I applied for an internship training dolphins a while back. I applied because I've always been fascinated with the creatures (although I learned to avoid any decorations that might suggest such when I was younger, they seem to be loosely categorized with rainbows and triangles). I found out about it on a date with a girl I was hopelessly infatuated with. She ended up starting to date her ex's roommate shortly thereafter, but I now knew that such an internship existed.
I was in the middle of helping start a non-profit called the Tipping Bucket at the time. Since start-ups are risky, and non-profits even more so, I was still applying for "real" jobs. Before the Tipping Bucket I had also spent 3 months living out of my parents minivan in winter in Utah*, and I didn't really want to repeat that experience if possible. I finally had some interviews pay off and I got a job offer to be a geophysicist in Houston, TX working for Western Geco.
I was in love with my job at the Tipping Bucket though, and really didn't want to leave it even if my "real" job was a smarter career move. I asked if I could start a bit later to at least wrap things up and see if everything would work out first. Western Geco let me postpone starting until the end of August! Great! A few weeks later the Tipping Bucket was seeing the financial burdens coming our way and broke up with me...
I was crushed. I also now had no way to pay rent. My job wasn't going to start for a while. I made plans to move home again, tail between my legs, and wait for the job to start. Once again I had found something that I really believed in and cared about and had failed.
Being ridiculous I started to try and figure out what to do with my last months of freedom. I made elaborate plans to learn Ruby web development at night to make myself useful for the Tipping Bucket and to surf by day because I wanted to. I was also going to study for the GMAT so that one day I could go back to the non-profits with some real business acumen and make a decent living changing the world without having to rely on grants and donations. Oh, and since I now had the summer free I figured I'd go ahead and apply for this dolphin internship thing too.
I didn't get it. I was sad, but then my brother was thinking about getting married mid summer, and I thought it might be for the best (of course he still hadn't proposed to the girl yet and it was the end of April by now). Besides, tickets to Hawaii were over $600 and I could learn to surf in Cali. Ticket prices dropped by over half and then I get an email saying they might have another spot after all... I was already a month late with my application due to a technical glitch on their website and had only submitted one of the two required letters of recommendation so I hadn't really expected much until this last email. They wanted me to fill out a questionnaire though. This thing read like an interview. I have never been so excited to fill out a survey before in my life! When I got the reply saying they wanted me I literally did a cartwheel in the dining room.
My brother did finally propose, and he is still wanting to get married mid July. I'm hoping he'll wait for me to get home, but I guess that's up to him. I start work 5 days after the internship ends so I'll only be home for one weekend anyway. I haven't found housing yet since I wasn't in the original group accepted for the internship and they already teamed up to find places. I would seriously be happy with a couple of trees to hang my hammock, a locker to store my stuff, a library with WiFi to keep in touch, a beach to go surfing and snorkeling, a place to shower, and then take my rent money and try the restaurants in the area. If I could find someone to let me use their kitchen I'd even cook for them once a day.
*I graduated on the flight home from Israel having made the mistake of graduating before getting a job lined up. Employers looking for educated people to fill entry-level positions go to the Universities to recruit, and once you are out of the system it is really hard to get a job. The fact that it was just about the bottom of the recession didn't help either. After a few months of living at home in Northern AZ I realized I needed to go back to BYU--where I got my degree--and use their resources to get interviews. Since I had no income to pay rent with, I took a couple of seats out of the Toyota Sienna, put down a memory foam mattress, stuck a dowel rod between the Oh Crap handles, and had a cozy little home. I showered and ate at friend's places, and when frost started forming on my blankets at night I moved onto their couches. I had over 40 interviews before I started working for the Tipping Bucket, but that is yet another story.
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