I did my interview today, and I think I did decent. The thing about it, I won’t know for awhile if I did well enough.
I’ve been over it with my wife and father, and they both said I should just keep going, keep looking.
Even though it might be futile. Especially, it seems to me. Panel interviews are tough to begin with, a panel with three cops (one of whom is the chief of police), and a member of city counsel. I’ve never had so many important people looking at me for an hour.
and that’s just it, I’m not important, not yet anyway. Maybe I will be, it would be nice to be important.
but I just have to keep sowing the seed, or ploughing the damn field, seems the same way of saying praying for good soil, no pests and just the right amount of rain. Which is a fair point, if I homestead I’d be trusting as much in faith as I am here. Good ol’ agnostic amatuer theologian me. Jesus talked a lot about soil, more than about a good amount else. Fishers of men too. Not much about lures though, or fertilizer. I swear it’s relevant. If you’re fishing and you aren’t pulling up what you are looking for, you look at your lure. Maybe it’s the wrong lure. If your plants aren’t growing right, you add stuff to the soil to help it. Neither of those jobs are exactly passive, not if you’re counting on some kind of return.
but sometimes you pull back empty nets, and the crops fail, and somehow you’ve still got to get up and try again
that’s what I’m getting at. I think that’s what’s required, and that’s why it’s so damn hard. When you’ve tried your hardest, and it still might not be enough.
15 comments
Good luck dude…hope you get it, but I agree with the others, don’t count your chickens…just keep applying/interviewing.
It’s funny when I was in my 20s I was so eager to get a good job…but by my 40s, I really couldn’t give a fcuk….I mean I’d do the needful, but I was no longer intimdated by the interviewers, nor did I really care about getting the job, except ofc I did it for the money.
Trouble with me is that I’ve been stuck in the low to average income level and I hate it. Seeing all my friends and my family get everything they wanted, esp. a house really bites.
About 20 yrs ago, when I couldn’t find work in my field, someone dropped an opportunity which at the time I didn’t know was a real winner…basically if I did a certain course, I’d get a higher paying job.
My brother-in-law who heard of the same opp jumped on it with all he had…I was personally so sick of university books, that I decided to pass on it.
He had these huge books to go through but after 6 months or so, he landed that well paying job….it did make me wonder if I shouldn’t have done the same. It’s obvious now since I had nothing better going on at the time, ofc I should’ve as well.
I can’t recall what I was doing at the time, but my head wasn’t in the game…looking back now at how broke and desperate he was (with my sister)…I can see why he jumped onto it and I should’ve done the same. It’s because I earned enough that I wasn’t so desperate for money.
I realize now I should’ve done the same and I think I would’ve been in a way better place…probably would’ve paid off a house by now.
Sometimes you wonder if you’re the fool in life…making terrible choices, not grabbing onto the good ones….being lazy when I should be aggressive…and vice versa.
Here I am 20 yrs later, in a bad place…barely holding onto a crappy job…my idiot dad carries some of that blame for my current situation…he ruined chances for me when I was younger…he doesn’t even remember the crap he did nor would he ever take any responsibility for it.
If my mother wasn’t around, it’d just be a lot easier to opt for euthanasia. I have health issues, I’m older now…little to keep living for. Not to be a downer…I sincerely wish you well on your job opps.
honestly, most I’ve cared in years about a job. That’s the pain, because for a variety of reasons, this is/was an oppertunity to matter again, do work that matters.
and I’m not obsessed enough to chase that any more than this. Someone sent me the opening, and I tossed out an application thinking that would be it. I didn’t expect the interview. Now I’ve done the interview, and I realize that I kind of expect it to become something. I’m still cynical, but I can’t lie effectively enough to prep for this specific interview and dissociate completely.
I’ll say this; if this comes up crap, I’m probably not going to care again for a long time. I let myself manifest anxiety like I haven’t had since I applied and was passed over for grad school.
It’s the faust of it all, like “I sold my soul, gave my all for this stupid outcome. If that wasn’t enough…..” what then? what then?
TBH, if the devil was hiring, sounds like he’s a more faithful employer than most.
Lol I hear…nice ending line.
Well when I had given up on my field, I actually got an opportunity with a company and I didn’t think I’d get it…but it went better than I thought. Only hitch was there was some travel involved and I wasn’t too keen on that…so I had to let it go, but I realize that was a mistake as well….actually there’s more to the story, but I can’t get into it.
Ya rejection is a tough pill to swallow but you can’t let it get your down….I guess I’m the same way, I kind of give up for a while, then later on I try again at something else.
