Tell Me About Yourself

Through blind luck, I managed to successfully do some rudimentary networking. At a party last Friday, I met a guy who's an upper-level employee at one of the companies I applied for back in May. I told him about my attempts to apply to his company, and he told me that they receive a lot of entry-level applicants so I shouldn't feel bad; however, he said that they like young people with a background in research and writing - I just need a way to get my foot in the door. He gave me his contact information, and I sent him my resume and cover letter. He forwarded them on to a division head, and she was impressed. The original guy got back to me, and he told me that I should be expecting a call for a screening interview in the near future. If I get through that, they'll call me in for an in-person interview.

My size-15 foot is successfully in their door.

I am, of course, elated. In fact, I've been borderline giddy. It's all I can do to keep from dancing in the streets and giggling like a schoolgirl. The irony of sending out 55 resumes and cover letters for six months and then falling ass-backwards into an interview because of a kegger in Kittanning is not lost on me. At this stage of the game, I'd be happy with just about any job, but it's a nice bonus that this is actually a company that I'd like to work for. Furthermore, it's in Washington D.C., which would give me a chance to live in a whole new kind of place. This is a particularly nice thing to have land in my lap.

Of course, being a glass-half-empty kind of guy, I can't help but worry about the interview process. Despite my dexterity and intellectual saavy with the written word, I can be clumsy, nervous, and painfully awkward in actual conversations. I stutter, hesitate, and fill my pauses with lengthy "ummm"s and "well"s. In order to call up companies for contact information or to request an interview, I've had to practice speaking on the telephone because I tend to talk in a dreary monotone when I'm on the phone. You should have seen me in my room repeatedly saying "Hello, how are you today?" in dozens of different tones in order to find that right mix of casual but professional, definitive but humble, and cheery but mellow. A passing psychologist might have suspected me of schizophrenia.

You would think that someone with a Masters degree in English would have an easier time speaking the language. One might even think it a requirement for graduation. But no, I have to practice sounding natural. The fact that this is hard for me merely reinforces my already developing suspicion that I'm typically unnatural. For my upcoming interviews, I've typed notes with personal information and lines that I need to remember when talking to important people. I've even scrawled "TALK SLOWLY" and "SMILE" all over these note sheets.

My natural inclination when talking about myself is to make self-deprecating comments. It's a defense mechanism that's probably symptomatic of a personality disorder, but it's also a bad instinct in a job interview when you're trying to make yourself sound like the best thing to happen to a business since discount toilet paper. Lines like, "I taught English for two years because they couldn't find any chimps to do it for free," might not go over so well.

I've done a screening interview before. After I applied to my third job way back in April, a company in Uniontown called me up. I fielded the screener's questions for about 20 minutes, and I got off the phone feeling very good about the interview. A week later I got an email informing me of their rejection. Now I'm extremely suspicious of my own ability to assess a "good" interview. The screening interview is supposed to simply weed out obviously sub-par candidates in order to limit the number of people they have to talk to in person. Being weeded out by a company in Uniontown after a simple screening interview is disheartening. In retrospect, I can remember sounding very wishy-washy about my qualifications and doing my usual stuttering. I can see why I was rejected.

In some ways, the screening interview scares me more because everything relies on the voice. In person, there's a lot more give and take, and I can take my cues from the other person's behavior. I'm dying to get this damned screening interview out of the way. I don't know when it's coming, so I just have to be prepared at all times. (It's sort of like being a reader of this blog. You just don't know when to expect an update.) I'm excited and terrified at the same time. This sort of emotional roller coaster could drive a man to gorge himself on pumpkin pie. And that's exactly how I plan to excuse last week's diet.

One of the few good things about a lengthy and grueling job search is that I imagine that the job I finally get will likely seem that much more rewarding. After having my past examined with a fine-tooth comb, worrying about resumes and cover letters for six months, being flat broke, and subjecting myself to these painful assessments, doing the old 9 to 5 will probably seem like a vacation.

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The Interview Process: Creating anxiety in job applicants since "Roman Gladiator" became a full-time position.

Confessions of a Closet Educator

"Teacher is hungover today, so questions will have to wait until after happy hour."

I've wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. Well, that's not entirely accurate. My childhood was littered with career aspirations that guaranteed a hefty salary situated just above the poverty line. Other children were daydreaming about being doctors, firemen, policemen, dinosaur hunters, and other lofty jobs. Unless you count starship captain, my dreams were less than stellar (HAR! PUN!). I first wanted to be a bus driver because that seemed like the most badass vehicle on the road to me (standards are low in the Kittanning area). Then I think "McDonalds owner" was on my agenda since that would mean tasty deep fried foods for free. I recall having a McDonalds play-kitchen complete with plastic food that tasted remarkably similar to the real thing.

