Anyway.
It went exceedingly well -- probably the best phone interview I've ever had, to be honest with you. That's also interesting/amusing to me because I not only hate the telephone, but outright loathe it. I tend to be much more personable and can answer questions more fully and to the best of my ability not in a phone interview or an in-person interview, but in text. Duh. Because I'm a writer. It's in my blood. I'm incredibly socially awkward in most situations, and that awkwardness skyrockets even more when I'm in a high-stakes social situation -- such as, y'know, trying to secure employment in order to be able to continue to feed myself and my wife. While I'm fairly certain I gave a good interview at Daisy's company, the fact remains that they never contacted me again even after I asked them for an update, so maybe in their eyes they didn't think I was a worthwhile hire.
But, apparently, the ladies at the university thought so.
This afternoon, when Daisy got up and checked her phone, there was a message from the lead interviewer asking me to call her back. This was, oh, a little more than 24 hours after the phone interview yesterday morning, so I took that as a good sign.
I knew I'd impressed them, of course, from their reactions to my answers in the phone interview. After working in academia for years, believe me, I know what an academic administration wants to hear, and I know how to phrase what they want to hear in as diplomatic and professional a way as possible. If they ask you a specific question, you counter with an equally specific answer. The same is true in all interviews, of course (or at least it should be), but if you know exactly what your interviewers want to hear from you, it makes the process easier.
Anyway, I have an in-person interview at 8:30 AM on July 16. Why so far off? Well...that's because I have to study for it. It's not a simple interview by any stretch of the imagination, no -- I'm being put on trial, basically. A trial by fire.
The position (which has never fully been explained to me outside of the job posting for it on the website) involves recruiting, but specifically recruitment of new students. This means it's basically my job to sell seventeen-and-eighteen-year-olds on why they should choose the university for their continued education, play up its strong suits and good points while minimizing the bad (what bad there may be, anyway) and rationalizing it away. It may include campus tours -- small or large. It will more than likely include going to high schools and other colleges (like junior colleges and/or community colleges around the area) to run panels on "career day"-like functions or give assembly-like presentations. Basically, I'd become the face of the university to incoming undergraduate students, 8-5 Monday through Friday, until (apparently) December, when the position is scheduled to end. And yes, it will end -- it's a temporary position only. For this position, if I get it, I will be paid more per hour than Daisy is currently making at her own job.
And it's not going to be easy to get. I mentioned above that I'm being put on trial for this position, and that I have to study for it, and this is true -- the interview on July 16 runs from 8:30 to 10:30 in the morning. Yes, it's a two-hour interview. Some of that time will be spent in normal interview fashion, where I meet the people in charge of things, including at least one big-wig chancellor, yes, before the most important part of the interview: I am to give a fifteen-minute presentation as if it were a real presentation I'd give prospective incoming students. In it I will have to detail everything I covered above, and again, basically sell the university's strong suits to the students. PowerPoint can and probably will be involved. After the presentation, I assume I will be asked questions relating to the information presented, and I will have to answer those questions to the best of my ability -- that's why I'm being sent literature, handbooks, and other information I need so that I can study it and create this presentation, because everything about me getting or not getting the job depends on it.
Let's step back here for a second, shall we?
This is a position that -- even though it says it runs from July to December -- I'm not even interviewing for until (literally) halfway through July. It's a position that is temporary, a position that is full time while it's temporary, yes, but is still temporary. It is a position that pays a decent salary comparable to that of my wife's salary for the time that it exists, but it ends a little over four months after it begins, and that's being generous. Come Christmas, even if I get the position, I'll be out on my ass and they'll have someone else filling the role (I know why it's a temporary position, but that's private information I can't really share here). It doesn't matter what they pay, but it does matter that it's temporary. Now today was the third time I've been contacted about interviews for this job, and then found out that my third interview will be a two-hour affair including a long-form presentation that a university chancellor will be in attendance for.
This sounds a little more complex and important than a four-month temporary job, doesn't it?
Look, I don't know how the university here operates (nor will I pretend to), but when it comes to hiring, multiple-interview processes, and presentations being made by interviewees...that's the sort of stuff that most universities only do when tenured professors, deans, and other really-high-up administrators are looking to be hired, not low-ranking temps. This leads me to believe, logically, that they're not just looking for a simple temp, but a temp that can be moved to another permanent position once that temp position ends, like a temp-to-hire situation. I mean, I may be completely wrong of course, but otherwise it seems like a lot of wasted effort with little return on their investment to kick someone back to the curb after four months.
Maybe that's just me, though.
