Shame

My friend Andrea and I have recently moved to Austin. It has been a very exciting and a very frustrating time. The friends that we have here have been extremely helpful in giving us ideas for finding jobs, and referring us to their apartment realtors, but sometimes even the best and most well-intended advice might go awry.

One of our friends, Jamie Amber to be precise, has been very excited about Andrea and I going to a job fair he had heard of. For the past month we have been running around to every available resource and handing in applications. We've handed out about 100 plus resumes and applications and had about five interviews between us. It has been exhausting. When Jamie mentioned this career fair, we asked him a few times if it was the kind that two twenty-somethings with very little work experience would be expected to go to. Jamie assured us that yes it was.

So we put on our best interview outfits and a Jamie's wife, Elizabeth, gave us a ride to the career fair. I took a minute on the sidewalk to change out of my bright red converse shoes and put on my sensible black pumps and then we proceeded into the building. I don't really know what I was expecting. It was only noon, so my head was still in its morning fog (which doesn't lift until about three, if you were wondering), so I probably wasn't expecting much. Just a few places like Taco Bell, or department stores from malls to be sitting behind booths handing out applications.

Confident in our abilities, we walked into the conference center holding the folder with our resumes, our sensible shoes clacking in foyer.  There was a booth with a woman behind it who asked us to fill out a form. I could definitely do that! We were on the right track.

We were then directed into a room full of booths, and I was immediatley filled with dread. Everyone was in suits. No one there was wearing clothes their friend had given them, or make-up from that was on-sale at Target. We found ourselves in a frightening world, but we had walked into the room and we had to look more professional than we were. We couldn't just walk in and walk out. Although that may have been a better option.

We walked up to the nearest booth, which looked very professional with a big poster next to it that said, "New York Life" and listed exciting adjectives like, Travel!, Careers!, Communication!. There were two people behind the booth, a man and a woman, both in very expensive suits. They obviously had gym memberships because they were both very fit, and they obviously did not get their hair done at SuperCuts, or whichever one strikes your fancy when you're at Wal-Mart shopping for underwear and socks so you can put off laundry for another week.

We did not feel super prof. We were not 30. We were probably very cute, and I was definitely wishing my mother were right outside.

We walked around with giant deer eyes, shuffled our feet toward the table the farthest away from the New York Life table (I don't even know what that is) and then practically ran out.

Upon walking out, heads down, the shame palpable, we realized we were hungry. So where did we go? The refuge of all grown-ups. Sonic. Because there was one close by. We sat at our booth of humiliation and shame and ate the most horrible food ever to come out of a machine.

It felt like I had been caught playing dress-up. Or like when you look back on a child-hood memory and realize you were being a total dumb-dumb and all the grown-ups were laughing at you. I wanted to go back and explain to the power-ties that we were misinformed. We knew we didn't belong there. But it was too late. So I just ate my cheeseburger and tater tots and Andrea drank her hot chocolate.