I really, desperately need a life (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Tuesday, 16 October 2007

I really, desperately need a life

In a recent phone interview, I pretended to be interested in golf and fishing just to be able to act like I cared about recreational opportunities. Next time I think I’ll ask about jogging trails and bungee-jumping. And wind-boarding. Or base-boarding. Or free-basing.

I’m pretty sure none of those are real outdoor activities, but somehow I think people believing I have a serious coke habit would make me a more interesting job candidate than the truth, which is that I’m just plain boring. The most exciting things I’ve done in the past month outside of work, in rough descending order of excitement:

I spent about 14 hours in my car to visit Memphis and see Ole Miss lose to Florida one weekend.
I visited a friend who’s just starting out in a job in Baton Rouge.
I watched a lot of TV.
I sent out a paper for review.
I got my laptop back from CompUSA in Metarie.
I did laundry a few times.

Why I can’t just be a normal person and admit my non-work interests mostly revolve around watching Pardon The Interruption and The Office and being generally socially awkward are beyond me.

6 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Rick Almeida wrote @ Wed, 17 Oct 2007, 8:04 am CDT:

I feel your pain, or at least felt it when I was on the job market.

When I was on my campus visit at FMU, one of the faculty and I were driving out to the big group dinner, and we had a few minutes to kill, so he drove me around town for a bit. We made small talk about schools, housing, and spousal jobs, all nice and usual.

At one point, we came to a big hospital/health care complex that apparently has a huge, well-appointed gym. He asked if I wanted to go in and check it out, and I waffled hard between feigning interest and just being honest and saying “I wish I worked out more, but the truth is I’m kind of a couch potato.”

I chose the latter, and luckily it wasn’t awkward or weird.

That’s not a very interesting story, but at least now you know someone read the blog. :p

2. Scott wrote @ Wed, 17 Oct 2007, 9:31 am CDT:

If you have to get into your hobbies, say:

*you like to travel (you are, in fact a “road geek,” right?...or is that “roadgeek”)
*you have a social scientist’s fascination with pop culture and love to see how it infiltrates the politics you study as well as the lives of the students you teach and how your knowledge of it allows you to relate to them
*you are a self-professed tech nerd who enjoys programming even when it is unrelated to your academic endeavors
*you are a sports fan (you wouldn’t believe how many conversations about sports football, in particular that I had to awkwardly fake my way through)

This is all true, correct?

3. Greg Weeks wrote @ Wed, 17 Oct 2007, 2:55 pm CDT:

It is really lame to be put in that position (being forced to admit you don’t work out in a gym is even worse!). However, what happens when you get the job and someone asks you to go fishing, followed by a round of golf…

4. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Wed, 17 Oct 2007, 3:10 pm CDT:

Tell them I’m busy with my nonexistent wife and kids?

5. Michelle wrote @ Wed, 17 Oct 2007, 6:28 pm CDT:

This whole post/exchange made me giggle—with you not at you. Just earlier today (while sitting down to reward myself with 30 min of SSX Tricky on my PS2—I did finish a book ms this week after all), I was thinking about whether it would be more awkward to admit to colleagues that I play video games or that I get bummed that I haven’t yet seen the final 8 episodes of Buffy. :)

6. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Wed, 17 Oct 2007, 7:01 pm CDT:

Sheesh, I forgot about finally beating Crackdown on my XBox. If only people knew that, then they’d think I was cool!

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