Then at the age of six or seven, the neighbor girl and I set up shop in my parents' attic. Did I create my own doctor's office or perhaps an elaborate moon base operations room from which to control orbiting warships? No, I fashioned the attic into a faux classroom, and the neighbor-girl and I pretended to be teachers.

I don't even remember what we taught or if we were even interested in helping others. I seem to recall being perfectly content to simply lord my power and dictatorial rule over my imaginary student body. I was their unquestioned leader, and they had to obey! It's really a vital step in the developmental process of the young white male. Sometimes we'd try to harangue my younger brother into being our unwilling and unwitting student, but he'd bicker and quarrel with us about not understanding what we were saying. And like compassionate educators, we silenced him, punched him in the arm, and told him to do as he was told! Obviously, he didn't come around too often.

I asked my mom once if she used to worry about me being an unstable child. She said, "Used to worry??" She brushed off my concerns, but I don't see how my parents couldn't have questioned the mental health of their firstborn. I didn't like sports, obsessively watched game shows and Nick at Nite, and concocted elaborate fantasies about having fascistic control over an imaginary second grade class. Maybe compared to the neighbor boys who set our house on fire, I seemed manageable.

In the third grade, I finally realized how outlandish and bizarre my hypothetical student dictatorship seemed to other people. Coincidentally, this was about the time that the other kids in school learned about my unusual behavior and began mocking me mercilessly for it. I guess they didn't take too kindly to my fantasies of ruling over them with ruthless authority.

I outgrew this disturbing behavior, though I certainly picked up a few others. One thing that did remain though was my desire to be a teacher. If you were to go back in time to visit me at any age to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd invariably say "teacher." The subject wasn't particularly important, which leads me to believe that I still secretly just wanted unconditional rule over impressionable young minds. Interestingly enough, the aforementioned neighbor-girl actually did grow up to be a teacher. We lost touch after elementary school when I moved from Ford City to Kittanning (which is like moving from a sewer to a swamp), but she's apparently living the childhood dream.

I was thinking about this today after reading about how your childhood career dreams are often the ones that would make you the happiest. I don't know how accurate that assessment could be. It seems like there are only so many people who can be marine biologists, pro-athletes, and Batman. But a life-long obsession with one particular job sounds like a promising avenue to explore.

Now that I'm all growed up, I know that teachers have horrible salaries, long hours, unending stress, ungrateful students, terrible essays to grade, unhelpful administration, and the No Child Left Behind program. That's why I turned my back on that career option not too long ago. But since I've been thinking long and hard about how I want to make a contribution to society, I certainly think teaching is something I have to consider. Every job comes with its own shovel full of crap to deal with, but maybe if I love the job, the crap won't smell quite so bad.

Besides, for all the shit they have to deal with, teachers still do have one thing in the eyes of their students... ABSOLUTE POWER!!

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Name of "Neighbor-Girl" intentionally withheld. I may be willing to share this horrifically embarassing tale, but she may not want her name associated with my perplexing and mock-worthy childhood.

Future Tense

Matlock: He puts the "corpse" in "habeas corpus"

Riding a tractor, doing menial office work, and hours of undesired down time gives one a great deal of time for self-reflection. Unfortunately, I don't like what I see.

With 55 job applications sent out to companies from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Washington D.C. to Boston to New York City and not a single promising prospect, I'm beginning to suspect that my current plan of simply trying out the publishing or journalism industry to see if I like it is no longer feasible. My wails of despair could be heard in the next township when read an article about the seven industries that were hit hardest by the economic recession and "Publishing and Journalism" was listed at number 3. Job prospects are not looking good for anyone in that field... especially for people with no direct experience and no degree in "Professional Writing and Editing."

But as I said, this lack of progress has given me a lot of time to think about my own life, how I got to this point, and what I really want to do. After careful consideration, I know that I don't want to be a technical writer. It sounds painfully dull and tedious. However, I'm also not so sure that I want to get into the publishing industry. Given my background in English, it seemed like a natural direction to take, and more importantly, it seemed reasonably lucrative.

This may sound unnecessarily saccharine, but the vast majority of the jobs that I've applied for would seem to have no impact on the lives of people. I'd be shuffling papers around, correcting grammar for inter-office memos, and essentially organizing the lives of other creative and productive people. I want to be able to make a difference.

Much as I bitched about teaching English 101, at least the work I did was making a direct impact on the lives of my students. Granted, some of them may have found my impact to be undesirable or at the very least monotonous and perhaps unlawfully titillating, but a difference was made. The class was mine to teach. That class was about writing and research, and as tedious as that might sound to some people, it's the part of English that I like. I have zero interest in teaching literature; I just can't bring myself to care about the metaphorical implications of fictional stories. It's certainly valuable, but it's not something I really want to do, so I don't think teaching high school English is a feasible option (since high school English tends to be very focused on the literature component). Also, children frequently irritate me - that seems like a deal breaker. And just for the record, going back to graduate school to get my PhD in English is not even being considered. I'd rather put my genitals through a meat grinder.

