you wanna know what i was doing today?
I posted the following to an actuarial students’ forum.
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Ideal job. Near home. Work on mutual funds/product design. In other words, where do I sign?
Then… comes the INTERVIEW. (terrified scream in background).
1. Typo on resume. Wrote 2004-05 for my stint in a mathematics Ph.D. program rather than 2003-04 (when it actually happened). This did not concern me too much, I calculated, because they had to have seen it, figured out what I meant to say, and called me in for an interview anyway. I sent my app on Monday, they called Tuesday, and I went in today. They pointed it out, I apologized and affirmed that their internal error-correcting code was indeed correct, and let it go.
Content portion of interview went okay, until last two minutes. When it all went wrong. (terrified scream)
2. The dreaded cell phone ring. I brought it in case my car crapped out (more on that later), realized halfway through the three hour session that I hadn’t turned it off before I came in the building. Sure enough, two minutes before we were concluding, the damned thing rang. On the exterior, I coolly silenced it after the first ring and said “I’m terribly sorry”. Internally, I figured I was sunk.
3. On the way home, my car snapped a tie-rod going over a set of train tracks. I’d been having problems with it, but I wasn’t doing anything at an unreasonable speed. The next thing I knew, one tire was pointing one way, and the second tire was pointing another way, and I was sitting in a corn field twenty feet from the road. (Thankfully, I wasn’t going very fast.)
Nothing injured but my pride. I figure I’m down one good job and one good car today.
I figured you all could use a laugh. I know I could. I could also use a (read: several) strong drink (read: drinks).
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Catch you tomorrow.
Jo on
08.30.2007 @ 22:29
Really? I can’t imagine a company NOT hiring you simply because of a cell phone ring.
No, if you don’t get the job, it will probably be because of the chunk of noodle stuck in your beard from the soup you had for lunch.
09.03.2007 @ 11:05
Sigh.
In general, cellphones going off at socially- or professionally-awkward times isn’t the end of the world, but “awkward” is the operative term here. This past spring, a class of mine inadvertently learned that a young lady in the class had selected “Crazy Bitch” as her ring-tone when her husband calls her. A bit awkward all the way ’round, especially considering that said young lady hadn’t been cutting the sort of public figure one would associate with such a ring-tone.
Anyway. When do you expect to hear?
09.03.2007 @ 15:59
Hopefully this week.