Life and such

Yeah, I haven't posted in like 9 months. Anyway, the inspiration for me finally emailing Dody to save my account was the result of a 7AM phone interview this past Friday.

The phone interview was with 3 Dutch individuals from APB Investments, one of the worlds largest pension funds, which is based out of the Netherlands. I got little sleep the night before hand, due to a much delayed German essay and general nervousness. But, once the phone rang, the adrenaline kicked in, and I focused myself for the call. Given that this was a finance traineeship to work in their investment banking operations department, i expected to be bombarded with technical questions about investments, derivatives, bonds, and so on. However, after the pleasantries were exchanged, with the exception of a few basic questions on what topics in finance i had experience in, the bulk of the interview was mostly questions concerning what my motivation was for taking this traineeship, and what I was like as a person. In addition, they explained more about the different divisions within the department, and we jointly agreed that the pricing division would probably be my best fit. This whole conversation only took about 20 minutes or so. They were also, incredibly nice during the whole process.

The cliffhanger moment was after the interview when they said: "Could you excuse us for a minute? We are going to go ahead and give you an answer right now.", and then proceeded to talk among themselves in Dutch. Even if you don't know the language it's being spoken in, the sound of a group of people talking about you had a certain "sound" in any language, i believe. And while I hear these Dutch speakers deliberating, I am nervously hopping around my room in my boxers, anxiously waiting to hear their answer.

And the answer was yes. They welcomed me onto their team, and expected me to be settled into Maastricht and be ready for work by September 15. I said thank you at least 20 times by the time we ended the call. It was a total rush. I couldn't' believe it. I called my parents first, to let them know, and they were encouragingly thrilled.

Ever since I joined AIESEC back over 2 years ago, I always had this feeling that traineeships were something everyone else did. I've never lived outside of Texas, or to be more specific, never outside of the 75 mile Austin / San Antonio radius. Almost everyone else I had met in AIESEC was either from a different county, had studied abroad, worked abroad, or just was an extensive traveler. I always felt that I never had a "big being-abroad story" to tell. Sure, reception events in California, and international conferences in Belgium are nice, but it's not actually living somewhere else. But now, i'm finally going to have the chance to be one of those people with a story. I finally feel that I have accepted the challenge of all those worldly people who have inspired me over the past two years. And now I owe it to them to not let them down.