I came here for master degree right after college in china and finished the 2-year program couple of years ago. For our field, it does not make much sense to do PhD, kinda like accounting. After about 3 months of job-hunting, I landed my 1st job in a tiny firm but a big mid-west city. The offer was a little low. I guess there were several reasons I took that offer

1st, market was not good in that year. For a former year, people can get 3-4 offers w/ only about 40 resumes sending. But for my year, it is about 1-2/100.

2nd, I was not experienced enough to tell what is a good offer and what is not. I did not pay attention to the firm size, what projects they were working on, neither the employees.

3rd, I was not tired of hearing my parents talking about this issue on the phone. I know they worried about me, but a little too much pressure.

Anyway, I started working. The beginning was not too bad and I was busy on a fast-paste project through which I learned a lot and I changed to h1b also started my green card application. In about 9months, this project was towards the close-out phase and the market kept going down and down. Several on-board projects were pended for funding issues and of course it was hard to get in new projects. There started layoff. Well, I talked w/ my boss that he could not lay me off since I have statues issue and I offered to do whatever I can do, like in-house document keeping. He was nice to me so I stayed there. I was so stupidly happy w/ the result. The firm kept shrinking till only 3 persons. I did lots of secretarial things. At one point I got loaned to another big firm which is a good opportunity for me to move. They asked me to stay. But ... The damn green card issue came out. I got my labor and I was waiting for 140, I saw my friend got hers approved which was submitted only 3 months earlier than me. So I decided to wait. I told the big firm that I cannot join them blablabla. I went back to my old firm for junky tiny projects. Terrible, finally my 140 got refused since my firm was in bad performance in the consecutive 3 years. I spend a lot of money / time but gained nothing. I left that city and I stayed in another small firm for about 6 months before I landed this job now. The firm can support green card application in a year. I am not 100% happy w/ this firm now even it is a big firm, it won't have the same problem as the former one, but I am just so unsure about the future. I only got 2 years left till when I can start apply GC.  I used to be an aggressive person, but I am getting more and more unconfident on myself. The other thing is I am so eager to get jealous. I cannot help thinking how unlucky I was and feel bad. How should I get out of this situation?

thanks for comforting me. btw, what is that?

以下是引用azureling在2006-8-22 15:12:00的发言：

cft mm

身份绿卡总是一个大问题

mm加油努力吧，一切都会好起来的

Thanks

I kept thinking I did something wrong. I should immediately start looking for new jobs when layoff started. I got plenty time to do it. I guess I was just so eager to get that GC and I heard many successful cases with similar situations so I assumed I will be fine. Everyone around me thinks green card is a big issue, a lot bigger than struggling a while in a not-satisfying firm. That was a bet with a huge risk and a nightmare to me now.

I am so admired to many jms here that they can keep fighting for what they want even after they failed. they never look back, they are always confident and enthusiastic. It is also the reason I am posting my story here. I think the way I read my past might be wrong, not healthy at least. How should I cheer up and get my fighting attitude back? How should I escape from the nightmare trap? How should I be one of the charming working-ladys here?

Hope my case is helpful to some people too.

To tell the truth, I was never jealous of my friend or whoever before so my high school teacher thought I never compared with classmates and I do not care about my performance(at that point, the grades are the only thing you can get jealoused of, right?)

but now, when I heard some good news from friends, I know I should be happy for them, but I cannot do it. I just feel so jealous and try to pick their mistakes or what they lose to balance my feeling. that is so scary. I do not like being this.

I think I read some threads on this board that some people grow better and better through their failure but some people are reversed. It is just like me.