Learning Curve

One of the perks of not driving every day is that on those occasions that I am required to drive somewhere, I’m actually kind of excited to do so.  I really missed driving when I was in Burkina Faso.  When in the capital, I would fantasize about how cool it’d be if my taxi driver offered to let me take the wheel.  This never happened.  But the funny thing is, I know that if I was to ask a taxi driver in Burkina Faso if I could drive their car, I’d have about a 50/50 chance of him saying “yes.”  I know this, because there was once a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina Faso that frequently asked taxi drivers if he could drive their car.  They usually said yes.

I drove to Boulder today, which is a whopping 30.1 miles from my house in Denver.  While I was certainly enjoying my drive (Bret Saunders was interviewing Chevy Chase on KBCO, as Chase is receiving some sort of lifetime achievement award this week at the Boulder International Film Festival), my mind was mostly consumed by my mission: I was going to Boulder to take a test for a job.

Let me just interrupt myself real quick by reminding people that I am relatively new to this whole “job hunt” thing.  It’s all scary and tedious and enlightening, pretty much all at the same time.

So why would I have to go to Boulder to take a test?  Fabulous question.  About three weeks ago, I applied for a librarian position at the CU-Boulder library.  I met their minimum requirements (miraculously) of having four years’ experience working in an academic library and seeing as how I intend to pursue a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, I guess I figured a job at a library might be cool.  One week after I emailed my resume, cover letter, dental history, favorite pizza toppings and inseam size, I received an email from HR at CU-Boulder, congratulating me on the reception of my application.  I’m still not sure what it means to be congratulated for having my application accepted.  By no means does it suggest that I have the job.  While I couldn’t sufficiently decipher the meaning of the beginning of this email from CU’s HR, what I did know was that I didn’t not get the job.  Phew.  The purpose of the email was to inform me that I was now scheduled to take a test in Boulder at a specific time.  No exceptions or postponements allowed.  Either I show up at this time, or my application is thrown out.  But what kind of exam?  I was utterly vexed, and I sought the counsel of my parents.

“It’s probably a good thing, Joel,” reassured my dad.

Seeing as how this is what I consider a “real job” (read: a job that pays not a meager hourly wage, but something known as a “salary”), I was and am still pretty confident that I have no chance of landing this job.  On many occasions I entertained the option of simply not going to take this test.  But I did.  As I was sipping on my coffee driving Northwest on 36 towards Boulder, I figured I have absolutely nothing to lose (aside from some gas in my car’s tank).

I arrived with plenty of time and when I approached the building, I saw a handful of well-dressed individuals approaching the building, one of whom was actually wearing a tie.  I don’t know what it was, but I somehow knew that these people were my competition.  I thought, that one guy is wearing a tie.  I knew i should have worn a tie!  I’m screwed!! I entered the building, darted into the elevator, and I noticed that I was among eight other people, all going to the same floor.  When I entered the testing room, I quickly realized that I was the youngest person in the room.  I also observed that I was one of about 50 people taking this test.  50 people with at least four years’ academic library experience are applying for this job.  I thought to myself, I love recessions.

In a not so weird way, I kind of felt like Will Smith in Men in Black, when he shows up to take the test to become an M.I.B. agent.  I was convinced that I was the odd person out.  The rogue candidate.  A woman sitting across from me was reading a book titled Library Metadata Research Methods as if it were a Sue Grafton novel.  She had to have been about 54 years old.  I thought, where am I? I quickly dug for my pen and proceeded to flip it about my thumb.  I attempted at non-chalance, because pen flipping is my over-compensatory defense mechanism when I’m placed in weird social situations like this one.  I listened in on other tables’ small-talk, where I learned that at least five people in the room have taken this test before.  I learned that it is a 50 question multiple choice exam.  I learned that they’ll probably pick the top two or three test-takers and offer them an interview.  I learned that one man has worked in a library for 30 years and has two grandchildren.

The test was fine.  Like any multiple choice exam, I was able to cross out 50% of the answer options based on how snidely they were worded.  I was surprised to find that about 85% of the questions were “what would you do?” scenarios that explained situations I had actually experienced while working at the library in Fort Collins.  This didn’t necessarily make choosing the correct response any easier; who is to say that my decisions as a librarian were ever by the book?

So while I’m sure three people named Eunice, Chuck, and Lynda (aged 72, 34, and 59, respectively) will probably land the interviews, I was very glad that I didn’t chicken out when I saw one of the applicants wearing a tie.  Turns out he was the only one who did.  Silly over-achiever.