Nervous wreck

I’ve been a nervous wreck since my interview on Wednesday. Deep inside I was hoping that I’d hear something by Friday, but Friday was here and gone and there were no news from anyone. I thought “surely they’ll meet no later than Thursday and make a decision and then notify the lucky applicant on Friday.” So if I had to guess, they notified some other applicant on Friday and now are waiting to hear back from that person and see if he or she wants the job.

I may be wrong, after all it took them a while to select me for the in-person interview. I personally felt really good about this face-to-face interview but then who knows if my answers contained the content that they were looking for. My interview with the search committee went well if you ask me, but I left the room without a sense of what they thought of me. In fact, at the end of that first interview, a comment was made about a position that may available in the future in case I didn’t get the job. Were they trying to tell me that they didn’t like me that much? My next meeting was with the director of the department with whom I think I got along very well and we agreed on a lot of issues facing their department and their potential effects and resolutions.

Everyone around me is acting as if I will get the job offer, I am not so sure. And it’s weird because I’m normally a very optimistic person, but maybe it is because I want this job so badly that I am trying not to get excited because I know it will really suck if I am rejected. It’s a job in a department that is the best of its kind in the United States, they have visitors constantly going there wanting to see how they operate. It is also in a city and area that I like and it’d be awesome to move there. So getting that job would be a real treat both professionally and personally. But the wait is killing me.

Posted by david at 8:33 am | Permalink |

Filed under Personal

The interview is over

I almost didn’t make it to my interview on time! I called a cab 45 minutes ahead of my scheduled interview for a mile-long ride. The cab took forever to get to the hotel. I was planning on looking around the campus before my interview but due to the late taxi, I had just enough time to make it to the interview 10 minutes before the appointed time, which is what is recommended.

I had 2 different interviews with different people. Overall I feel I did fairly well, definitely better than my phone interview if you ask me. I do not know who the other candidates are, so maybe I am against very stiff competition. It is also hard to tell what is in their minds, maybe I feel I interviewed well, but my answers may have not contained the type of information that they were looking for.

There is nothing more for me to do than to sit and wait for a phone call or a rejection letter. Let’s hope for the best. The department is impressive and the people seem very friendly. I would love to become a part of their staff.

Here’s hoping!

Posted by david at 7:56 pm | Permalink |

Filed under Personal

August 23rd 2005

Make it stop!

Greetings from the Atlanta airport where I am waiting for the next flight to take me to my final destination so that I can attend my job interview tomorrow. We arrived from Kansas about 10 minutes early and my next flight was simply 2 gates down the hallway. But as luck would have it, my next flight was delayed for an hour.

So here I am, sitting, checking out the Internets and waiting for the plane to get here from, I think, Reno, so that we can board and leave. The problem is that it has now started raining hard. And I mean hard. I haven’t seen rain like this in quite a while. And my guess is that they won’t allow any planes to land until this rain stops because I see several planes just sitting on the runway waiting to take off, so I imagine that all air traffic is frozen until the rain leaves.

Could someone please make it stop? I got home from China at 9:30 pm last night and I was home for literally just 12 hours before I left for the airport. I would love to get to the hotel, sit back, watch some TV and get a good night’s rest before my interview.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Update: The plane that was supposed to arrive from Reno got sent to like Memphis to refuel because it had to circle for so long without being allowed to land. Eventually they got us in another plane but then it took like 30 minutes for us to even take off due to the long line of planes that also had to depart. I finally made it to my hotel at midnight and went to bed almost immediately. The interview is later today, let’s hope it all goes well!

Posted by david at 5:22 pm | Permalink |

Filed under Pointless

Greetings from this side of the world

I arrived back from China last night at around 9:30 pm. The trip was great, definitely the experience of a lifetime. I had a little bit of trouble with the food, but other than that, it was definitely something so different to anything else I have seen or experienced.

It is now 6:30 am and I’m up and running again since I have to get to the airport in a few hours again so that I can fly out for my face to face interview for a new job. I hope it goes well as it is something that I would really love to get.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post an update soon, I believe that the hotel I’ll be staying at has free Internet access.

Posted by david at 6:36 am | Permalink |

Filed under Pointless

August 19th 2005

Shaolin Temple

Here is a picture of me and my travel companion in China at the Shaolin Temple. I didn’t tell him I was going to post his picture on the Internets, so I pixelated his face.

Posted by david at 9:25 am | Permalink |

Filed under Personal

August 17th 2005

Hot Pot

Last night they took me to a restaurant that they called “Hot Pot”. It meant just that, a pot in the middle of the table, where they boiled water and oil. The waitress would bring different types of meat and throw them in the pot. You would then use your chopsticks to fish the meat out of the boiling water. Similar to a fondue really. I of course was unable to grab any moving targets with chopsticks so they finally brought me spoon type thing to help me get some food.

They also served “hot liquor”, or “paint thinner” as I called it (because I think it said so on the label.) I’ve shot everclear before, but this stuff made everclear taste like chocolate milk. One small ceramic cup of it and I had a very good buzz.

My normally very composed Chinese hosts got wasted on a single cup, what followed was a night of some of them making penis jokes and others attempting to spit fire by blowing the left-over hot liquor over an open flame.

It was definitely a memorable night and a good time was had by all.

Posted by david at 5:00 pm | Permalink |

Filed under Observations, Personal

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