Rocky Mountain Rendezpoo

So this past weekend I (Patrick) went out to Laramie, Wyoming to attend a job fair. It was put on by the University of Wyoming. The whole point of the things is for oil and gas companies to come and interview prospective students for internships and jobs. I was excited to have the opportunity to get an internship, so I decided to come out of my comfort zone and go to it.

On Friday the 2nd I got up early and loaded up in a van, (by loaded I mean there were 6 people in a 12 seat van), and we drove 6 hours to Laramie. The drive wasn't bad since I guess I was asleep for about 2 hours of it. Anyways we checked into our hotel and went to the university campus. This day of the "job fair" was a resume and interview workshop. The 4 hours I spent sitting and listening were pretty insightful. I was able to fix a few errors on my resume, and now it it a shining beacon of what future employers will learn about me when I am looking for a job. It was a good experience for me, and I hope I will be able to use what I learned from it in the future.

Ok, so after that we went back to our hotel and chilled, after we had dinner at Wendy's. MMMM Jr. Bacon Burger with Crispy Chicken Nuggets and a Frosty. Yum. The next day wasn't too exciting for me. Everyone else went on the field trips that were being put on by the oil companies. I had to stay behind because I had some homework I needed to do. Plus I didn't want to miss Saturday college football. It took me awhile to finish the assignment I had because I would work on it for like 10 minutes then go back to watching the game that was on at the time. Don't worry I eventually finished it.

Sunday wasn't a big day either. Basically I walked around looking at the various booths that the companies had set up. Most of the booths had sign up sheets for interviews, but only 2 of them were accepting undergraduate interviews. The rest of the companies were only interested in graduate students. Boo. Anyways I was able to talk to some of the recruiters there and give them my resume for future use. The rest of the time I spent sitting around doing nothing. They did have a dinner that I attended, but half the food was spicy, so I couldn't eat it due to my colitis.

The next day wasn't any better. In fact I would say that it was worse. The undergrad interviewers never showed up, so my only chance at getting an interview was destroyed. So me and a couple other guys left after we found out that they hadn't shown up. We left Laramie around 9 in the morning. About 11 a.m. we came to a dead stop. Turns out two semis had collided with each other blocking the whole two lane highway. It took two hours for the mess to get cleaned up and for traffic to start moving again. To make matters worse, an hour later we hit another traffic jam. They had shut down the highway due to a "car wreck", whatever that meant. So it took us an hour to get to the exit they were forcing everyone to get off at. Then we turned around and took the detour route. Instead of being able to head west on the I-80 we had to head south on the 191, loop around through Vernal, Utah, then head west back through Heber-Provo Canyon to Provo. In the end we basically doubled our travel time, spending 11 hours on the road.

All in all the experience wasn't that great. I understand that times are tough economically, but it would have been nice to know in advance that the companies were only looking for grad students. Basically I spent 50 bucks to go to a resume/interview workshop and spend 17 hours on the road.