To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee
JANE EYRE	CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Wuthering Heights	Emily Brontë
A PASSAGE TO INDIA	E.M FORSTER
The Lord of the Flies	William Golding
HAMLET	WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Bend in the River	V.S Naipaul
THE GREAT GATSBY	F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Catcher in the Rye	J.D Salinger
THE BELL JAR	SYLVIA PLATH
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley
THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK	ANNE FRANK
Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes
THE BIBLE
The Canterbury Tales	Geoffrey Chaucer
ULYSSES	JAMES JOYCE
The Quiet American	Graham Greene
BIRDSONG	SEBASTIAN FAULKS
Money	Martin Amis
HARRY POTTER SERIES	J.K. ROWLING
Moby Dick	Herman Melville
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS	KENNETH GRAHAME
His Dark Materials Trilogy	Philip Pullman
ANNA KARENINA	LEO TOLSTOY
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll
REBECCA	DAPHNE DU MAURIER
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	Mark Haddon
ON THE ROAD	JACK KEROUAC
Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW	ANTHONY TROLLOPE
The Outsider	Albert Camus
THE COLOUR PURPLE	ALICE WALKER
Life of PI	Yann Martel
FRANKENSTEIN	MARY SHELLEY
The War of the Worlds	H.G. Wells
MEN WITHOUT WOMAN	ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Gulliver’s Travels	Jonathan Swift
A CHRISTMAS CAROL	CHARLES DICKENS
Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain
ROBINSON CRUSOE	DANIEL DEFOE
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Ken Kesey
CATCH 22	JOSEPH HELLER
The Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA	ARTHUR GOLDEN
The Divine Comedy	Alighieri Dante
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY	OSCAR WILDE

Another page is turning ...

Hello people reading my blog on Blogger, long time no see. My name is Sarah and today I will give you a summary of my year past, present and future. Probably not in that order.

I have been quite busy this year, since last October until now. I could not afford to post either a blog post or a video which is also because I was too lazy to do so. I was not really thinking about writing a blog post until about an hour ago. I thought it was time for me to inform ALL the people I know, about what I am doing and where I am going. Although some of them might hate me by now, for not calling or messaging them. I am sorry that I do not do it more often. I will try and do better in the future.

Anyways. Some of you know that I went to a far far away country for an internship, as part of my gap year. It was an amazing experience which I will try to write a complete blog post about (I already started but I'm struggling to condense everything, as I am sure you don't really care about what I had for breakfast on the 5th of February for example ;)). To sum it up real quick, it was again an experience that allowed me to grow as a person and as a professional. I guess that was the initial purpose of the whole thing. I saw and experienced a lot of amazing and sometimes unexpected things.

This school year, my last year as a student, I am moving again. This time to a colder country. I have named Scotland ! Home of the Highland Games, Calvin Harris, some weirdly hot accent and our beloved James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser (one of the main characters of the absolutely amazing series Outlander, go watch it if you haven't already !). For a full academic year this time, not like last time in Ireland. So as you can imagine, I am PRE-TTY EXCITED. As usual, I haven't started packing and will probably not do so before the 14th at night. So you know, I am leaving on the 15th.

However, I have already found a place to stay, I bought a sim card for my phone and enrolled online for uni. So yay me for being so far-sighted, yet so disorganized. FYI, I just bought a planner, last minute. Hopefully it'll get better from now on.

So yeah, that's it, the big announcement. I'm leaving France for the UK/Scotland. For now. But I secretly hope (not so secret now xD) that I will stay there  when I graduate, or move somewhere else as I cannot stand living in one of my own countries anymore. I am more Moroccan than I have ever been French and I am more French than I have ever been Moroccan if that makes any sense at all. Anyway, I am tired of being seen as only half of me.

On this cheerful note, I wish you farewell. Maybe you'll read my next post. Maybe not.

THE Internship

Hello people reading my blog on Blogger, my name is Sarah and today dear readers, I have no words. Yep you read well. No words to describe how I feel right now, while I am writing this blog post. Amazing, ecstatic, glorious, would not even start to cover it. And for those of you who know me IRL (IRL = In Real Life, here you go with internet slang), you know this never happens.

In my previous post, I was telling you how hard it is to land an internship, let alone THE internship. But today, I am here to tell you that it happens. It is possible. It exists. And to my very surprise, I managed to find and get the holy grail (for me anyway): a 6 months internship at Total in Qatar as a Communication and Events trainee. I am not going to talk about how much I am going to be paid or what advantages I am going to get, but just so you know, it is unbelievable, it is like opening the cavern of Ali Baba, although I don't remember saying "Open, Sesame!", just sending my resume and cover letter, hopelessly. A bottle in the ocean if I may say. Anyway, this was at the beginning of August. 

This month, I received an e-mail on Sunday 6th, telling me that I had been shortlisted for this position and that if I still wanted to work with them, an interview would be conducted the same week via Skype. Btw, dear Skype people, thank you for making communication throughout the world so easy. I can honestly say here that I thought there had been a mistake. That they had mixed up resumes and that they were expecting to see someone else or something like that. It was all too good to be true. I went on with it, after thoroughly googling on the name of the HR executive who sent me that golden ticket, just to make sure it was not a scam or a joke of poor taste. I sent a short message back saying that yes of course I was still interested and that I would love to have that interview soon. The time and date were set pretty quickly, leaving me time to do some research on the company and the events I would have to organize if I got the job. Thursday, 11 a.m Doha time, so 10 a.m here in France. I spent two days not worrying too much about it, then came Wednesday.

