The Power of being aggressive

It became rather apparent to me as I was interviewing for the position I have now, that if I wanted to prove I was serious about it, I was going to have to head up for a visit myself.

Now I'm going to be honest, I was really kind of tired of waiting to actually receive an offer and we had talked about it a lot.

The Monday of my last finals week ever was probably filled with the most stress I had that week: and it wasn't preparing for the tests I was soon going to have to take — because I really only had like two exams that week. It was this last interview that I thought would be the only possibility of a job offer, and that conversation just happened to be during finals week, a mere six days before graduation.

Now, the editor in Gillette knew that that week was my finals week, so she kept conversation fairly short. But at the end she said that she had wanted to start the discussion about a job, but then we left it at that for the day.

At that point I felt like I was right on the cusp of getting this job, but there was something more that I felt I needed to do. I offered to come up to Gillette and see the town and meet her personally.

​​For me, this was to make sure I could actually handle a smaller town like Gillette and actually be able to live in Wyoming, because let's be honest here, Wyoming being a huge part of northern Colorado humor, "Wyoming is Wyoming and there is nothing there but wind." Well, now I find that to be true, but the people here are also super nice, and even though opinionated, have open hearts and minds.

While I was on rounds with one of our main reporters, she mentioned that Ann (the editor), had told her that I had offered to come up, and she said that was pretty gutsy, and she also told me that showed I cared.

So in the end, the fact that I decided to make the 5-hour drive up to Gillette to stay for a weekend made all the difference.

I had partially come to meet the editor and see the paper and partially to make sure I could "handle" Wyoming, but that is what made all the difference, and I don't think I ever would have thought to offer to come out unless my JTC capstone professor had said something about it during class.