Interview for an internship

When I was 18 I had my first real job interview. I'm not counting the interviews that I had at places like Arby's or Planet Smoothie, which I aced. At Planet Smoothie, I didn't even have to talk to the manager. My "interview" consisted of the manager asking a friend of mine two questions: 1) "will he show up for shifts?" and 2) "will he steal?" All it took was a "yes" and a "no," respectively, and I had a job. But this was the real deal, now: a summer internship with Delta airlines making web pages. This was the stuff resumes were made of.

I had never made a web page until a week prior when I heard about the internship from an "older" gentleman in my digital art group. Today I wouldn't consider this man old, but at the time, he was ancient: he had a real job doing computer stuff, for one, and I think he might have had a steady girlfriend. His success in both the romantic and professional worlds intimidated me.

I decided to make an impressive, professional web page to wow Delta. So I found a picture of this girl I liked from a japanese cartoon and I stuck her in the background. Then I wrote a bunch of stuff about me, the most interesting subject I could think of. I talked about my work experience (none of which pertained to making web pages) and my intention to become either a creative writer or a musician. Did I really think this content was "on target?" I'd like to think I knew I was sabotaging myself, but I'm not so sure. At the time, I remember earnestly wanting the job, but also feeling that it was hopelessly out of my league.

On the day of the interview, I hopped into my stepmom's Toyota Corolla and began the journey from one side of Atlanta to the other. Delta, being an airline, was located near the airport. My interview was at 8am, and the drive was one hour each way, so I was on the road by about 6:50. As an 18-year old, I objected to the early hour on principle. It was a hot, smoggy, summer morning and the radio in the Corolla was dead, killed supposedly by lightning that struck nearby as my stepmom was driving. So I listened to the growl of the road as I began to sweat and stick to the driver's seat through my ill-fitting dress shirt.

My stepmother is a wonderful woman, but not a fantastic driver. Highways make her nervous, and the Corolla is underpowered which doesn't help. On long drives, she finds a truck and drives about 10 feet behind it the whole way, making for limited scenery (how's my driving?) and a misguided sense of security. It's sort of like a toddler hiding by covering his eyes; if she can't see the road, the road can't see her. When I inherited the car, I also inherited the bottle of Midol in the glove compartment. My friend Kevin used to throw the pills at unhappy looking people from the car window. Maybe a Midol would help. On my drive, I didn't find a truck to hide behind, and I didn't take a Midol, but I didn't drive very aggressively, either. I was a new driver, and the massive Atlanta highways frightened me.

When I finally arrived at the scene of my interview, I was surprised at how nondescript the building was. This was before I learned that corporations often have many offices, and they typically aren't very themed. I didn't know of the sea of beige that waits in most workplaces, and I don't think I even knew the word cubicle. But I went inside and was somehow directed to the interview room.

Once there, I was seated across the table from three Delta employees, none of whom I had ever spoken to. They were wearing light shirts and dark pants in blue tones, classic business casual, and one of them had a briefcase with gold buckles on it. I was immediatley conscious of the fact that my sleeves were too short. To make matters worse, though my friend in the art group had suggested I apply for the job, he was not invovled with the hiring, so nobody would be throwing me softballs or better yet answering the questions for me. I also realized pretty quickly that my connection did not make me a shoe-in for the job. They jumped in, one after the other, piling on like a congressional panel. They asked tough questions, questions I had not foreseen, like "why do you want this job?" and "have you ever coded a web page before?" The real zinger, though, the one that sticks with me to this day, was "why did you choose Carnegie Mellon?"

The man who asked the question sat at the center of the table. I don't know how old he was. At the time, he had the aura, again, of somebody "old" - somebody with their life in order. Somebody with a job and a car of their own, with an apartment and a fridge with their own milk in it and the breakfast cereal of their choice. He looked at me with intensity. I could imagine his leather-soled foot tapping. I had done a terrible job of answering his questions, which might have explained his testy tone. After all, why was I wasting his time?

Why did I choose Carnegie Mellon? The real answers seemed absurd: because I missed snow. Because there were more women there than at Georgia Tech. Because I had fond memories of going places in New York with my grandmother that were named after Carnegie. Because I had a fascination with number-two anythings, with slight underdogs. Carnegie Mellon was probably every bit as good a school as MIT, but it didn't have the name, or the money, or maybe it had a slight inferiority complex and a need to prove itself, like I did. When I visited, I walked to class during a blizzard, and I stayed in a co-ed dorm. I loved the hunger, the passion of students willing to walk through snow to sit in a lecture hall and learn about physics, which I also loved. And I loved the idea of a co-ed dorm half full of incredibly brainy women and half full of guys who wouldn't be more athletic than me. I was sold.

The decision to go to Carnegie Mellon was not an easy one. That place is expensive. My parents objected to the debt I would be taking on, and intially refused to co-sign on my loans, an effective veto over my desire to attend. I wouldn't have had the courage to go had it not been for my 12th grade english teacher, who said, simply and emphatically, "You go, Jesse. You go there and you make yourself indispensable to them." And that's exactly what I did.

But that day, in Atlanta, when asked the question "Why did you choose Carnegie Mellon?," I didn't have a good answer. After a second or so of silence, my interviewer supplied an answer for me. "I guess you wanted to spend a lot of money for no reason," he said.

Needless to say I didn't get the job. But I'd like to think the experience taught me a few things. That one hour was too far to commute, especially in Atlanta. That car stereos are very important, and should be repaired when they break. That in life, the truism "it's not just what you know, but who you know" does actually apply. That corporate buildings are not theme parks, and that some of the people who work in them are bitter enough to snipe at a nervous eighteen year-old in way over his head. But most of all, this interview affirmed a belief that I hold to this day: the belief that things work out the way they're meant to, and that a little self-sabotage can protect you from people, things and places that aren't right for you.

Today, I can shuck and jive. I know how to answer questions to give people the impression that they want so I can get the results I want. I don't talk about my band during job interviews, unless I'm trying to demonstrate my creativity, or my ability to maintain a healhty work-life balance, or unless I'm explaining how I channel my passion towards non-work activities so that I can maintain the expected level of professional detachment in the workplace. I know what to say, and when to say it, but I often wonder if I should bother. After all, in many cases I'm the one asking the questions, now. I'm the one who's had the girlfriend, the apartment, my own box of fruity pebbles. And now it's a wife, a house, a kid and a hot cup of lapsang suchong. But what I envy most, what I miss, what I hunger to recreate is the intuitive sense of self, the audacious confidence and the inate courage that inspired an 18-year old, however subconsciously, to bomb the interview for an on-paper dream job that wasn't right for him, that he just really didn't need.