continued from the last post...
Upon getting up on Tuesday, I knew that there was no way -- no way
whatsoever -- that I would ever be ready for the presentation on
Wednesday morning. Daisy and I barely get any time to ourselves anyway, even on her days off, because there's always something else to be done. On Sunday morning, she had to work really late and then we went over to the parents'. On Monday, we went to her sister's place for fourteen hours. Tuesday was her last day off for the week, and silly me, I actually wanted to spend some downtime with my wife. And, y'know, actually get some downtime.
Some of you may be saying "Brandon, you don't have a job, so all of your life right now is downtime." That's not the case at all. There's a lot of stuff I do in and around the house, and I keep near-constantly busy with it. I don't like being bored, so I always find something to do. And, of course, there's applying for new jobs for hours on end every several days as well. I do work. It's just not the type of work that involves sitting in an office or standing in front of a classroom anymore.
Anyway.
The interview/presentation at the university, as you probably know, was scheduled for Wednesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon I knew that there was no way, realistically, that was going to happen and still give me a decent shot at getting the job. As I am honorable to my last breath (see my previous post), I emailed the lady in charge of the interviews to tell her that I would be unable to make it in on Wednesday morning, and asked if I could reschedule. I knew that if I didn't reschedule, there's no way I would be able to give any sort of presentation unless said presentation was me saying "hey, I don't have any slides or charts for you, but I can stand up here and talk to you about shit."
The other reason I requested a reschedule was because I hadn't heard anything from Daisy's company on Monday, so I was doubly expecting something on Tuesday. Daisy and I had other errands to run on Tuesday (including another short trip over to her parents' to pick up some herbs from the garden) and actually wanted to spend some time together, so my plan was to buy a little time for all of that stuff and to take care of everything I could within that timeframe.
My request for a rescheduled interview was granted -- for Thursday (read: yesterday) morning instead of Wednesday. That meant I'd have to put together the presentation from scratch in the span of what at the time was about 36 hours, including normal sleeping/eating/Daisy time as well. So I began my work.
I want to step back from the situation here once more and mention that I wasn't exactly enthused with the details of the university job; as I told you before, it entails a lot of travel and basically being the face of the university to prospective incoming students. While I can do that, and more than likely do that easily, that's a job more suited to Daisy (who told me that this position is basically her dream job). As you folks know, I'm not exactly a social person, and that goes double for when I am forced to drive around to lots of places and slap that fake smile on my face. But...there's a lot I will do and a lot I will put up with for a steady, incredibly-well-paying (for the duration of the position, anyway) paycheck that will help us pay the bills and get us out of credit card debt.
The problem with putting together the presentation wasn't making the presentation itself -- that I can do easily with LibreOffice (the standard Linux office suite) -- but in knowing what the presentation needed to cover. My directions on creating the presentation had been incredibly vague; they were, in fact, one word: admissions. The word admissions could mean a lot of different things, and I wasn't sure in what capacity they wanted me to focus on the most, especially with the rather vague literature I'd been sent -- a few brochures, a campus map, and a directory of programs the university had to offer. However, the position was in the office of, and working for, undergraduate admissions -- new students choosing the university as their education destination. With that in mind, I decided to focus my presentation on playing up the highlights of the university with the intended audience being those new prospective students. If I were a freshman, what would I like to know about the school? Its programs? The city of Omaha? What about its extracurricular activities, tuition, sports, Greek life, etc? So that was what I focused on.
Mind you, I know next to fucking nothing about this university.
Yes, my wife went there and got her Bachelor's degree there. Yes, it's the university here in town, and it's the "smaller version" of the big, important university in Lincoln. Yes, I know the sports they offer and what their mascot is...but aside from that? I don't know anything about it. I've only lived in the city of Omaha for two months. I don't even know my way around the city on my own. Sure, I can tell you where three different Walmarts are, and I could tell you where to get the best pizza in town (it's still Night Flight, duh), but other than that? I know nothing about the city aside from statistics. Daisy has been living here for over ten years and still needs her GPS to get from point A to point B most of the time, especially if point B is in a neighborhood or section of town that she/we never go to often or at all.
So in making the presentation it wasn't so much that I couldn't do it quickly, but that I needed to focus on what to cover, in what order, and how I could get the information for that stuff from the brochures/booklets they gave me as well as the university's website -- which I was encouraged to use liberally. I've made many presentations before; I had to do them not only in undergrad, but I had to make complex, lengthy (hour-long, 40-slides-ish) presentations for my high-level lit classes in graduate school. This was a presentation that would last fifteen minutes, so my guess was that it would be...oh, ten slides or so. With a beginning and end slide, so really, eight slides worth of material to cover in fifteen minutes. That's not bad, right?
It took me three hours to make the first four slides. I was shot. And remember, the first slide is a "cover slide." Groan. My brain was fried by the time I went to bed on Tuesday night, with the understanding that I would come back to it once I was awake on Wednesday and finish the rest of it.
In the midst of this, I'd still not received a call from Daisy's company or the HR guy who was supposed to get back to me, and I sent him an email detailing not only the job posting number, but requesting any information he had on it and hoping he'd give me an update -- as I knew I'd been recommended for hire by several people at that point. It went unanswered and again, ignored. Upon going back to work on Wednesday night, Daisy brought up the frustrations about this in her weekly meeting with her coworkers, and I was given directions to call the HR guy on Thursday -- if I didn't get him, leave a message and the supervisors/managers who worked with Daisy would get on him about it. Okay, I thought, that's fine.
Wednesday was slow and tiresome.
I haven't been sleeping well; I've been sleeping, when I do sleep, very erratic hours that don't lend themselves much to productivity during daylight. If I want to spend time with Daisy during the week at all, I almost have to (roughly) be on her same sleeping schedule and pattern. That's been very difficult as of late, and I've found myself sleeping for short stretches before I'm awakened by the cats, the need to pee, the need to eat something, daylight, kids screaming outside, people slamming doors or stomping upstairs/downstairs, etc. So, I'll sleep for a few hours at most before something like that happens, get up and deal with it, and then go to sleep (usually somewhere else, like on one of the couches) for a few hours more. Repeat until I can't sleep anymore or my back hurts.
Part of this is due to my allergies, which have gone insane over the course of the past two weeks or so -- enough to give me a low-level sinus infection at almost all times. My allergies will be fine for two or three days and not bother me at all, and then wham, I am smacked down by them big time for another two or three days. Again, repeat this cycle over and over and you have my life. Nebraska is a much different allergy environment than Kansas was, even though geographically it's only about 200 miles away from where I lived before. Its weather patterns are different, its temperatures/wind directions/barometric pressures are all different, and it's wreaking havoc on my body and its tolerances for these things -- which also isn't helped when I spend a few hours every day outside on the porch, as I don't smoke in the house.
Anyway.
As Daisy went back to work on Wednesday night and the interview/presentation was on Thursday morning, I dove into finishing it almost as soon as she left for work. When I started it, I had five slides complete, including the cover slide. When I finished enough to call it "done" or "done enough," it was eight hours later and I had twelve slides total. It was 3AM. I had my alarm set for 5 not only because I needed to be able to be awake enough to go to the interview, but because Daisy would be getting home shortly thereafter.
Sleep did not come. I made food and tried to tire myself out with a full stomach -- didn't work. I tried to watch Netflix until my eyes were heavy. This worked marginally until I was able to turn it off and actually rest a little. The rest was broken at 5, obviously, when my alarm went off. I hit snooze, and then a few minutes later was reawakened by Daisy's key in the door.
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