Tomorrow’s the big day. Happy thanksgiving, everyone.

So yesterday, I had a job interview in Atlanta. Dad decided to ride with me so the driving chores would be split and to make it easier all the way around. When I got to the interview, I was set up in an edit suite to put together a simple edit of how I would edit a tease for a show produced by the company. I set up a pretty nice sequence then went back through tweaking the edits. I was about a third of the way done lining up action to correspond to beats in the background music when I was dissatisfied with what I had changed, so I hit “apple+z” on the keyboard about four times to completely undo the edit when a little pinwheel sort of thing popped up. I anticipated that this was the OSX equivalent of Microsoft’s hourglass, so I waited a few minutes. After nothing changed, I left the edit room and told the person I was interviewing with that the program was locked up. She said I should just wait for it to finish crashing or whatnot, then just restart it, retrieve my work from where Avid stores things (the Attic), and let her know when I was done.

After an hour or so of looking at the pinwheel and exhausting friends in my cellphone who might have any idea how to end a program in OSX without hitting the reset button, I went back downstairs and let the interviewer know that the thing was still locked up. With her in tow, I figured out how to force the program to close and restarted it. I wasn’t able to search the Attic because, honestly, I haven’t ever had to use it and that combined with the odd feeling I had with the interviewer just leaving me up there put me in an odd situation to start trying to find it. I doubt I’d have found anything there anyway as nothing I had done had been saved.

With her in the room, we talked as I started from scratch and cobbled together another sequence in about fifteen minutes. The interviewer was shocked I didn’t have a thorough knowledge of After Effects and Photoshop, even though I never claim to anywhere on my resume. My guess is it was just assumed based on my still photogallery, which the interviewer had positive comments for.

Things were cut short because it was the end of the day and the interviewer needed to leave. I finished off my little sequence, saved it and wrote down exactly where it was so the interviewer could go back and check it later. Afterward, I met up with friends from jobs past and had dinner, which made the trip much more worthwhile.

At the end of that, I am left with a few questions:
1. When someone is completely honest on their resume and spells out all their experience, how do you mistakenly assume they know something that would otherwise be an additional bulletpoint?
2. I was working under one of their editor’s profile. How is it he hasn’t set the Avid to auto save? I spent probably 30 – 45 minutes working and it didn’t auto save a single time.
3. Given how well-loved Macs are, how is it that I of all people can sit at one for less than an hour and have a program crash? Is the 04 rev of Adrenaline buggy? Is there system missing a patch? Was I caught as an unwitting sacrifice in the war between Avid and Apple?

The people were really nice at the place and I think I would have enjoyed working there, but I think I am much more valuable than they are capable of realizing if only because of my time spent at BAVC.

Knowing now that I am not going to grad school, a weight has been lifted and I am ready to get on with things. Plans are underway for me to move to the left coast next week. I am pretty excited because I have always wanted to live out there, and there should be plenty of jobs there for which I am qualified. This will be my first real chance to apply for jobs out of which I hope a career can come.