Saturday, November 15, 2008

Escape from a Parallel Universe

Just so that everyone knows, I did get that job in American Samoa. In fact, I've already flown a good bit of the way there. I am currently spending the weekend at my boss's (extremely nice) house in Las Vegas. In fact, you can see a picture or two of it on the website of my future immediate supervisor, which also includes quite a few shots of his original trip down there in 2004. From now on, I'll be chronicling my life to and in American Samoa on my new blog, Coming of Age in Samoa.

So yeah. I'm finally out of my parents' house. Awesome. Take that, lingering self-doubt! Time for some reflection on the five months since I graduated. A few of the most memorable things that happened in the Parallel Universe were:

- Moving home from college and only half-unpacking because I was so certain that I was going to get a job in two weeks or so and move out.

- Applying to a lot of jobs.

- A really sweet family cruise to Bermuda, where I took a lot of pictures that I haven't finished uploading to Facebook yet.

- Applying to a lot of jobs that I didn't even really want.

- Emailing my resume to my dad's friend in Juneau, Alaska who forwarded it to people he knew all over the country, one of which got back to me. This was the one in American Samoa. This was in July.

- Applying to a lot more jobs that I didn't really want and never heard about again.

- Applying to more jobs.

- Restoring and sailing our old sailboat with a friend.

- Learning that I more or less had the job in American Samoa, but not having a clue when I would be leaving.

- Applying for more jobs that I wasn't remotely qualified for.

- Having a birthday.

- Working as a Production Assistant on two fairly cool shoots over the course of a month. One was in a brand-new enormous mansion, the other on a military base and involved the Secretary of Defense, Guy Who Replaced Rumsfeld.

- Applying for a lot of jobs that, to put it briefly, I already knew I wasn't going to get.

- Applying to more of that same type of job.

- Finally learning exactly when I was going to American Samoa.

- Visiting my grandmother in DC and touring the US Capitol.

- Watching an election with a really sweet outcome.

- Oh, and once I saw a blimp.

- A big one.


Out of all the job search-related things that I did, there were a few moments that stick out in my mind:

- A small production company in Boston that didn't seem to know what state they were in, seeing as they posted all of their jobs on the pages for almost every state on the East Coast.

- The same company asking for a PA (basically a go-fer that brings everyone coffee) with at least 3 years' worth of experience working for major cable networks. You know, because people spend that long working in the big leagues and then want to fetch coffee for a small company.

- The automatic email reply that I received after applying to any position with Disney. Despite being only about two sentences long, it managed to cram in at least four grammar/spelling mistakes. Mistakes bad enough for ME to notice. ("Applicants whose resumes are best suited for the interests of our Company will be contacted.")

- The guy on Craigslist who really desperately needed a woman to take naked pictures of him. Desperate enough to post it on every single NC city's TV/Film/Radio page, even though his posting had nothing had anything to do with any of those things. It became really creepy once it became the only posting in the Greensboro area for almost a week, as it was the only thing I saw whenever I checked the page.

-The posting that must have been written by my ex-girlfriend or something. "Looking for a qualified Female editor to edit a film. Must be experienced with Final Cut or Avid editing systems, but Avid preferred. (What happened to Avid anyway? Oh that's right Greed!)"

Yeah. Glad to be done with that. Well, next stop, American Samoa!

3 comments:

Vicus Scurra said...

Nothing much to say, just wanted to post a comment here before it got deluged by all of your other fans.

Pamela Core said...

WOWWW!

hannah said...

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