Time for some backstory, a little exposition if you will. In my entire life there have only been two things that I wanted to do for a living. Until I was thirteen, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Around the age of thirteen I began to realize two things. One was that I really wasn’t Air Force material and the other was that I really really liked making computers do things. In fact, I realized that there really wasn’t much of a limit at all on the kinds of things you could get a computer to do if you knew the right way to tell it. It was then that I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life building software. (It was probably also then that I guaranteed myself four years of high school without a single date, but that’s beside the point). So let’s jump forward a few years. I’ve graduated from college with a degree in Computer Science. I got good grades and I’ve got a pretty solid resume. Theoretically, I should have all the things I need to convince someone to let me build software for them. And yet at this point, I’m something like 0/13 on my job offers to interviews ratio. That’s right, I heard back from Cerner a couple days ago and they decided to pass on me. It’s frustrating, and in the case of Cerner, more than a little discouraging. When I read the news from them, I kind of felt like all the air had been squeezed out of my lungs. I really wanted to work for them, and I can’t figure out what I did to convince them that I wasn’t right for them. For that matter, I’d like to know what I must be doing wrong in all my interviews. I don’t think I’m entirely without a personality or any kind of conversation skills but I can’t seem to convince anyone that all I really want to do is build good software and that I’d be qualified to do it well. At this point, it’s all I really think about anymore (as a quick check of my recent posts will clearly show). I’m trying not to let this get me down too much, but all the same it’s something I’d really like to get behind me.