I had trouble falling asleep last night. I was thinking about the interview I was going to have today with the Jamestown Sun. This newspaper, comparable in size to the California one, is located in North Dakota. The thought of North Dakota kept me tossing for a good 30 min in the dark.
When the prospect of a job gets within range - where you can picture yourself saying goodbye, packing up a U-Haul, and apartment hunting in a foreign place - the once fuzzy picture comes into frighteningly sharp relief.
While waiting to fall asleep, I tried imagining myself living in some small town somewhere (this applies to both papers I've recently interviewed with). It was hard to picture. It was also hard to think that the main reason I turned down the Wisconsin offer was to go to a bigger, better place (paper and city). Well...the prospects I'm facing lately aren't all that grander...
I've had to come to terms with thinking about the job trajectory of my chosen career path. I think I'm going to be starting off small. Smaller than I was originally willing to settle for.
Anyway, back to the interview. I've had conference call phone interviews before but this was the first time I had three people interviewing me at once. It seemed a little excessive, but to their credit, the editor and her assistant editor were originally going to interview me, but the editor had to step away, so another reporter joined in and in the end it just ended up being three vs. me.
I think the interview went okay. The main thing was that since it was a conference call on speaker phone, they sounded all far away and echoey and there was a noticeable lag time. Every time I asked a question or finished a sentence, there was a pause. In my head, I imagined them making eye contact, looking at each other, while I sat and squirmed. I don't like having to imagine what sort of non-verbal cues a group of people are sharing on the other end of the line.
The interview ended with a cool and ominous "we'll be in touch." There weren't many sparks flying with this one.
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an unreliably sporadic account of the search for my first job as a newspaper reporter. the shorter the lifespan of this blog, the easier. the longer, the more interesting.
About Me
- Eunice
- California
- writer. questioner. observer. listener. note-taker. thinker.
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5 comments:
maybe it'll help if you think of the ND job as an adventure with a clearly marked timeline. and years from now you can tell your children that you once chose to live in north dakota in a town where you knew everyone and that you don't regret it one bit. anyway, just wanted to say i hope you find a job that fits like a glove, even if it takes some wriggling at first. oh and i've been meaning to tell you, Clif Bar makes wine! i wanted to tell you because i associate you with clif bar for some reason. my boss told me this, and also that it wasn't very good. i guess they should stick to making tasty health bars.
don't know if this is like what you went through as a senior in high school, but perhaps looking back on your experiences from then can help some of the anxiety (looking at how settled you are now versus how much you miss your old home, and how much that balance has shifted since high school). what are your thoughts?
i think i'll have a hard time leaving atlanta (or at least living more than an hour away from it); but perhaps sometimes we were meant for different things (smaller suburban towns)
hi clif bar :) i took your laptop. mine's the left one on my desk.
btw, we're not going to savannah anymore. we decided to go to tn instead. whew~ i don't have to pretend! when shall we go to "bahamas"?
man that stinks! it's like they're toying with you. they see you squirming, yet they just rub it in yo face! interviews suck!!
on the flip side, i hear wisconsin is pretty nice.
@ jane: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. I wouldn't be moving there indefinitely...North Dakota isn't a black hole that I'd have to claw my way out of...and I'd def like to be able to tell some stories, 50 years from now, that start out, "when I was your age, I walked uphill for nine miles during a freak blizzard in North Dakota..."
That's funny about Clif bars! It's probably your subconscious memory of sophomore year. I kept a Costco-sized box of Clif bars in my dorm. Remember the days of trekking between Gil/Thom and Harris?
Man, your job is sounding more and more Coloradoian...Clif bars and wine. Just throw in a pair of North Face hiking boots in there somewhere.
@ hj: Good point - moving on from college/Atlanta does bear some similarities to graduating high school/leaving home.
But leaving home was nothing short of thrilling for me. I was excited to move on to the next step, which was a clearly defined four-year university education. I was one of those kids who said 'bye' without looking back. I think I gained some real independence during college but never had to deal with adjusting to missing home. I think that'll be more apparent this time around.
@ heej: I look forward to our trip! That's my side hobby nowadays, you know.
@ enoch: Yeah, this one had its uncomfortable moments, most def.
On a different note, my feelings about Wisconsin are kind of....eh. I think Wisconsin has one cool city (Madison). It's kind of like Oregon in that way, with our Madison = Portland. But Portland is better. And Oregon is infinitely cooler.
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