donk

So I got an internship. I learnt from past failures of my portfolio that one basic one won't do the job at all. I have to do like what I do with coverletters (and occasionally resumes) which is customize customize customize. I stayed up all night after work Thursday and until my interview Friday (mostly) to do it. Not to say I didn't at least try to sleep, but I had almost fallen asleep when Ciro woke up to find himself locked in the bathroom and started clawing at the door to be let out. I got up and let him out, and lay back down with him next to me to try to sleep again, but at that time I got a brilliant idea in my head on how to do my portfolio.

Many creative types may know this sort of feeling as persistent inspiration; the whole "oh man I really need to sleep, but this is such a good idea, maybe if I just start it, that will be good enough. No I should really sleep. I'm going to try to sleep." 10 minutes later: "ok, I need to start this, I am going to forget if I don't start it". So I got up and started it and picked out all the pieces that were going in and made up the covers (I made it like a little book, or a 'zine; a single short-signature [12 pagse] long). When I finished that, I tried to go to sleep again, but I pretty much just lied in bed for about 2 or 3 hours with my eyes closed trying to get comfortable and trying to sleep to little avail.

I got up at 10:30am or so and finished it up around 11:30. By this time it was too late to try to submit it via the internet to Kinko's, so I had to go there in person and try to get things figured out. They claimed they were printing things (though none of the printers were going), so I had to go to the self-serve. I had put the disk into my laptop (and brought my laptop) so it wouldn't get scratched up in my portfolio, and I'd brought the laptop in the case I couldn't get it to print right or in a timely fashion so I could at least just present it on screen. Well. At Kinko's self-serve, the colour printer does not do two-sided automatically. I spent probably about $12 on prints I couldn't use because of this. $6 of which was on printing from Preview which makes for a really shitty printing as for whatever reason, it downscales all graphics before sending to print; even vectored ones.

12:30 rolled around (my interview was at 1pm), so I called and asked to push back to 2pm since they were about 90% of the way to my present work, and I was on-foot rather than on-bike. The first bit of trouble I really ran into was trying to eject the disk from my laptop because somehow along the way a very tiny screw had lodged itself in my cdrom drive's slot. This made ejection impossible. I almost wrecked the disk trying to get it out. Lucky bottle opener to the rescue: I got the tiny screw out, and though my laptop (which is apparently a slut for reading any optical media) would read it, the kinko's mac (after MUCH thinking) would not, and well, it is .40$/min. When it is like the slowest possible build of powerpc, that is a lonnnnnng time. I probably spent a good half of the money-time just WAITING for the computer to do something.

Anyway, I got it printed, and I left there at about 1pm. I got down to the place at 1:30 and had my interview. They were blown away. The guys really liked what I did, and when I mentioned I could draw really well (I also had some samples tucked in my portfolio), well, that went even better. Basically said I could have the internship if I wanted it; particularly because they were also looking for someone who could work on Fridays (which is my best day to do this anyway). So I start there at 1pm this Friday. I'm excited!

Just for the sake of it, I might send it to print at Kinko's (because I will have time to get it with a decent turnaround and it will actually be cheaper than if I try to do it myself again) and make a few more copies so I can leave them behind since it went over so well, and I might still be able to interview at Miami Ad School (the lady emailed me) on Friday while I was out and about and just not checking my emails anymore (or sleeping) pretty much when I'd specifically told her she should call me in my message. I emailed her back today saying I'd still be interested in interviewing this week and to let me know what a good time would be (as she said she'd had a very hectic week and that was why she hadn't gotten back to me at all). If I get that job, it would be awesome because then I'd be teaching design. Which is something I really want to do because it is such a varied field.

Woo woo!