Dream job It wasn’t my first interview by any means, but I had never wanted a job as much as I wanted this one. For years I had been floating from one job to the next, not sure of what I wanted to do in life but needing some way to afford living on my own. I had filled many temporary positions and a few permanent ones, or at least ones that the employers considered to be permanent, even though I didn’t think of them in that way. I had met many interesting people and made a few friends, but I’d never felt that I’d found a post that suited me. Interestingly enough, many of the friends I’d made along the journey felt the same way.
I had worked in a restaurant serving food, in an insurance office reviewing people’s claims, at a PR firm thinking of ways to impress important people, and even on a construction site building homes. An odd set of skills you might think, and none of them really appropriate for the job I was going for now - forest conservation. This was an area I’d been passionate about as a teenager, but didn’t think I could ever make a living from. Now I’d decided to give it a chance. Some of the skills I’d picked up along the way had even been in direct conflict with it, such as the pounding of nails into wood. Those poor trees! Now I’d be in charge of saving them. Well, I hoped I would be anyway.
I’d done a lot of preparation for this one interview, this one shot at fulfilling my destiny. I tried not to be too dramatic - naturally there were other interviews to be had, or so I had to think, to take some of the pressure off. I had searched for this job for over a year, even considering moving across the country, only to decide to wait until something came up round here. It wasn’t easy to get your foot in the door in this line of work. And not just anyone could do it, hence my two years of graduate work.
There was no telling how many other people were vying for this position. The number of CVs that office received must have been in the hundreds. It’s tough finding a job these days, let alone the job you want. But we mustn’t let things like that stop us from getting what we want out of life. I’ve resigned myself to believing that if there’s something you really want, you have to really focus on getting it, and that means blocking out discouraging thoughts. I had to believe that the job was mine, despite the pain I might have to endure if I didn’t get it.
I imagined the interviewers to be a great bunch of guys. Here they were, doing what they loved to do. Certainly there was gratification to be found in any job, even in the jobs I mentioned before. But dignity and self-respect depend on your own view of life, and how you see yourself as a benefit to the world. And of course, what you feel would satisfy you the most personally.
So I would do my best to convey these feelings during the hour or so I had with the directors, and cross my fingers for a call back. I suppose everyone passing through their doors would be doing the same thing, but if I could express my deepest passion for preserving forests, which I’ve realised was my destiny all along, surely I would be doing myself the biggest favour. |