I didn't realize it had been so long since my last update. Work has been busier than usual somehow, but hopefully I can get back to my goal of updating this at least once a month. No promises, though.
Since you last heard of me I had yet another on-site job interview. Yes, really. I think at this point I can say I have confirmed that crossing the 5-year experience mark is making a huge difference. Within the past year I have now had 4 interviews, which comes after about 4 years in a row of having exactly zero interviews.
This time I only had to travel 3 hours to get there (and another 3 back, of course), so unlike This interview I didn't have to stay the night. No bill for an inn, no bill for a dinner out, just the cost of the gas for six hours of travel. And here's the crazy part: they reimbursed me. The place where I shelled out all that additional money made no offer to do so, but this one where I spent almost nothing in comparison? They're willing to pick up the check. I actually could have spent the night and had a meal on them, but I didn't know they'd reimburse me. And that's ok, because I didn't have the time anyway. I had time to drive there, do the interview, and drive back, getting it all out of the way in one shot.
So the good news to you aspiring librarians is that not every out of state interview will be on your own dime. Just some of them.
Oh, I didn't get the job, by the way. I probably should have lead with that, but I figured that was the least shocking part of the news. On the shock scale, me not getting a job rates somewhere between "the sun came up" and "bacon is still delicious," while me being reimbursed for my interview expenses rates somewhere between "I got through a day without wishing for death" and "Jesus came back, and it turns out he was Japanese the whole time."
This time I feel less bad about missing out on the job, since it wasn't the millions-to-one job I missed last time. But I realized something distressing in that bit of seemingly good news: I'm never going to want a job that badly again. From now on, every single interview will be entered into half-heartedly.
Maybe that's a good thing. In some ways, interviewing might be like dating; if you're desperate, it shows, and it's a major turn-off. And like dating, the more you need the job, the longer you've gone without one, the more desperate you are. It's a cruel catch 22. The only way out, it seems, it to reach the point where you're so demoralized that you've given up deep down. Only when you stop actually giving a fuck about whether or not you get the thing do you have a chance to get it.
I don't know yet where exactly the interview went wrong. It didn't seem to go badly. I thought I gave good answers, and they didn't seem to show any facial expressions or body language to indicate that they thought I was a train wreck (and I have a good natural ability to read these things). But I also did get the impression that they wrote me off during the interview. For one thing (among a few others), they said the next step was to call references, but they never called mine. So maybe I said or did something wrong. Or, maybe they simply had their heart set on someone else who came in before me (I was the last to interview). I will try to work up the courage to contact them soon and ask if there was a misstep I made that I can correct in the future, but I still haven't heard official word of my rejection, and I think it would be good form to do so.
In the meantime, I am now days away from the new semester starting in my current job, the one I hoped to Japanese Jesus I wouldn't have to go back to.
Save me.
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