Anyway. The "literature" for the position was mailed to me this afternoon (according to the lady I talked to) and once I get it I'm supposed to be studying it and working on my presentation in two weeks. A lot can happen in two weeks, though. I have a lot of other applications in right now at various other jobs, industries, and universities around the Omaha metro area. That means I could receive a callback, interview, and an offer within that window of time before I could even do this presentation and interview thing with them. Will that happen? Probably not, but the fact remains that it's possible. It's not like I'm going to stop applying for new positions or following up on the ones I have applied for already, though.
"It sounds like an awful lot of work and too many hoops to have me jump through unless they're already dead-set on hiring me for this position anyway," I told Daisy tonight.
She shrugged. "It's not out of the question for some places to do this; it would be akin to an interviewer asking me 'okay, pretend I'm an angry customer on the phone with you. Go.' It's similar to that, just for a different job. They want to make sure you know what you're doing."
"Obviously," I replied, "but do you think they're asking all of their interviewees to do this? If they are, it seems like they're wasting a ton of in-the-office time to conduct interviews, if each one is two hours long like they tell me mine will be."
"[University] is really hard to get into," she said. "Everyone wants to work there; they're very competitive."
I just want to work there because I've been working in academia for almost five years now. I know what I'm doing when it comes to academia, and I know that an administrative position of any sort in academia (except, well, a temp position) would be incredibly stable and basically immune to most layoffs and/or other downsizing. If I could play off that temp experience into a full-time position with a comparable salary, Daisy and I will be pretty good, financially speaking. We'd make enough combined to where we could afford to start looking to buy our own home, make enough to where I could get a new (or newer) car.
"Look, we have one of three possible outcomes for the foreseeable future," I told her last night in bed. "One? I get a job with a salary comparable to yours. Two? You get a better job, one with a much higher salary than the one you have now, and it buys us more time and breathing space for me to find something that I would actually want and like to do. Three? Everything remains as it is now, and while we're not rolling in money, we're at least mostly stable for the time being until either one or two happen."
Daisy has an important job interview tomorrow morning after she gets home from work tonight, and she's somewhat nervous about it. The starting salary for said job is about 25% more than she makes now, and the higher-end salary is double or more. Yes, while the temp job I'm interviewing for would make us some good money for the short run, it will end. And that's even if I were to get it. The job she's interviewing for tomorrow includes possible travel as a liaison for the company, and it was heavily implied that said travel was all expenses paid. I just want Daisy to be happy in what she does, and I want us to be continually financially stable one way or another. For that to happen, something has to happen for one of us or both.
There is the fourth possible outcome that I didn't mention or list above, and that outcome would be for us both to get highly-paid positions doing what we'd like to do, with hers being something new as well. I call this the "snowball's chance in hell" possible outcome, as we'd have to be remarkably lucky for this to happen. For any of you who know me well, luck in job hunting (or much else) isn't exactly my strong suit.
So. Onward.
Tonight in the mail I received a letter from my former landlord in Newton. It was the final breakdown/accounting of the house after I'd lived there. Cleaning and repairs were taken out of the security deposit that had been paid upon moving in -- and it didn't cover it all. So, what I got in the mail was a bill for $140-something.
My first thought mirrored Daisy's sentiment on the situation as well -- that place was in pretty nasty shape, and though we did what we could, I'm lucky it wasn't more.
I wrote a check for the amount he'd billed me for out of our joint bank account and stuck it in the mail with a short letter wishing him well, as well as a proverbial mental shrug. It's done now; I lived there for five years, and yes, a fair amount of the place needed some considerable work. We cleaned what we could and we took care of everything that we could take care of within reason and within the time frame we had to work with, and yes, I'm lucky and glad that it wasn't more. But, it's not like I can do anything about it now; I no longer live there and that place, that town, that state -- it's all in my past. I've never returned to, and have rarely given a second thought to, any apartment or house I've lived before since moving out here to the midwest. That house served me well as a good bachelor pad and home base, but again, it's in the past now. My former landlord and his wife are good, kind people, and I believe it was that goodness and kindness that probably made him take things a little more leniently on me than they could have if the two of them hadn't liked me so much. So yes, I got off a little light (at least in my own eyes).
I'm beginning to get the hang of this "joint checking account" thing too. I sort of have to, as my own personal account is slowly emptying. I've paid three of my bills out of my own account in the past several days, and because of that I'm keeping an eye on it while I use our joint account to pay the household bills like the rent and water/trash. We're being cautious with money, which is good. I have my own debit card for that account and I have the checkbook for it (so that when checks must be used, I can just write them out, write them in a ledger, and send them off).
