So, What Have You Got to Show For Yourself Young Lady?

In the last twelve months, I have:

• Received my Bachelors Degree
  
• Learned to make coffee
• Memorized the the excel spreadsheet shortcut handbook
• Perfected the art of changing in and out of my interview suit in Banana Republic dressing rooms
• Completed a senior Capstone Thesis Project
• Accumulated enough twitter accounts for promotional sites at internships to donate to the people in Oklahoma city who still don't have twitter
• Had business cards made. 5 free ones. They sit on my dresser.
• Had my fair share of celebrity encounters
• Moved to New York City
• Applied and re-applied to the NBC Page Program
• Probably got blacklisted from The Daily Show (I have tickets to see Jon Stewart as well as tickets to The Colbert Report this upcoming March, so stay tuned...)
• Started attending shows at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre
• Made some sort of impression on the CBS Page Program
• Realized I know very little about sports...
• Yet also went to my first Rangers game.
• Hopefully maintained a positive attitude
• Devoted more unpaid internship hours than most people do in a lifetime
• Dealt with absent minded creative supervisors, and overly anal OCD supervisors
• Sent out a lot of resumes and applications
• Met a ton of extraordinary people. Nice, extraordinary people.

Bring it on 2010! Hit me with your best shot.

Post Graduation Unemployment- The Same Story You've Heard 400 Times Before.

Yea................no.

I am not like all of those other graduates suddenly paying for health insurance and wishing I spent more time reading Obama's health care plan before jumping on his social media bandwagon.
I could complain to you about every conversation I have with any adult which basically embarrasses me, makes me feel small about myself, reminds me that I'll never be a success and basically announces to the world that I desperately need help getting a job.
But instead, I am going to prove to you why I am different. And while I still don't have a job, I blame that entirely on the economy. It is through no fault of my own.
After the NBC Page Program fell through (and don't worry, I have resubmitted and will keep doing so until they give me another chance), I didn't mope around. The difference between me and all these other unemployed Bachelor's degrees, is that I have done everything to make myself, well, I am going to use the word: unique.
In addition to applying for every job on craigslist, mediabistro, media-match, and joining Linkedin- I have done every absurd thing imaginable to get my resume into the right hands.
If there is something I haven't thought of, I encourage you to post it below.
The following is a list of some of the craziest things I have to get my dream job.

I found an email address for an employee at HBO. The email address was Firstname.Lastname at hbo.com. I then googled at hbo.com and found 6 other employee email addresses, all Firstname.Lastname at hbo.com. I then decided to use this formula, and apply it to any HBO employee that I could find. I searched the HBO website, I checked the IMDB pages, I found the name of every crew member on every HBO show. By the end, the list was comprised of hundreds of names, some as normal as Susan.Fletcher at hbo.com, and others stretching to Jeremy.Piven at hbo.com. I am certain I even sent one to Mark.Wahlberg at hbo.com. And at that point, I though, 'what the hell', so I sent one to Ed.Burns at hbo.com, Eddie.Burns at hbo.com, Eddy.Burns at hbo.com, and Edward.Burns at hbo.com.

I sent out hundreds of these emails. For the next hour, my gmail was flooded with responses from Mail Delivery Subsystem:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently.

But more than a few of them were real. And a few of those even responded. However, the best they could do was give me the email address for the Human Resources Dept, which is clearly listed on their website.

The Email Screen (NBC Page Program Part II)

Enough with waiting. In real life, I actually waited about 3 months between NBC Page Program and NBC Page Program Part II, but you people in the blog world don’t seem to have time to wait that long.
So instead, watch this.

Now I’ll try to be short, as your attention span is the only thing I’m trying to get right now. My email screen was scheduled, then it had to be rescheduled.

Skip ahead another month. (Warning: This is the same clip you just watched.)

Finally it was set. I was home for winter break. I had my dad at his laptop. Me on one home computer. My mother on the other home computer. My good friend had dropped off HoCho and a muffin. I don’t drink coffee. I was prepared.

The email screen is a list of question sent to you in a document attached to an email, that you have exactly one hour to open, complete, and send back to a specified address.

