My Brain Hurts

Holy cats! (I told you I was going to try to use that phrase more often.) I just used my lunch hour to complete a job application for a job that sounds pretty interesting. But I tell you, after what I just went through, I'd better at least get an interview. I deserve that much just for making it through the application process.

To begin with, I despise applications that ask you to upload your resume and then proceed to have you enter everything that is in your resume into their online form. It takes FOREVER. And it's all right there in the resume that you already asked me to upload. But finally, I had that all entered and hit Submit... only to receive an error message. I had to reload the page. And then I had to enter everything all over again.

I hit Submit again and this time it went through successfully! But wait, what is this? Another step to the application process? The site informed me that I needed to answer some assessment questions and anyone who didn't take the assessment would not be considered for the position. I assumed it would be a few questions about your attitudes about this and that... some sort of personality test, basically, designed to see if you would fit into the corporate culture.

As it turns out, it was a test. A long test. It did indeed include a section with the personality test questions. Those are always annoying... they want you to provide black and white answers to situations that have many shades of gray (at least 50 ;) ). And then came the vocabulary test. No problems there. I can rock a vocabulary test. It was long, but kind of fun because I knew all the answers. Even when the next section was full of A is to B as C is to D questions, it wasn't bad. After all, I took the GRE a few (many) years ago and it was full of questions like that. I scored in the 99th percentile back then, surely I can still do this. (The high score on the GRE was mostly gratifying because I took it at the same time as someone else I knew and didn't especially like because he was always trying to show me up at everything. I finished in 30 minutes and left. Then when scores came back, this person - who had spent much longer working on the test - was bragging about his score somewhere in the 80s. It was awesome to be able to share my score and see the look on his face.) As it turns out, it wasn't quite as easy as I found the GRE - probably because it's been a few (many) years since then. But still, not TOO bad.

And then came the last two sections. Math. So much math. Algebra. Patterns and sequences. Fractions. STORY PROBLEMS! Seriously, what are they trying to do to me here? I have never been a huge fan of math, but I did ok with it until I reached trigonometry and calculus. I hated them so much that they forever ruined my relationship with math. And I never did like story problems. All year long Haley brought home pages of story problems every week and I had to grit my teeth and deal with them. (And let me tell you, it's humbling when you really have to stop and think to figure out a 3rd grade math problem.) 6 pages - 20 questions per page - of math problems. I'm not a math whiz, I'm a writer. And I'm applying for a writing position. Why would you torture me with math? In the end, I think I did ok. I came up with an answer - hopefully the right answer - for all but one question. I had to give up and flat out guess on the 3rd to last question.

That was just painful. I'm so glad lunch hour is over so I can go back to my regular - no math required! - work.