The Finite

There comes a day for each of us in which we all must face our own mortality and come to terms with our own deaths. But I digress. I need a summer job.

Where have I been lately? Since my interview? Well, since that Monday, I’ve had an Immunology test that following Thursday, genetics quiz the Wednesday after, then a Biochem and Principles of Public Health exams on the same day. Then there was the scholarship essay due the day after. My classes wouldn’t let up until they had collectively punched out my caffeinated blood all over the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Library.

But the good news is that I remained alive, closed down the Gr1llé and made it safely to the train station despite walking through the campus in the dead of morning crooning Jonathan Coulton at the top of my lungs.

The results of that interview will come back to haunt some distant future Tommy. Tuesday, I think. But the results of 2/3 of my exams came back. An (unfortunate) B and a (WTF?) A. I can’t really explain that last one. But no one deserves my thanks more than you All for the constant mobility although I suppose the polymer wheels deserve a shout-out too.

So if you’re not on Purdue’s campus, you probably don’t know that Pharmacy school admissions interviews are this week. Well, they are. Everyone else’s was this past week. Mine and about 100 transfer students’ interviews are Monday. From what I hear, everyone is freaking out before the interview but sitting serenely during (or so it seems with very constricting dress pants). Those that aren’t passing out in the streets of dehydration or excessive formal wear, walk around in a daze afterwards.

So this being my first legit interview I am a little nervous about it. I mean, I had that fake one back in eighth grade, but the only lesson I walked away from that was to fidget where my interviewer couldn’t see and make eye contact.

Then there was the really informal one at the beginning of the year for a committee position that I really, really screwed up with, but Chan was cool with it and I got in anyway.

From that I’ve deduced the three rules of interviewing.

1. Don’t screw up.
2. Seriously, don’t screw up.
3. If you wear brown shoes with a black belt, it is culturally acceptable that you be shot on sight.

I went through the 5 stages of death on Tuesday, but I got better. I’m a little more liberated now, like in V for Vendetta when Evey no longer fears death after being imprisoned by V. I can face Monday with a healthy level of fatalism.

I just have to remember to eat so I don’t pass out, but not to have so much coffee that I come off a jittery coke head.