I didn't get it

Well, after waiting for a couple of days, I got an email from Cedar Fort. Here is most of it:

"Amy,

This is the only email address I found for you, I hope it works.

We want to thank you so much for your time and consideration in applying for
the Graphic Designer position at Cedar Fort. It is people of your quality
abilities who assist us in making Cedar Fort such a valuable asset to our
community.

We have decided on another individual to fill this immediate position, but
will keep your resume on file for any future openings.

Thank you again and best wishes on completing your career goals."

Then it had his name signed at the bottom. So, one place down, 100 million to go.

My interview

Well, I went to my interview at Cedar Fort Inc., and honestly I don't know how I did. I feel like I did well with asking questions and putting myself in a positive light, but I don't know.

The interviewer did bring up my blog, which was kind of a surprise. I mean, I don't think there's anything on here I'm ashamed of, but it was kind of a surprise anyway. I mean, I don't have it listed on my resume and it didn't come up when I googled my name, so that must've taken some sort of digging.

So, he brought up my blog but didn't say anything about it, bad or good.

Then he looked at my portfolio and didn't say anything about it, bad or good.

We also talked about my experience and he didn't say anything about it, bad or good.

As an interviewer, I guess you'd kind of want to keep your feelings of the interviewee to yourself, but usually I can still gauge how they feel about me, but not this time.

I find out in a couple of days how I did and I'll let you all know, too, since right now I have no idea how I did.

Something turned up

Well, it's finally come to pass.

After two-ish weeks of waiting, I've finally got an interview with a company I found, thanks to Anna Bergevin, on the BYU alumni site. I hope they think of me as an alumnus of their school, considering I'm an alumnus of a sister school. I'm sure they're okay with it.

Anyway, it's with a company called Cedar Fort Inc., that publishes LDS books! Hoo hoo! I would be designing advertisements, bookmarks and book covers. Also, I just reread their job specifics and I'm pretty qualified. At least, in my mind. :) Proficient in InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. I'm not perfect in them, but I've had advanced experience in all three.

So, the interview is tomorrow at 10:30 and I'll let you all know how that goes. In the meantime, I'm researching the company like mad and trying to quell my pre-interview jitters.

On the job hunt

In a blink of an eye I was graduated and home in good ol' West Jordan, leaving me to wonder "What's next?"

As always in the summer, I started on the job hunt, but something was a bit different this time: I had a degree and a desire to not settle for anything less than what I wanted in a job.

I started pulling up websites with job offers for journalists and graphic designers, wishing I had put a little more effort into taking classes for graphic design majors -- like typography -- or at least had sat down with a designer at the Scroll to teach me some of their secrets to good design.

Sure, I'm pretty good at the basic ideas of design, especially for page design, but I just realized I wanted to know more about the design world -- but, alas, it's a little too late.

Other realizations I had revolved around my choice of major, and therefore my choice of career. Roughly 100 million advertisements in the classifieds were for engineers or nurses. "Shoot," I thought to myself, "too bad I'm not good at that one science thing." Then there were the 100 million other computer/website design jobs. "Crap. I should have learned HTML."

Then again, I don't like science or computers, and something could turn up in page design, right? Stay tuned for the answer.

We're basically all just children

Oh Senior Seminar.

Oh last day of Senior Seminar.

Oh getting to last day of Senior Seminar.

And then the heavens opened and the people rejoiced.

It started out like pretty much any other Senior Seminar day, with lots of senioritis and presentations about what people have done wrong in their lives and what they can do to make it right. We got together in groups and were trying to decide whether or not to pull Martha Stewart's line while she was in prison, and what to do about the whole prison thing.

Here's what was on the line: a mystery box marked with a giant question mark.

We decided that we wouldn't pull the items and we'd also do a countdown that coordinated with her freedom from prison, which gave us a tie for the win with another group.

Which meant it came down to a cupcake eat-off. We chose Kirk to do the honors and watched in semi-horror as he downed a Better-Than-(insert your favorite word here) Cupcake, with Skor chips and whipped cream and chocolate cake and caramel. He stopped breathing for a second, I think, but eventually got it down amidst cheers from us -- the curious members of group 2.

We opened the box that, unbeknownst to us, held our salvation.

There it was: dollar store Play Dough in four different colors. I chose red and blue, and was promptly entertained for the rest of the class period making cigarettes (for another group presentation), mountains and little men. Oh, and this little Christmas tree at the top of this post. I was not exempt in my joy; my other group members made cubes, animals and imprints of different objects around them.

This brought me to the realization that everyone is just a kid at heart -- even seniors who are graduating and going out into the world.

It redeemed my thought of humankind and made me want to give the world a can of Play Dough -- not a Coke.