fit to drop

Yesterday was a very long day.

It started early with me getting up at 5:00AM in order to get ready for my first interview.  I set of at about 6:30AM and this was too early.  I arrived at about 8:00AM and sat in the multi-storey for about an hour before heading out to the interview.

I've discussed before how I'm pathologically incapable of being late, and this was another example of it, although in my defence I was heading into London and had no idea how the traffic would be.  Indeed, if the end of the day was any judge I could easily have been several hours late!

The second interview went okay.  The plan was a bit wholly and I ended up sat in what was essentially a team meeting.  I wasn't at all sure what, if anything, I was meant to contribute to this.

Also I was obviously handicapped by being quite shy.  this is a particular problem around new people (as I'm sure it is with all shy people) but also with larger groups and it turned out the team was quite large.  I was introduced to them all, but I am terrible with names, so 2 seconds after the introductions I had utterly forgotten who they were.

It didn't help of course that I had my second interview in the afternoon and I was worried about having enough time to get up there, so when it came to questions each time I was more keen to move on than ask a lot of questions.

While I think I would like the people there and the job sounded interesting, I would have two problems - it's a little outside of my experience and I'm still not sure about working in London.  Certainly I don't think I could stand moving into London.

The second interview was in Cambridge.  I set off for it a bit later than I'd hoped and so put my foot down on the motorway.  It had thankfully cleared from the rush-hour so I made it up in time, but if I'd travelled at my usual pace I'd have been late.  As it was I only had about 20 minutes for my lunch.

The second interview was the technical one.

I'd spent as much time as I could doing the prep work, but it was quite difficult to know what direction to take that - should I focus on the physics or the kit they actually sell?  Should I try and memorise a handful of the facts or get a more general feel.

As it turned out they covered a good range of topics, but didn't go too deep into the areas.  Also I got to play with a couple of their products, which was interesting.

My fear on this job is that they are quite focused on that one small area.  On the plus side it turns out their products are really clever and complicated, but I keep flip-flopping - is it too specialised, or is it techy enough to compensate for that.

I felt this one went better than the first, but I did find I couldn't answer some of their questions and also made some clear errors that would have been solved if I'd sat and thought for a while, rather than just blurting out answers.

The fit to drop of the title comes from the fact that, having been up since five, done some 5 or 6 hours of driving and not finished the second interview until 4PM I then had the journey from hell home.

Basically it didn't start well, as there was an accident on the M11.  Now, to be fair, the people on the other carriageway had an utter nightmare, because it was queued back for miles, and was literally stopped.  Most of the people there had actually gotten out of their cars.

On my side the problem was caused by people rubber-necking - slowing down to look at the accident.

I'm not sure if it was this delay or the fact the accident on the M11 meant people would be taking different routes, but when I arrived at the M4 / M3 area of the M25 it ground to a halt.  I must have crawled along for about an hour before finally getting on to the A3.

Now admittedly I did go and get some petrol and grab some junk food to cheer me up, but it was 8:00PM before I got home.  So that must have been about 8 hours I spent driving yesterday.

Hence why I was shattered and today I have basically been useless.