Job Update

I've bored you senseless with tales of my stress over this particular job, so it seems only fair that I keep you updated and 'in-the-loop'. See? I'm ready to go back into the business world, I've got the lingo down pat. And Roger.

I was going out of my tiny mind. It's not a far trip, but I was rapidly approaching my destination for a while there last week. On several occasions, I reduced myself to tears by being my very own worst critic. I was ready to throw in the towel. Then, a professor at CFU who I don't actually know happened to walk by my desk while I was oh-so-carefully smashing my skull into it, and offered his assistance. I explained the problem. He decided he wanted to start from scratch with it. I shan't bore you with the details any more than I already have, but essentially, I had a 2-hour intensive brainstorming session with this chap, who ended up working through the problem in the exact same way I did. And reaching a solution.

To be quite honest, if he'd managed to solve the problem any other way, I would have thrown the towel in and not submitted the problem. What's the point, if I didn't do it myself? The fact is though, that he switched a couple of lines of my code around within itself, and made it do what it should do. I was on the right track. I was this close.

Exhilarated and somewhat exhausted, I submitted the project late on Wednesday night, and at 10am the following morning received an email from BossMan, offering me the position. Man, I was ecstatic! Overjoyed, I forwarded his email to my sweetie, and the members of my family, and got to work on finding out what the next step is from here, immigration-wise. I was so excited, in fact, that I forgot to respond to his email.

Yes. In my overwhelmed, overjoyed, over-the-moon state of mind, I forgot to accept the job.

Yesterday, I get a frantic phone call from DR, saying that BossMan wants to know what the hell the deal is, do I want the job or not, will I ever write back? *smacks self* Hard. I responded instantly, although I haven't heard back from him yet.

So...erm...keep your fingers crossed that he doesn't think I'm a complete moron? I'd appreciate it.

Math. Obviously.

So I'm a somewhat superstitious individual, which is why I didn't mention here that I had an interview on Friday. It's for a nice small little company that my professor works for. She recommended me for a nice little web development position, so I went in to meet the boss. The interview went really well, and they are 'cautiously optimistic'. Basically the deal is that, if I can write the three programs he gave me as homework, he'll hire me on an internship, so we can see how it works out, and then once I graduate, if it's all going well, we'll start doing the paperwork that will switch me from an F1 visa to an H-1B.

When I came home from the interview on Friday, I started freaking out, as I am wont to do. I lost all faith in myself that I could write the programs, and essentially built up a huge barrier for myself. My philosophy appeared to be:

I can't do it, so I'm going to give up.
I look better on paper than I really am in person.
I can't apply the knowledge I have to the real world.

Huge wall. So I ignored the programs all weekend, and yesterday, while Barbara was at work, I ran out of excuses and had to dedicate some time to it. I started on the first program, wrote up the basics in Java, and then got completely rear-ended by the math. I gave up. When Barbara got home, we chatted, ate dinner, and played some Castle Crashers. Finally, as we lay in bed about to go to sleep, I opened up to her and explained my fears. A couple of tears later, and I felt composed enough to actually describe the problem to her.

My sweetie is brilliant, but math is not her strong suit, as science is not mine. We have our fortes, and our areas in which we are lacking, and together we work well. Essentially what I was trying to explain to her was the equivalent of her trying to explain the EndoMuscle System to me, which for those of you just joining us is practically quantum physics. Anyway, as I'm oh-so-calmly explaining the problem, using my examples, Barbara pipes up:

"So for 4 weeks, and a goal of 16, that's 4 a week."

Nice, simple math, right? 4 x 4 = 16. Obviously. Yet, I'd been focusing on small, 0.something numbers so much that I'd fried my brain. This was exactly what I needed. The light in my brain switched on, and I ran to the computer. Huzzah!

So, the program is not complete, but it's a darn sight closer than it was this time yesterday, all because of my girl. So I wanted to say thanks to her, in a nice public forum, for calming me down, and helping me get to the bottom of E= MC².