At exactly 9:30am (the appointed time) I started refreshing my email. Nothing. At 9:35am I started to freak out. I had a sudden idea to check my school email, which I had not used once to communicate with NBC, but was also listed on my resume. Sure enough, the email screen was there. Not only was it there, it was sent at 9am, with the appointed send back by time as 10am. By now it was 9:38. That was only 22 minutes to complete the ‘exam’. After 30 more seconds of freak out, I got to work. My parents researching everything I shouted at them, and me- typing furiously. Similar to the way I am typing now, encouraged by the sheer memory of it.
22 minutes later I sent in my barely half completed email screen. By this point I had already resigned myself to a life of burger flipping. (Not that there is anything wrong with that! :) ) No Brooks Brothers NBC Page jacket for me. I then thought to email the woman who I had been corresponding with at NBC about scheduling my Email Screen. I double checked to make sure it was her mistake first, of course.
I wrote her a very polite but discouraged email, explaining the events of the morning. I then gave myself a break, and went to catch up on that weeks episode of The Office and 30 Rock. As the name Lorne Michaels appeared on the screen, the office theme song ringing loudly from my phone caused me to answer to an HR rep from NBC. She apologized profusely about the mis-communication and asked if I were available to take Email Screen at a later point that day. We then arranged for the screen to happen from 1pm-2pm that afternoon. On a hunch, I asked if the screen would be the same questions as earlier that morning. Her response? “Yes, but don’t worry, well send you a new email.”
Needless to say, I raced back to the computer and worked on those questions for the next three hours, and then throughout the 1 hour of the actual screen time.
So even if my answers weren't the best answers, they were certainly the longest, most researched, best edited, and well written.

What can I say though? The next month I got an email. They didn’t pick me. Not for the next step, not for nothing.
I mean obviously damnit. Or why would I be writing this damn blog?
You shoulda figured that out and not even bothered reading this post.
Dumbass.

Too soon to insult my readers?

Waiting... For Jeff Zucker/Sucker

As I was waiting for the NBC Page Program to instantly accept me, I began to fill me head with all sorts of trivia that would help make me the next Jeff Zucker. Interestingly, I found that if you typed in Jeff Zucker into your web browser, it immediately redirects you to his Wikipedia page. Funnily enough, I found that if you type in Jeff Sucker into your web browser, it also redirects you to his Wikipedia page. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself.

The NBC Page Program

In November 2008, I suddenly realized that Kenneth the Page, on NBC’s 30 Rock, was not a completely fictional character. While someone over the age of 19 who still believes in a witch who comes after you when you don’t eat your vegetables probably doesn’t exist anywhere, the Page position at NBC is just as coveted as Kenneth’s NBC Page jacket in the game of poker with Jack Donaghy. With over seven THOUSAND applicants for a mere 60 spots, the chances of getting into the NBC Page Program are about as likely as your boob falling out of your top while on TV in the middle of the Superbowl. So about one. But actually, the stats prove that it is less likely to be chosen to wear a dorky suit, give tours of a glorified office building, and get the chance to usher people into their seats for a show, than to be a qualified candidate getting into Harvard Medical School. What does one learn from that statistic? Be a doctor; because your dreams of getting coffee for a GE executive are never gonna happen. Still though, one cant crush a dreamer with numbers, and I decided to become Kenneth the Page. Only a shorter, wiser, more awesome one.
My first step to becoming the next best friend to idol Tina Fey, was to find the job description and application for the NBC Page Program on the World Wide Web. It wasn’t too hard. After I read the three paragraphs explaining the program and realizing that all of my prayers had just been answered, I left the tabs open on my laptop for two weeks. It was already a moment of great accomplishment- finding something that I actually wanted to apply for, a goal for something to look forward to in my life after college.
I then discovered that my roommate’s friend’s sister had once been an NBC Page. Swish right?
I emailed the distant connection and soon set up a phone call. At the designated time, I called her, and then proceeded to have a glorious hour and a half conversation with the person who I was certain was my foot in the door. She helped me with my cover letter, passed my name around to some hiring people, and convinced me that if she could do it, anyone can.

Before I continue, I would like to take a quick moment to explain what the process entails for becoming an NBC Page.
First: you submit your resume, cover letter, and basic information online, basically requesting to be considered and applicant.
Second: they either acknowledge that you applied and inform you that they will eventually contact you regarding the next step, or you just never hear from them again.
Third: if allowed to continue, you are given a time to complete the Email Screen, a fancy way of wording: online questionnaire, within an hours time.
Fourth: if you pass ‘the screen’ you are invited up for an interview. You then meet with a few different members of the NBC team who do their best to make you wet yourself
Fifth: if you have survived the interviews and you have brought a change of clothes, you ate submitted into the well of death, that is- the group interview. There, they force you to compete with the other applicants while pretending to work as a team.
And if you do all of that correctly, and Jerry Seinfeld owes your father a huge favor, the might let you work at the lowliest position NBC has to offer.

So after hanging up on a high note that the first job I was looking into was almost guaranteed to be perfect for me, I submitted my information to the Page Program.
Then it was waiting time.