Interviews

I am a part of the academic advising's hiring committee at work. One of their advisor's was recently promoted. Though the promotion was exciting news, now begins the tedious work of hiring a replacement.

Working at a college offers many challenges. You have to be good at a lot of things. Take for instance my job; there are two major parts to my job. One, speaking with students. It can be one on one or it can be with an audience of 200+ students. Two, dispensing of federal and state aid to help a student pay for their college. Along with number two comes knowing all federal and state guidelines (a lot of paper is wasted for the manuals of federal and state regulations and each year the regs change as our legislatures change) and knowing all IRS regulations.

And I think I meet with a lot of students. Academic advisors meet with far more.

Two of our applicants were scared to death in the interview. Interviews are tough, don't get me wrong. But both applicants knew each member of the committee. So a thought arises...if we scare you, the students will eat you alive. You hate to see someone leave work in tears everyday. It happens occasionally, but it shouldn't happen every day. But to say something positive, they both seemed very intelligent and were hard workers. I have no doubt that they could handle the rest of the job. But since their main job will be working with a diverse population of students, they will go no further in the interview process.

The third applicant sounded great on paper and did a decent interview. My only concern...she seems too perfect. You get the sense that there is something more to this one, you just can't place you finger on it.

So the decision was made to call in more applicants. There were a lot of applicants for the job. The pool had to pick from was 15. Today we interviewed 3. Now we are calling in two men (who were my first picks).

We shall see what happens next. My guess is that one of these two guys will be hired for the position.

Of course, I tend to be harder on the applicants for one reason. I spent three years writing people's resumes and teaching people interviewing skills (had to get through college somehow). So many times after an interview, I want to pull the person aside, tell them what went wrong where and how they need to improve if they really want to get hired. But I have moved from the pre-interview stage into the interview and post-interview stage. No longer can I pull the person aside and give a few pointers.

Dinner with the UN

The other night I went to have dinner with Anita and her husband Kevin. Kevin was cooking dinner (the evening’s special was shrimp spaghetti with a lemon pie for dessert...Yumm!). Anita and I were going to be getting a few things together for her baby shower. Anita's sister (Dee) and Mom (Paula) were also coming over to help us with the planning.

So why did this feel like a dinner at the United Nations? I'm sitting at the table (the only Caucasian in the group and at least 6 inches taller than everyone else). Anita, Dee and Paula are rambling about this, that and the other in Spanglish (I caught most of it). Kevin is on the phone with his mom speaking Mandarin Chinese. What more of a diverse group could have gathered for dinner? We had me, the Caucasian...Anita, Dee and Paula are Hispanic...Kevin is Asian.

But hat's off to Kevin for making another delicious meal! Thanks, Kev!

My office

Not so long ago we got new offices. Last fall we were moved to our temporary homes down the hall while our area was torn down and rebuilt. Well, it turned out pretty nice and we moved back. Here are a few pics of my office. Yes, I know my office is a little bland, but I am working on that. Just imagine more pics on the walls and a few more plants.

Here's my place!

My polka dot chairs!

Little Moments of Joy

Today, one of those moments happened. I was driving to work and saw an absolutely wonderful sight. What was that sight? The speed limit sign. Now, why would that create a small moment of joy? Today they increased the speed limit 5 whole miles! Woo Hoo! No longer is it 35, but 40! I was previously driving 42 miles per hour and was driving 7 miles over the speed limit. Now I am only two miles over the speed limit. Yeah!

Quote of the Day

Today's quote has been provided by Flannery O'Conner...

"I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome."

For some reason I thought that was really funny! :)

Techinical Difficulties

My computer at home has crashed. My C-Drive gave up. The first sign would have been the clicking noise that my C-Drive kept making. The next sign would have been the blue screen with the message 'your computer is shutting down to advoid any more damage'!!!! Followed by 'your files are now being deleted'!!!!!

Ryan is going to try to salvage what I had on my computer. It will be a bummer if I lose all those pics and music files. As horrible of an excuse at it is, that is why my blog has been sorely neglected. Sorry blog!

Plumbing

Let me start off by saying that I am not a plumber. But I have to say that I do know a few things about plumbing. One, if you are working on your plumbing, make sure water is not running through the pipes under repair. Two, even if water is not running through the pipes, you may still want to consider turning the water off.

Why is number two so important? Last week at work we had some plumbing problems. Right above our office is the VP's office. In the VP's suite, there is a small kitchenette. Apparently, the kitchenette was experiencing plumbing problems.

Plant Operations was called to check out the problem. Half way through their attempt at plumbing, water began to pour through our ceiling. Let's review the definition of pour.

Pour (pôr, pr), verb. To rain hard or heavily.

And rain hard it did! You could have taken a shower in our office. My coworker sprang into action! She grabbed all the trashcans in the area and put then under our waterfall. At the same time, my other coworker called Plant Operations to let them know of the problem. It didn't take them too long to turn the water off, but now there is a huge puddle in our office. At least our office has good air circulation. Our puddle should dry before too long.