"Use it for whatever you want," Daisy told me. "It's our money. Just don't go and spend like $500 of it at once without telling me, or something like that."
I've written here before how it makes me uncomfortable to not be financially independent and responsible for myself. Yes, Daisy is my wife, and yes, legally and mentally/spiritually the money is ours, since both of our names are on the account. But again, I'm not working right now, and Daisy's the only one contributing funds into that account. I felt guilty last night when we went to get groceries and she paid for them, because even though it's our money that's used, more than half of the groceries and other commodities in the cart were for me and me alone (read: non-vegan things and cigarettes).
Again, yes, I realize that in a sort of half-hearted way, my mere presence has contributed to that bank account's balance, as the majority of the "extra" money in there was from wedding checks written out to both of us. Yes, that does ease my guilt a bit, but it doesn't ease it so much as to where I wouldn't feel extremely uncomfortable, say, going to Amazon and getting some stuff I needed/wanted off of my wish list(s), stuff that I've been needing or wanting for a while. I'm not going to do that. She wanted me to do that to get her something for her birthday, and I refused to do so -- I didn't want it to be like she was spending our money and/or money she earned from her job on her own birthday present, you know? Instead I used my Discover card on the night of her birthday to get her stuff she wanted and needed when we were out...as well as some pretty daisies, daisies that are currently still sitting in a vase on the desk in here in the computer room a week and a half later.
I am going to have to get used to it, though, whether I'm contributing to said account in the near future or otherwise. All of our bills will, quite soon, have to be paid out of that account -- as will any groceries I get for the household on nights where I have to run out and pick stuff up. Up until now, like I said, whatever bills I can pay from my own account, especially the stuff in my name, I've just been paying it directly from there. I'm slowly paying down the balance on my credit cards, and I haven't put gas in the Monte Carlo since the day I drove it up here in May because I so rarely take it out anywhere -- we usually take Daisy's car regardless of who's driving because my car has no air conditioning (and, well, it's summer). We've taken mine out a few times, but I can count on one hand how many. I actually need to get it out and drive it around a bit, run some errands or do shopping in it soon, just so that it doesn't sit in the parking lot and rot/rust.
In the meantime, while I've been at home I've been trying to accomplish a lot of different tasks. Two or three nights ago I sent off a volley of Thank-You notes to friends and family until I ran out of actual notes to send. I ordered a box of 100 of them off of Amazon (with my own money, of course) and they arrived yesterday -- so over the course of the next few days I can continue writing/mailing more of them out. I got 100 in the box because Daisy has a ton of people to write notes to as well. I'm the paranoid guy who thinks we're going to forget someone in our thankings, or that we'll forget said someone because we misplaced their gift(s) to us, or forgot to write down that someone's name in particular when going through them.
We still haven't done that, by the way. We'd planned to do it this week during Daisy's days off, but other things kept coming up. We wanted to go to the gym this afternoon, too. Daisy needs an oil change in her car. We did all of our shopping yesterday and last night, and we were pretty tired after that (it involved four stores, two trips home, and a trip to the parents' in-between for Canada Day). Daisy's days off go quickly, and we can never seem to get everything accomplished that we need to. To those ends, the house is still a mess of boxes and bags of clothing from Daisy's old bedroom at her parents' place, the wedding/bridal shower gifts have yet to be sorted, and the master bathroom still needs to be cleaned and scrubbed down like crazy (good thing that's Daisy's bathroom and I never use it). We did, however, finally assemble the new bed frame that Daisy ordered to replace my old one that broke into pieces upon the move, and we, ahem, installed the bed on top of it. It's very high off the floor once the mattress, box springs, and mattress pad are all on the frame -- it comes up to my waist. Because of that it's a completely new experience for me; my old wooden frame, with the padded leather headboard, was much lower to the ground -- it was only maybe six inches off the floor and the bed sat down inside the frame, not on top of it. The new frame is about eight or ten inches off the floor and everything sits on top of it, which makes the bed itself super-tall. It's going to take quite some time to get used to, I think. The cats find it interesting, though, as they now once more have someplace interesting (to them) to sleep under.
On that note...that's really all that's going on right now. Daisy works tomorrow night until midnight before she's off for the 24 hours of July 4th. We're going to a work party held by one of her managers for a little while in the evening, and will also be doing lunch beforehand with the parents (at least, that's the plan). She's working weird hours this week because of the 4th holiday, meaning she's going in at 4PM to make up time, and on the morning of the 5th will be staying later than usual. She gets paid for eight hours of a shift for the 4th (as it's a holiday), but as her normal shift is ten hours long, she's making up time here and there for the rest of the days she works this week.
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