Again, if you know me well, the fact that I tend to leave things to the last minute won't surprise you (but that is not something I like to tell recruiters though, for obvious reasons). So I didn't start researching before late in the afternoon. Then I had to Skype my mom to talk about what I was going to say regarding some aspects of my professional talent (ahem ... right). And this took me more time than I had expected. Way more time. So I ended up going to bed without rewriting my notes properly or blow-drying my hair. It was that or I would have been a complete zombie in the morning: not very advisable when you have an important interview.

So, the next morning, on Thursday 10th, I woke up at 8 a.m so I would have time to work on my "hairstyle". I didn't eat my breakfast, too nervous for that. I just prepared a cup of good ol' tea  that my grand parents brought me back from Ireland (Barry's tea please, I will be eternally grateful for that red box) and drank it while working on my curly head. Took me more time than expected, so I decided to not rewrite my notes, just read them and put make up on during my last 20 minutes, because the camera is never nice with you. You need to look damn good IRL to look good on the screen.

Freaking out two minutes before 10. Good at not showing it, am I not ?

I was on time as always. Ok, maybe not always, but for important things I am. They were 3 minutes late. Yeah I know, not a lot but when you're dying out of stress in front of your computer, three minutes seem like eternity. The whole thing went pretty smoothly I think. Well clearly, because at the end, the HR executive told me, without taking time to consult with the two other persons present, that he thought that unanimously they would agree to pick ME. They apparently interviewed a lot of people prior to me, but without taking too much time they just picked me. I could not believe it at first, still. I mean I have not studied in one of the top five business schools, same goes to the High School where I spent two years preparing for the competitive exam, it was not one of the best. So I hope you understand where I am coming from when I tell you that I could not wrap my head around what he just told me. Such a big company, for such a position, with such advantages. All of that for me.

When I finally closed my computer, I can shamelessly say that I had a tear rolling down my cheek because this school year was a shitty year by the end (not including Erasmus here obviously ;)). A lot of stress, a lot of struggles, again a lot of stress and finally this. So maybe, just maybe it wasn't all that bad after all. If it all ended happily (not ever after, yet), I guess I can try and forget what happened and just remember that I made it. I got out of this terrible situation and transformed it in an amazing one instead of a "meh I can do with that" one. Sending your resume like a bottle in the ocean can sometime pay off.

Twentysthing: Raiders of the Lost Application

Hello people reading my blog on Blogger ! My name is Sarah and today I am going to tell you that you are not alone in your struggle to land an internship or a job. Nope, you are not alone. Actually, it might be one of the reasons you are struggling to land the internship/job of your dreams.

I have been really stressed out lately. I am currently working at an amusement park. My summer job contract will be over at the end of August. In September I am supposed to start an internship, the first one of my gap year. It is important that I start in September, otherwise I won't be able to do two internships of six months each, the end goal of this year. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to answer too many offers because of my work schedule which does not leave me time to write proper cover letters, the most important part of any application in my opinion. This "lack" of applications is what is stressing me out, because a lot of people have told me that the more I apply, the more chances I have to get picked for the holy grail: the interview during which I can finally sell myself, prostitute myself if I may say, in order to leave every other candidate stuck on the starting blocks. What people say seems logical at first sight. But I have come to believe that a resume and a cover letter I really worked on might bring me more than a hundred empty applications.

And it paid off at first ! I got an interview at IKEA. It didn't work out in the end because apparently they went for someone with more experience in the field of PR (don't get me started on the experience topic, it is an endless loop that pisses me off). My point is, I worked really hard on my cover letter, did a lot of research and didn't put too much "bullshit" (the expression "brown-nosing" comes to mind here) in it, and it succeeded ! So now that I have told you my miracle recipe for success at not getting an internship, we can go back to the actual subject of this post. Don't get me wrong, the hard work on the cover letter is required, necessary, essential. But the thing to keep in mind here, is that someone who applied to the same offer got picked over me because of their experience. But what if I didn't apply to an offer? What if I just made a spontaneous application ? Being the only one applying to a position of my own choosing ?

I found the idea even more appealing after reading articles on a website for professional women. They were giving advice and detailing how to be sure to reach the person who is the most likely to take a look at your resume and cover letter: the hiring manager. So from now on, I will answer offers, but I will surely try the spontaneous application method. In these hard times, I do not need any competition, especially when I am barely starting to build up the experience section on my short resume.

Lost in transition

Being lost is one of the scariest feeling I've had to face in my short 23 years of life. The image coming to mind is a crossroads. A windy, cold, dark crossroads and you have no idea which path to follow. So many possibilities leading to so many different outcomes. Eventually though, a choice will have to be made.

It all started two months ago when I learned that someone made a decision impacting on MY future, putting everything I had planned in jeopardy. Bye bye double diploma in London, bye bye international career because none of the solutions offered could allow me to do any of those things anymore. And I got mad, real mad because it took me so much time to finally figure out what I wanted to do with my life for the next five years. I think that is what made it so hard for me to move on. I realised that I had followed a steep yellow brick road that eventually led me to an Emerald City ! And I ended up abruptly taking off my green glasses.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we have all been lost at some point and we will probably be many other times. And well, there is no manual that comes with the unknown, explaining  to you how to safely overcome it. Although I would be really grateful if someone took the time to write one. I could see something like "The Unknown: how to get yourself out of there in 5 easy steps".

All you and I can do is suck it up, hold on tight and do our best until the sky gets blue again, because eventually the storm will pass and it will get better. At least, that is what I like to tell myself. Because in the end, what else can you do, wait and see ? Yeah, well, thank you but no thank you. That will be without me.

PS: For those interested, I ended up changing school. I now still have the opportunity to take a gap year and try and get in a double diploma program in International Marketing in Aberdeen next year.