Therefore, with my current credentials and interests, I'm pretty well qualified to be an adjunct for composition and rhetoric courses. A few months ago, I set an arbitrary deadline for myself. I told myself that if I didn't have any solid leads for a job by the beginning of November, I'd start applying for teaching positions for the spring semester. At the time, November seemed safely far off in the future, but now that the future is now, I have to do something so that I don't feel like a financial leech and complete cipher of a human being. As a result, I've begun to explore my options for teaching in the spring.

But that doesn't really feel like a permanent solution. I've been in academia long enough to know that adjuncts make shit for money and have no job security. But I also like the idea of helping people and making a difference in the world. Which is why I am considering, as I did a year ago..... applying for law school.

Bear with me, gentle readers; I know this self-indulgent post is lengthy.

You're probably thinking, "You're fucking crazy. Law school costs major dollars and requires more studying than ten grad schools." And you're probably right. That's why I'm just exploring the possibility for right now. The way I see it, this is the perfect time to explore all of my options. I have no wife, no kids, no long-term career that I'd be giving up. I've got time on my hands and some short-term ways of making money. My current boss has a lawyer friend who is willing to talk to me about what he does. And with the recent election, I've developed an almost obsessive interest in how the political system works. Furthermore, at the risk of sounding arrogant (as though I don't do so every time I post), I know I'd get into law school too. My grades are exceptional, I have research experience and a masters degree, and I'm confident that I could do well on the LSATs.

On the other hand, just because I *can* do it doesn't mean that I should. A year ago, two career counselors told me that I didn't seem to have the drive to make it in law school. At the time, they were exactly right. My only drive a year ago was, "GET OUT OF GRAD SCHOOL." I really didn't care about anything after that. I also don't know much about the specific kinds of law that people practice. No good comes from being uninformed about career decisions. Two years ago, I ended up in grad school because it seemed like a good idea, but I didn't really give it the necessary consideration. I'm not making the same mistake twice. I'm only looking into it, and I will not apply unless I'm certain that it's the right choice for me.

So to sum this whole thing up: I'm having an existential crisis, and I don't know what to do about it. Desperation and discouragement can lead to hasty and unwise decisions. If I make a choice regarding a change in my career plans, I want to make sure that I'm doing it for the right reasons and not because of my crippling fear that I'll end up mowing lawns for the rest of my life.

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4 out of 5 readers think JP isn't even qualified to pump gas for a living.

Lamentations of the Loser

Curse you, Barack Obama!! You have outwitted my campaign and bested me in the general election. Even the surefire addition of Jean-Luc Picard to the "JP For President" ticket failed to garner the interest of voters.

Oh sure, your charming demeanor, solid economic policies, compassion for the ills of the poor, commitment to improving health care, and commanding stage presence may have swayed voters. But you're the President-Elect of the United States of America. You don't have the long-standing and biologically-innate ability to easily turn a blind eye to inner-city education, third-world countries, and brown people. Goddamn it! As a giant white male in the target demographic of 18-40, I can ignore all of those things without breaking a sweat and still have enough ignorance left over to completely keep sexual discrimination, gay rights, and social security reform from ever entering my mind.

And yes, your victory speech last night may have actually inspired millions across the country and given hope to disillusioned and disenfranchised people everywhere. But where were the awkward pauses and insincere smiles that people expect from their President? I didn't see that, sir, and I'm disappointed! As President, I would have been NOTHING but awkward pauses and phony facial expressions. I could pull funding for child cancer research and grin about it until next Thursday. I know how to behave like a real President of the United States.

I will say this in your favor though, President-elect Obama: you also defeated Virgil! That makes the defeat so much easier to swallow.

With 349 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote, you certainly know how to make the voters sit up and say, "I loves me some chocolate!"

That's probably why I voted for you too. Damn you, Barack Obama!!

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Self-Loathing: Proving to be a greater detriment to voting for oneself than any existential crisis could ever be.

VP Pick: Jean-Luc Picard

My fellow Americans, it is my honor and privilege to introduce my running mate in my campaign for President of the United States of America: Captain Jean-Luc Picard. This may be a late pick, but I guarantee that he has the leadership qualities and executive experience that our country needs from its Vice President.

Captain Picard found the previous administration's actions to be shameful and un-American, and he doesn't want our opponents to continue those failed policies.

But what does Jean-Luc Picard bring to the table?

Jean Luc-Picard is a gripping public speaker and accomplished diplomat.

Jean-Luc Picard understands that we must move forward!

Jean-Luc Picard supports your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.


Captain Picard knows the alphabet and can incorporate it into a showtune.

Captain Picard doesn't take shit from our nation's enemies.

JP and Jean-Luc Picard: The future that your country deserves.
The change that we need.

Make it so! Vote on Tuesday!

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I'm JP, and I approved this message.


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