“Sometimes you wonder if you’re the fool in life…making terrible choices, not grabbing onto the good ones….being lazy when I should be aggressive…and vice versa.”
>>oh god, do i ever. we zigged instead of zagged. -_-
-but my “bad” decisions were not choosing the right college (the college i went to was ranked #1 in the state, my idiot friend friend with a 2.5 GPA was kicked from my school and went to an expensive college for dumb ppl, got hooked up with rich kids with rich parents and got hooked with a sweet job and is now making ~200K),
-not choosing the major i wanted (genetic engineering, bc the college i wanted to go to cost $$$$ and they only gave me 50% aid, and 50% of a shitton is still $$$$, meanwhile the field EXPLODED and had I went into this field, which only really smart ppl could get in, I would have been making 6 figures after getting my bachelors, certainly after getting my masters, and i would have been surround by nerds, which is MUCH preferable to the avg person bc the avg person are such shitty co-workers).
-not choosing the right city/state to live (i got run over by a car by a shitty ass person as soon as i moved to a particular city/state). changed my life forever
-just examples like that, where it’s not obvious they were the wrong choices, but in the end, ultimately WERE the wrong choices.
and is the blame ours? or would the universe fuck us anyway, no matter what choices i made? i oddly blame both…
It’s crazy how similar lives can be though they play out in different ways….I value my friends and I’m glad I met them but it wasn’t worth the hell I went through in my program to have them. Still I had tunnel-vision, because I thought getting this hard degree would give me a great name/rep and ofc the money as well.
I’m also in a nerdy field as well and I agree I like nerds more than average people…I mean the ‘fun’ nerds…there are some with bad social skillz in my program who give us a bad name and I avoid those. But the ones who are well read, easy going, etc…they’re nice to be around and very funny and interesting too.
As you’re growing up you don’t even value what you have and know…not to mention the good qualities as well. When you look around, you realize so few people possess a lot of great characteristics.
But getting back to what you said, ya the rich have a very easy ride in life…and have all the great hookups.
The choices we make matter a lot even as a young adult and some decisions can hurt us for life, like your car accident…like me hanging with the wrong crowd in my late teens. Some mistakes are irredeemable and alters the course of our lives.
That’s why at times I not only hated my life but myself. How can someone so smart make such stupid decisions, or why not make less dumb ones…or why not listen to friends/family when they’re all telling you the same thing? Ugh
I really had it good…despite my depression, being poor, etc…I still had plenty of chances for ending up in at least a middle-class cushy life, if not upper…and ofc I’ve already mentioned the chances I had with an s/o and yes I let all these good opportunities slip through my fingers.
It’s the old “another train will come along” mentality…I missed out on that great job or that great girl, but Ithought to myself I’m still ‘young’ there will be more. And fortunately for me they did come along for a while but then I still didn’t act when I should’ve….till those trains finally stopped coming.
Had I took advantage, I doubt I would’ve ending up thinking about suicide…I would’ve just lamented getting old and whined about how short life is.
What’s worse is that I think in the future they will cure old age and allow us to live in our 20s forever….and we’ll have missed that too. I mean if you could be young, healthy, looked your best….had a good education, lots of money then you’d live the dream anyone could want in this life.
the thing is- I didn’t know it was a rich school for rich kids. and that life was ALL about connections.
at the time, i didn’t have a computer to even look anything up (this was right around the time when only rich/middle class ppl had computers and the poor didn’t. this was when computers first came out and not everyone had them yet, and probably wasn’t too much information on the web then like there is now.
at the time, i thought life was about hard work, and merits, and if you were smart and worked hard, you’d get somewhere in life.
and i thought it was the “smart” thing to go to the top #1 ranked public school (i couldn’t afford any of the private schools). and the university that had the Genetic Engineering program was private. At the time it was 40K a year which was A LOT, and I was only given aid for 20K/yr. Where the fuck was I gonna come up with 20K/yr x4? I thought 80K in loans is excessive, so I decided NOT to go into the GE program.
It is now 72K a year. Also a school for rich kids. If I had gone there, I would have gotten my GE degree, my time at the uni would have been very easy vs at my school where it was full of smart kids and very competitive, i would’ve gotten a job right out of school, and got paid very well, had I gone to that school and gotten that degree that became “hot” in 4 years.
