Think back over your history of interviews, for jobs or schools or whatever. How often does the phrase "weird and bad" come to mind? If it's more than once, you have my sympathy.

Today, weird led the parade. I had my interview, singular, for a psychology internship position starting over the summer. They're willing to pay me $15,000 for a year's worth of 55-hour weeks, but that's not weird. What was weird was showing up, announcing my name, and having a string of people, from the receptionist to the leader of the group part of the show, to the director of the program, look at me with a quizzical head-tilt and say, "Oh! You're here! Yes..." and then wander off to find someone to talk about me. Then they would come back and ask, as though they really cared and not just to be polite, "How are you feeling?"

Words cannot adequately express how discombobulating this was for me.

Finally someone explained, "There were supposed to be eight people in your interview group, but one person called in sick. Their last name is [mine minus the last letter], so someone must have crossed the wrong name off the list." And the light dawns, as the explanation for the misplaced concern presented itself to me. Way to start things off on an odd note, people.

Then, later, came the bad part. I felt like I was behaving myself well enough during the interviews, no random swearing or nose-wiping on strangers, so that was fine. But toward the end, they mentioned, "Oh, and our news is, we've revamped our program and relocated some of our offices. So, beginning this summer, anyone planning to work with adults [read: Kate] will be splitting their time between our East Podunk office and our Middle of Nowhere office [read: an hour and a half commute for Kate]."

Fantastic. I was already several different flavors of ambivalent about the internship in the first place, and now we're tacking another five or ten hours a week extra commute time onto the fun?

So, you may remember, a few weeks ago, I asked you not to wish me luck, because I really didn't know what I wanted out of all this? Well, I've decided. I do NOT want this internship. Not bad enough to call them and ask them to take me off their list, but bad enough to fervently hope for a gentle-but-firm rejection letter at the end of February.