My boring semester

This is an excerpt from an email I wrote to a friend in France:

I'm about to sign an offer for a real job. Most of my semester has been spent trying to acquire that offer. I flew to virginia to check out a job at a new gatorade factory; I took a 4 hour programming exam for Epic Systems; I've gone to countless information sessions; I played poker with General Electric and had dinner with Navigant Consulting; I drove to Indianapolis and Chicago for interviews, and I did at least 5 interviews on campus, some of which required hours of application-filling. It has been exhausting - not so much the actual amount of work (some of my friends are doing twice as much) as the stress of getting rejected from companies. When I first started I was terrible at interviews and Kyle was doing amazing. He was flying all of the country while I was getting "First of all I want to thank you for interviewing with Company, but I'm sorry to say..." That was pretty tough. I'm not used to rejection and failing at things and for a while I thought I was doomed to being a housewife. Kyle was really supportive though and I learned and got better. My biggest mistake was being humble in interviews. It's counter-culture to be cocky when you're talking to someone, especially a stranger, but that's what it takes to get jobs. You have to sell yourself and your accomplishments without sounding like a jackass. I found the easiest technique is to smile and act excited when talking about classes, work, whatever, instead of just describing them like you would on a resume, which is what I did in my first few interviews.

Anyway, it WORKED! I finally heard back from Accenture (after breaking down because their late response led me to believe I was rejected again). I'm going to be living in Chicago and flying all around the country doing consulting work. Kyle is leaving for Ohio in a few weeks for a co-op to boost his GPA (for grad school later) and then he is going to live with me when he graduates next december. Hopefully we're going to live with a couple of our friends too. Kyle's going to work for Hitachi Consulting, which is on the same block as Accenture. Pretty cool huh?