Meanwhile, I chose to go to the competitive #1 state school, had a hard time competing against everyone bc they were all immigrants and smart and studied way too much (asians, indians, russians etc) so it was competitive af and everything was graded on a curve so competing against really smart ppl make the 4 years difficult- every assignment, every test, all graded on a curve against the smartest and hardest working ppl. I busted my ass and still had a decent GPA, but that GPA wasn’t good enough for a masters program in anything good (I had a 3.3 GPA in the end- decent but not good enough).
Meanwhile if I had gone to the rich kids school, I could have fucking COASTED the entire 4 years. I would have gotten a 4.0 GPA (back when GPA was a total of 4.0 and getting over 3.5 was insanely hard). I know I would have gotten a 4.0 bc my idiot friend who went to that other rich kids school wound up with a 4.0 GPA- which is fucking INSANE considering she was KICKED from my school after consistently getting a 2.5, 2.3, 2.2 GPAs. On paper, they made her look like a genius- 4.0 GPA. Easy peasy tests and coursework. Lots of rich kids to befriend and get hooked up by their parents who were all in high positions.
Meanwhile all the ppl in my school were immigrants, had NO connections, had NO rich mommies and daddies, and yet work the type to work their ass off- like me- to get ahead in life. The problem is that they were ALL hard-working, so it made the entire 4 years there SO hard and competitive.
OH- I also knew another person at the same rich person college that my dumb friend went to. That person was actually smart, and she got hooked up rich friends and connections and got a 6 figure salary job at graduation. Same as my idiot friend with a “4.0” GPA. They both had a bullshit 4.0 GPA.
Meanwhile I busted my ass and only got 3.3 GPA. I couldn’t get into grad school or other programs with that shit GPA.
I could indeed have gotten a 4.0 GPA at that rich person private school and just coasted the entire 4 years there, and gotten a 6 figure salary job by graduation.
It just pisses me off to no end that I chose the wrong fucking school. On paper, my school was better in every way- better rankings, smarter students, lower cost, etc.
Only when I got there, I realized what a dump of a school it was- the school was cheap and stingy- didn’t spend a dime on food- the cafeteria food was LITERALLY served by ex-cons, bc ex-cons were cheaper to hire than normal minimum wage ppl. Our classrooms and dorms and buildings- were shit. Go to any other private university and damn, the buildings feel luxury. And did I mention the dorms were SHIT?
Anyhow, my life would have been SO different had I gone to ANY other fucking university. To work so hard and to get NOWHERE in life. God. Fucking. Damn.
OH- I had skipped a grade in school and started college at 15 btw- so I definitely would have gotten a “4.0” GPA at the 2 expensive private schools. I mean, if my idiot 2.5 GPA friend got a 4.0 GPA at that school… sigh…
ONE FUCKING “wrong” decision changed my life forever. How was I supposed to know it was the wrong one? It was literally the most logical school to go to- the best rated with the lowest cost. But it was the WORST choice I could have made. Literally the worst.
is this the 2nd round of interviews at this place?
no this is the single round. I interviewed with a different place back in January, and this one went better than that one did.
I can’t help but be superstitious, and keeping trying to read signs when I rationally know there’s nothing there. The first interview this year, I got up at the crack of dawn, drove an hour through rain and unpleasantness, then let a little thing whiff me and I know where I screwed up on that one.
This one, I didn’t screw up that I know of. It was a beautiful sunny day.
it’s just, not knowing, I hate the power imbalance in this process between a potential employee and company thinking of hiring them. Nowhere else in our society do we allow another to humiliate us like this. It’s why I’m washed up, and if this doesn’t come to anything I’m going to step on the gas for GTFO, because if something this promising doesn’t come to anything…….. what reason have I to hope for better?
“then let a little thing whiff me and I know where I screwed up on that one.”
>>what do you mean? they got wind of your depression? u said a little too much about something?
I was a little too honest. I had some feelings about how a last job had gone down, feelings that have no place in any interview ever, and I let it slip.
interviews are a sales pitch, if you manage to stick to what you want them to know, that’s the hardest part
I’ve probably done that too, but yes definitely try to keep feelings outand if you have your own mental struggles (obviously) never tip them off…it can be a deal-killer. Always keep it friendly and professional…make them believe their search is at an end, you’re the one they want.
that’s odd- to have 3 ppl interviewing you is usually the final stage of interviews, not the first.
first and last round, by my understanding. Multiple rounds would be kinder/easier. But then they’d be giving everybody that advantage and it probably wouldn’t help me as much as I think.
Oh and it was six people interviewing me; 3 cops, city counsel guy, their head of domestic violence intervention and the recruiter, though the last two hardly spoke
did they tell you in advance it was going to be a 6 person panel interview?