Just to catch up on a few things…

Since July I’ve been in the application process for a new job here at The Hospital. A friend of mine in the marketing department clued me in to the fact that they were thinking of creating a position to coordinate The Hospital’s growing social media outreach projects, so I fired off an email to the director of the department before the job was even posted. I interviewed a few months ago and was asked back for a second interview, which finally took place in September because the creation of a new job role got tangled up in HR for weeks on end.

My first interview was with a panel of four people, and they really liked me. They liked my resume, liked my writing samples, liked my personality, and la la la. Of course I was really excited about the opportunity to get a foot in the door in the marketing department – without a degree in the field, that’s a tricky thing to do, but my experience in internal and external communications within my current department has helped me build a portfolio of sorts that’s at least halfway impressive to anyone within this organization. To an outside group, who knows – which is why finding this type of job at The Hospital was a plum chance for me.

But, after much hard work (and even a homework assignment!) preparing for the second interview, I found out (on moving day, natch) that despite nailing the second interview, I came in second place to someone from an outside agency who had more experience in the industry. The manager who called me was very apologetic and reiterated all the things about how they thought I was great and would be an asset to their department and if anything ever came open they would absolutely call me because they were all so impressed, just not the right fit for this job because of lack of experience, and so on and so forth.

But you know how it is. Hear that after a rejection and no matter how sincere the bearer of the bad news is, everything feels like lip service. And I was in the Hardee’s drive-thru line when I got the call, which didn’t help.

And of course this all took place on moving day, which you all know was SUCH a wonderful day to deal with – well, anything.

I drove to E’s house.

“I didn’t get it, baby.” He opened his arms and I snuggled into his chest and got all teary. “I’m giving myself ten minutes to mope,” I sniffed. “Then I have to deal with the rest of this crap and I can’t cry any more.” He said many comforting things and rubbed my shoulders and kissed my hair like the wonderful boyfriend he is. When my ten minutes were up, I forced myself to get back to the business of moving.

Maybe it was for the best that I got the news on a day that was already crappy. I had to suck it up and move on. Literally.

I understand their reasons, of course. I wouldn’t have wanted to go into a job for which I was ill-prepared and lacked the experience necessary to totally kick ass. I can’t ride on personality alone, and if I’m not qualified, then I’m not qualified. I can deal with that.

It’s a field I really want to be in. My boss knows that, and after I told her why I didn’t get the job, she said she was going to make an effort to help me get more experience within our department so I could build up my resume a bit more. She also offered to sign off on tuition reimbursement if I’d like to take a class or three in order to boost my academic credentials.

(Boss, I LOVE YOU. The only reason I want to go work for anyone else is because I know that if you won the lottery tomorrow, you would probably not take me to Bermuda with you and I’d be stuck here working for people not half as awesome as you are.)

That brings me to grad school.

I tried it once before and my first class in the Master’s in Project Management really made it quite clear that I did NOT want to work in Project Management after all. I do okay at it right now, but this is not where I want to be. This is not the kind of work that inspires me or even makes me a tiny bit happy. So I’ve been digging into info on graduate programs in the St. Louis area (online learning, not my thing) and found one school that has several Master’s programs in communications that all have the same core courses. So I could take one or two classes and then head into a program in Media Communications, Media Literacy, or Communications Management.

I was rolling this over in my brain when I got a call from the director of the Marketing Department last week. She called to apologize for not having been in touch since the interview (she was not the one who made that first call to me) and to reiterate how impressed she was with me and really wanted to have me in their department when something suitable became available.

I was truly touched. After a few weeks of mellowing out post-rejection, the same words didn’t feel like lip service anymore. They sounded more honest, more true – true enough to make me feel like even little inexperienced me could have a shot at moving into the field I really want to be in.

I seized the moment and asked her about the graduate programs I was considering. Would one of these be worthwhile, what do you think of the school, what do you think of a possible emphasis in this or that? She was so encouraging and seemed pretty pumped that I was seeking this out on my own.

Little Miss Initiative, that’s me. But seriously, who wants to get thisclose and get shot down again? The resume isn’t going to improve itself, you know.

“And I hope you don’t mind,” she continued, “but I took the liberty of sending your resume and application information over to the VP of [department]. I was speaking to her the other day and they’re thinking about creating a similar position to support their new [redacted] campaign, so I told her about you.”

YOU. HOPE. I. DON’T. MIND?!

Guuuuhhh.

It may become something, it may not. At the moment, the job in the other department doesn’t really exist yet, it’s just an idea they’re tossing around. But my name is in there. Yowza.

And graduate school starts in January.