Rejecting My First Real Job Offer

Plus my eight-year-old business and my early action uni

Oh, the joy of being an EU citizen!

Next year, I’ll be taking a gap ‘year’ in Europe in the nine months between when school stops and uni in the US begins.

The ease of getting a job in Europe is very encouraging. Now I know that if I somehow completely mess up in life, there will always be a job for me in Europe serving food, picking apples, or selling tickets!

It’s just so new (and slightly weird) to me, how easy it is to get a job in Europe. In South Africa, there is a 33% unemployment rate (and 46% among youth!!), and it’s similar in Eswatini. There are so many people clamoring for the menial jobs, just to be able to feed their families. It is a failure of the system and of education that unskilled jobs are not just filled, but desperately sought after.

Europe, with a 6% unemployment rate, is a whole different world. I’m hyper-aware of how lucky and privileged I am to have the opportunity to work and live there, as a German citizen.

Here is a very telling graph from Statista. “Breakdown of unemployment rates in G20 countries” by Einar H. Dyvik, (2024).

I was looking for a job in a hotel over the ski season, which would grant me a lively winter environment, lodging, and, of course, the opportunity to try out skiing. My experience in service is limited, but not altogether non-existent. I have barista-ed and done sales at Mabuda Coffee stall at Eswatini’s two largest music festivals, Luju and Bushfire. 

My strategy for getting a job was pretty straightforward - spray and pray. I emailed a number of hotels in Austria, France, and Switzerland requesting a job in service. Some rejected me as unqualified (fair enough), some ignored my email (fair enough), and three asked for an interview with me (yay!).

I was so scared for my first interview, a five-star hotel in Austria called Schlosshotel Ischgl. It would be my first time truly testing my German again, one full decade after leaving the German school in Cape Town. I prepared hard, and spoke to my friends from Europe and North America who have interviewed and worked before, so I could anticipate which questions might be asked. To my pleasant surprise, my interviewers were wholly unintimidating, and my German flowed well (except my failure to remember the German word for ‘country’, Land). After my third interview, I realized that an interview (in this case) means they’ve already decided to have you, but they just want to see you’re a decent human, and make sure you understand what will be required of you.

Picture from Hotel Eiger’s website of their deck and the mountains - this beautiful place is where I am going to be working in two months?!

I have now decided to start working at family-run Hotel Eiger (located in Mürren, Switzerland), the two job offers in Austria having a start date that is too ambitiously soon for me to be able to cart myself around the world in time. I’m so excited to spend a Christmas in the snow, learn a thing or two about customer service (very useful for a budding entrepreneur), and to work in the most beautiful place ever.

Full of Shirt

I was just eleven years old when I designed, printed and sold my first Africa shirt. I think it’s so cool that, eight years later, I’m still doing this. This month, I’ve done an order for fifty shirts. I love picking out the shirt colors, and the ritual of attaching the tags once they’ve been printed at Yebo Art Gallery.

Here is a little video I made after my latest order:

I contribute 50% of profits to the dog food costs of the anti-poaching dogs at Mkhaya Game Reserve. A few months back, my dad and I had a day tour here with the voucher I’d won at the 21km Resolution Run, and I was reminded, once again, of the beauty and lumbering grace of the massive creatures I’m doing my small part to protect.

The guide was super nice - he even let us check out the rhinos on foot! It’s only now that I went to retrieve this photo that I realized I was wearing one of my Africa print shirts - how ironic! I promise that was not planned, lol.

I hope Spotted Rhino will continue when I’m in the US, giving tourists a beautiful reminder of their holiday, and leaving rhinos with just a little more protection. My brother has expressed interest in taking it over, which would be great.

One more piccie from Mkhaya.

Exactly One Month Till…

The Stanford Early Action Deadline! After speaking to an alum from Waterford Kamhlaba who is at Stanford, I’m more excited than ever to make this uni my top choice, and apply early.

Who knows…this could be me next year :). This picture is from Stanford’s website.

Though I’m not making any uni my be-all and end-all, there is something about Stanford’s campus, location, climate, courses, and general vibe that appeals to me. The only thing which is a con is the purported requirement of “booking a fortnight in advance for a coffee date in a fellow student’s crammed Google Calendar” (perhaps to be expected in a uni full of over-achievers). However, the lovely Stanford student I spoke to assured me that, despite being moderately endangered, there exist students who are more easy-going and spontaneous.

I’m glad I still have a whole month to apply, because the eight questions I’ve got to answer for the application are taking a lot of brainpower and tinkering. Something as simple as “five things that are important to me” transforms into a quest to into the depths of creativity. I’ll get there, though. Exciting stuff!