apply[əˈplaɪ]
to formally ask for a job or a place, usually in writing
ExamplesShe had applied for eleven jobs before this one.
Word tags
Twenty words you meet in your first month at any job – in a short story where all of them actually appear.
Maya had for eleven jobs before this one, and by the eleventh she had stopped expecting an answer. So when the email came – she was the strongest , could she start on Monday – she read it three times before she believed it.
Her , Dan, met her at the door on the first morning. He was blunt but : whatever he promised by Friday appeared by Friday. "Your will look ridiculous for two weeks," he said. "Then it won't. Everyone thinks they're the exception. Nobody is."
He was right. The first arrived before she felt ready, and she stayed late twice, though nobody asked her to. She was not paid and she did not mention it. Her was fifty minutes each way, which she spent reading, and by the end of the second week the journey had become the calmest part of her day.
The work itself was mostly small – checking figures, chasing a who never answered, sitting quietly in meetings she did not yet understand. Her were friendly in the careful way people are with someone new. One of them, Priya, was openly and said so without embarrassment, which Maya found she admired.
In the third week Dan asked her to help a small , mostly to watch how it was done. The was and changed his mind twice. Maya said almost nothing, took notes, and afterwards Dan gave her the first real she had received: she listened well, she wrote clearly, and she apologised far too often.
She stopped apologising. It was a small thing, and it improved everything.
By the end of the month she could the routine work without asking, and she had begun to with the parts that were not routine. Nobody mentioned a and nobody mentioned her , and she understood that this was normal, that the first month is not where those conversations happen. What she had was smaller and more useful: she had become someone the team could give work to and stop worrying about. She was, for the first time, for something real.