I got an interview!!!

Score! I got an interview, first step to getting hired is interviewing. :) Now I have something new to be worried about - interviewing is scary. Someone is literally looking at your personality and judging it based on the few minutes the spend with you...that's intimidating to me. How do you prove you're a nice, upstanding person who they'll want to work with in that short of time?

I watched a funny show last night about "beauty and the geek" and they have 9 ultra-geeky boys with no people skills, and 9 ultra-beautiful girls with no brains. Then they all learn from each other how to become more of whatever they're not.

As they interview tons of people all over the place to decide who gets to be on the show, they ask boys social questions:
"When was the last time you went on a date?" "umm....uh.... never." "what do you do on a typical Friday night" Now they get excited. "We stayed up all night long! It was crazy, we got like 6 people playing this ultimate game of Risk and we didn't start until late, like 10:00 and we played until 4 in the morning, it was so awesome!"
Then ask the girls brainy questions:
"What's you're IQ?" "um. slightly over not too dumb." "who wrote Beethoven's 5th Symphony?" "giggle giggle. I don't read books. I'm sorry, I only read magazines. giggle giggle."

The sad thing is none of these people know how pathetic they look to the other side. I guess interviewing makes me nervous for that reason. The person asking the questions has a clear idea of what the "right" answer is, and once in a while you just don't get it right.

Earlier this week in my interview the lady asked me what my "personal policy is for answering phones". My response? "um. Well, I guess that depends on what you mean. Like I believe you should answer the phone if it rings....." (Oh my gosh, did I just say that out loud? throw me a bone here! What are you looking for? Do you want to know what I'd say when I answer the phone? how often I should do it? If I think you should hang up on people who are dumb? give me a real question! I don't have a personal policy on answering phones! I just do it!) "For example, Brother Johnson believes that a phone should be answered within the first 3 rings. What do you think about that?" "Oh yeah, that's definitely reasonable. Obviously whoever is calling needs to talk to somebody and they should be taken care of. " (I hope she doesn't find out that I never answer my own phone unless I know who it is or why they're calling....)

Last night after my missionary meeting I spent 45 minutes discussing working, jobs, kids, cars, and other life decisions with one of the other wives-of-a-ward-mission-leader in my stake. She's an incredibly nice person, and she works for the church in the history department. She's going back to school just because she wants to learn, and she really doesn't need a degree by any means, but she's doing school because she likes it.

I asked about her experience working when she had kids, she said that sometimes she did work and sometimes she didn't, but she never worked more than full time, and she would leave work at work. She gave 100% at work, and 100% at home and she felt good about it. She did say that if you can stay home, it's well worth it, but she was tired of "poverty" (to use her word; they certainly aren't hurting for money now, but maybe they were then...) and she went back to work and loves her job. She's a very nice lady, and thinks highly of the people in CES Physical Facilities, as do I. Turns out she knows a lot of people who work for/in the church, and has done a lot of different jobs there. She said that since she'd worked for the church before, it was easy to leave to have a baby and come back when her babies were all in school, so that was kindof encouraging. If I ever have a baby, and if I ever decide to work post-baby I totally could. I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

I did decide that I'm thankful for the people around me, and the things I can learn from them. I love talking to people about their experiences making the same decisions that I'll have to make. It's helpful to know I'm not the only one that is in the situation. It's nice to have a vote of confidence, even if it's from someone I don't know well.

It's good to be taken care of.