I had applied to at least 20 paid interships for this summer. I was rejected for every single one. Another three rejection emails came this week.  Studied really hard for some of the interviews. Was ghosted for one of them.  The disappointment was just killing me.  The university has a program to set people up with some unpaid work, which is great. I really had my heart set on paid work, but I decided to try and take it.  I will admit I'm burned out on the whole process, with the flaking, ghosting and outright rejections it's been discouraging. I had a phone interview at the grocery store set for Saturday morning for side work  as a cashier and they never called. Upset me a lot. Just the pure indignance of being stood up is really upsetting. 

By this time, because of so much baloney I'm not taking it as seriously now. One interview last year I studied for hours and took the day off of my professional job. Guy never called. I was devastated, bawling.

I got a last-minute invitation for a panel interview for one of these unpaid projects. There wasn't much detail about the project at all. They said that they needed to hire for a position like mine, a designer, so I thought I would at least go to the interview. The link to the website was in the email signature, which I didn't see right off, I felt bad about that, but I think the entire panel was deeply confused. I will admit I didn't study much except to review the job description. 

To me it was extremely unprofessional. I almost felt like the guy was purposely trying to throw  all of us off.  It was not a normal Q and A format. We literally only had a blurb of the job description-that's it.  He asked us to just start talking, as a team, about what we would do with the project-no talking points, just a general question. So there's me, a designer, a couple of developers and an engineer. It's not enough info, so I chime in to break the ice and answer how I would approach the project. He frowns like it's the wrong answer.  Everyone puts in their input, developers, project managers, all very articulate and intelligent.  The convo dies down, and the interviewer does nothing to facilitate it or keep it moving. There is no information-no project scope.  He condescendndingly asks, "Do any of you know anything about this project?"  In truth, we don't. I didn't have the guts to say it, but a developer spoke up and said, "We don't have enough information. We do not know what to talk about." True statement. The guy finally explains the project, then says that it's 50 percent done-that they don't need any designers, (that's me) only people to write the code, that the project is almost done. I'm an hour into this and thinking "why did you invite me here? You saw my resume.  You've wasted all of this time to tell me you don't need any designers after all?"

There is a super long, long, long silence, no one is speaking, SOOOO awkward, so I say, "I have a few questions." He says, "Are you talking to me?" Yes, I say. He then tells me no-that he can't answer my questions and that this is the wrong time.  Another 60-120 seconds of extremely long silence ensues. He then says OK that he can answer my quesion now. I ask him how many hours a week this is in case I do more than one project and is it a full time committment.  He talks in circles never answering.  It was probably one of the worst interviews I've ever had in my life. I honestly wonder if it would be easier to just keep teaching, they don't seem to play this many games.  I knew about 20 minutes in that I didn't want this project based on how incredibly awkward it all was.  I still wrote a thank you note, thanking him for everything and telling him how much I learned even though that is baloney. I felt so disengenuous writing the  thank you note. The truth is I thought it was a massive waste of time.