solarhippie | Guidance Counselor's Office, Wednesday

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Guidance Counselor's Office, Wednesday

Was the guidance counselor doing her own homework in the office today? Yes, yes she was. She was taking a class on navigating the currrent job market this term, and this week's task was to create a LinkedIn profile and an online resumé.

The latter was the cause for the occasional, soft 'goddammit's coming from Karolina's office.

She was not very technically minded, and anyway, that site that was supposed to help her was totally working against her, and had probably been designed by a villain. And that was her frustration before even getting to the issues with what she had to fill the resumé with, which was... not a whole lot. 'Freelance superhero, 2012 - present' just didn't sound that professional.

Someone please rescue her.

[ooc: Open office!]

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Tony had his class this morning, so he was caffeinated enough to catch onto that. But just barely.

"You okay?"

Karolina looked up, making a face. Furrowed brow and scrunched-up nose and everything. "Tony, this website hates me."

And apparently it was frustrating enough that she didn't even stumble on calling him by his first name, so hey. Something positive even about this situation, even if she wasn't likely to notice it herself.

It was adorable of her!

"If it's Facebook or Twitter, you're correct."

Karolina had the kind of face where most emotions looked kind of adorable, no lie.

"It's not either of those, I actually know how to use those," she complained, gesturing at her computer. "It's this site that I'm supposed to use to build a resumé online and it just, it keeps shifting things around when I don't want it to!"

'Exasperated' was pretty cute too.

"Alright, alright," Tony said with a laugh as he scooted around to look at the screen. "Billionaire tech support is here to help."

"Look," she said, gesturing at the screen in a way that was probably best described as 'helpless'. And also 'vague', at first, before she pointed at a particular spot. "That keeps shifting all the way to the right like that whenever I try to add a picture! And I don't understand why."

It was a pretty simple-looking editor. No coding necessary, just clicking and dragging, and filling in existing text boxes with your own text. So, she was aware that it shouldn't have been this difficult.

"I don't get what I'm doing wrong."

"Okay, take a breath." He inhaled deeply as though to demonstrate, waving a hand to encourage her along.

Karolina looked briefly like she was intending to protest, but then she did actually paused to breathe in. (Focused, like her therapist had told her to do.) Then she looked just a touch sheepish.

"It's just supposed to be easy to use," she explained, "and it's not."

"It's harder when you're stressing out," he assured her. "Things snowball."

"I think this was designed to be stressful," Karolina replied, a little on the wry side, as she brushed her hair back over her shoulder. "And I haven't even gotten to filling out my non-existent previous work experience yet."

"Then they upsell you on getting help with it," Tony replied. "You have work experience here at least. Everything else is just getting creative with the explanations."

"And how would you explain that I was a runaway and a superhero between the ages of like fifteen until twenty?"

Because she honestly didn't know how to sell that to potential employers.

"Self-motivated and accustomed to working in a team environment?" He could make so much sound reasonable, huh?

It made Karolina snort a little, at the very least.

"Yeah, but where will I say I learned that?"

"On your sabbatical from school." Yes. Call it a sabbatical and people might buy that.

"I guess?"

She didn't sound entirely convinced, but it was a start.

"And I mean, I'm grateful that I graduated from here at least, because I could've just as easily have ended up with no high school diploma at all."

It hadn't seemed very important to continue with school, what with everything else that had been happening.

"It might have helped that this school is... unique? And gets blown up less than the X-Mansion."

LOW BAR, TONY,

Yeah, she was frowning at him a little, right now. And getting an unimpressed look from Karolina Dean, no matter how slight, was kind of a feat.

"I don't think that's a bar we should be using," she said. "Most schools don't get blown up. Most buildings don't, especially repeatedly."

Look, there weren't many schools for kids like her!

"I'd know that if I didn't fund the Avengers, you know."

You know what, some pretty obvious questions were occurring to her, right about now.

"Should I even be asking you this?" she asked, eyebrows knitting together as her head tilted to the side. "I mean, have you ever had to make a resume before?"

Wait, wow, she just heard herself, aaand here came the little gasp and the hand that came up o her mouth.

"No offense, oh my God."

At least Tony wasn't offended by it! He laughed instead, shaking his head.

"Well, you're not wrong. I've seen a number of them in my time at least."

"... Fair." It did make sense. "Still, sorry."

"When I was your age, I'd probably take offense. But then... I was an idiot around then. So you can safely say you have a better head on your shoulders than a billionaire of the same age."

Did that help?

Maaaybe?

"Thanks, I guess," she said. Mostly because she was wary of accepting compliments that involved people putting themselves down - even past versions. "But you turned out okay, too."

See, yeah, there came the need to reassure.

He was just full of casual self loathing. No big deal.

"I did," he granted her. "Took some time to get myself together. But I think that's also what your twenties are for."

He gestured toward the computer to illustrate his point to her.

Karolina shrugged, sheepishness turning a little more wry. It was progress.

"These are... maybe kinda the moments where I wonder if I really have something to offer for this job," she said. "Or if I'm still way too deep in the process of figuring myself out to help anyone else."

"I think that anyone who claims to have it all together is either lying to you or to themselves," Tony said with a conspiratorial little grin. "Is this what you want to do?"

"I think so," she said, nodding slowly. "Right now it is, at least. I just want... to help."

Karolina Dean in a nutshell.

"So that maybe at least one or two kids might have it easier than I did. Especially if they're... different." Because guess what, Tony, you weren't the only one with self-loathing issues! Though Karolina's were mostly behind her.

Hey, he understood that! It was literally why he was a futurist.

"And you'll understand them in a way other people won't," he replied. "A poorly formatted resume website isn't going to beat you."

Karolina snorted, softly.

"It might give me a bad grade, though."

"Then we engage in a little light hacking." No big.

"... How light?"

"It's me," he said with a little dismissive wave. "I'll probably make it run better."

Karolina's head tilted. "Kiiinda sounds like cheating?"

Sort of?

Look, she would be concerned about something like that.

"Cheating would be making people pick your resume. We're just going to make sure it looks nice even with the system being difficult." Of course that'd be his opinion on it.

Luckily Karolina had also always been pretty easily swayed with halfway decent reasoning.

"Well, I guess that's not so bad," she said. "I mean, I don't know if I should cry over this assignment as much as I want to."

"If it helps, I think I cried over a few assignments in college too," Tony said, eyes going a little blank as he accessed the computer with his brain to tweak a few things for her.

It was a bit like IT remote accessing a computer!

She'd been teammates with Victor Mancha, so it was a little less weird for her than it might have been otherwise.

It was still a little weird, though.

"... Oh wow."

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Guidance Counselor's Office, Wednesday

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