I was supposed to start a new job yesterday. But I didn’t.

Today I went to the doctor for the last bit of medical attention needed before I can gain medical clearance for the Peace Corps.

A little over a month ago I submitted my resume for a ‘Front End Web Developer’ position here in town. I had a phone interview before the Massachusetts Saga and it went quite well–I was told over the phone that my interviewees were going to highly recommend me for the second round of interviews. I was ecstatic. I came back from the East Coast and I found out that they wanted me to come in for a face-to-face interview. I happily accepted. That went well too. I was then told there would be a third and final round of interviews and I would hear back in the next few days whether or not I would be invited back. I was.

Now I can’t say how the other third round interviews went, but I can infer how they went based on mine. I sat down in the conference room and I was told that my interviewers were bringing out the big guns in this round, the tough questions. I let out a ‘hoo-boy’ and the games began. To be honest, I didn’t know the answer to most of the questions and that’s how I started off each question but I followed it up with my best stab at it. After that, I said something along the lines of, “But if I had to do it and I didn’t know how, I could look it up.” I think I was told that was cheating.

I left the interview with mixed feelings. I gave it my all, and most of my all was ‘I don’t know’. If I got the job, great. If not, I’d understand.

I got the job. The offer came a day later with a salary and benefits. I had just finished having lunch with a lady friend so when I saw the email I sprinted out the door and quite nearly tackled her in excitement. Needless to say, I took the offer.

The salary was half of what enticed me towards the job. I had a guaranteed income for a year. If I do the math it doesn’t come out to much more an hour than I made working for the Arboretum, but the fact that I couldn’t work more than fifteen hours a week made the salary seem so much more. I had that money spent from the moment I opened the offer email. The first thing on my list? A car. A Mazda RX-8, and then I changed my mind to an ’81 Corvette because it was cheaper.

The second half that enticed me was the job itself. I had no idea what I would be doing exactly, but it sounded like a lot of running around between departments and a lot of meetings. It sounded busy and busy is important when you’ve had to sit at a job where there is nothing to do some days. Simply put, I looked forward to working hard.

After I accepted, I went into the Arboretum and gave my boss my two weeks notice. She took it better than expected. Even though is isn’t the type to put up a fuss, I expected her to because I had agreed to work until the end of August. She was happy for me. Rightly so, if you ask

Fast-forward to last Monday. I went apartment hunting (I needed a place to live if I was going to work here). I get back and I get a call from the Peace Corps. It’s a follow-up interview to make sure I’m still committed. My heart stops. Time stops. Then life happens. I tell him, of course I’m still committed. He tells me then it’s all up to medical clearance and if that gets in soon, then I could still leave in September.

I hang up and I panic. What do I do? I call my parents and I ask them what they’d do. My mom makes sure I still want to do the Peace Corps. My dad tells me to talk to my new boss–find out if he’ll still want me to work while I can. I call Geoff, needing a biased opinion to help me. No answer.

Jump to Wednesday. It’s a hard thing quitting a job. Sometimes it’s a matter of making sure your boss knows how much you hated working for him and sometimes it’s hard because it breaks your heart to leave a place and people you’ve grown fond of. Now imagine your grew fond of a place before you ever had a chance to go there, leave that. I had built myself a grandiose world where I had the perfect job for a college grad and thus the perfect life. My would-be boss took it well, he understood the situation. his only complaint was that he had to go through the hiring process again.

Now I’m without a job completely because I put in my two weeks notice at the Arboretum too. Not so. When I go in on Thursday, she asks a few things that lead me to reveal my situation. Without me asking for my job back, she offers it back to me until the end of August, as it should have been. I truly find the best bosses.

And back to what I did today. I drove two and a half hours round trip for a five minute stay at the doctor’s office. Four of those five minutes was spent filling out paper and one was spent getting blood drawn. When the results get faxed over the the Peace Corps Medical Services, it should be a day or two before I’m medically cleared. Read: the end of this week/early next week.

I’ll keep you updated.