Pith and Vinegar

A few of my other social intertube 2.0 places, I made cryptic remarks about some things going on earlier this week. Three things. I said I’d spill the beans later. Also, I haven’t made a real post in a bajillionty years.

Mid-September, I saw an entry in the Classifieds section for “26 paid full-time positions.” Including a couple of computer-related spots. I called ‘em. It’s a federal internship program that the YMCA runs. 26 10-month spots for non-high school grads, 10 6-month spots for grads. While I graduated college, I never got my high school, so I was eligible. This is the first and probably last time my lack of high school is an advantage.

I went to an information seminar. They ran a bunch of those through later September and early October, with probably a thousand or so people altogether, about 20-30 people per seminar. Not everyone was interested in continuing, but I did.

October 16th was “program interviews,” where they individually interview everyone interested to determine their eligibility for the program, and to see what they’d get out of it. Not everyone was recommended to proceed. I was.

October 20-22nd was Assessment Week, where the remaining 130-odd people went through… well, assessments. What our linguistic skill levels are, creating a successful resume, how to prepare for an interview, determining our “barriers to employment,” and so on. We also made our final selection for which of the available jobs we wanted. It was very useful, even without considering the internship. I’ve been using the same basic resume for 10 years, and after Assessment I finally figured out why it hasn’t gotten me any hits. There was a bit of attrition; by the end of the three days there were only about 100 of us left.

October 27th and 28th was sort of a “debriefing” where we got the results of Assessment Week, and then based on those results we got informed if we were going on to the next step: interviews with the prospective Mentors. I did. I got three interviews lined up: two on November 2nd (this past Monday) and one on November 3rd (Tuesday).

I showed up, and did fairly well. I did okay on the first two, but I felt like I nailed the third interview, probably because I was more comfortable by that point. That position was the one I wanted most, so it worked out well.

November 4th and 5th (Wed and Thurs) the Y was supposed to call people back to let them know if they’d been accepted. I didn’t get a call Wednesday, which was disheartening. I did get a call around 3:30pm on Thursday.

I didn’t get any of them.

So that’s what the “Damnit” status message was about. It’s irritating, but it’s nothing world-ending. They do a few internship rollouts a year, and I’m eligible until I hit 31 in June, so they already added me to the January rollout. I may even be able to apply to the same positions. We’ll see.

Cross your fingers.