How to arrive...

...15 minutes early for an interview:

I had a School Social Work Practicum Interview this morning before class. I live in South City and the interview was in North County... not so easy. I looked up directions last night and programmed my route into the traffic checking website so that in the morning, all I had to do was refresh the page to see what traffic was like.

Well, I had class at 10am, and I remembered seeing that I had scheduled the interview for 8am. And I knew that normally, the drive would take 30 minutes, and that with traffic, I would need an additional 15. Well, leaving an hour before the interview sounded ridiculous (this is St Louis, we're talking about... and I'm from California), but I tried to be ready at 7am anyway...

Well, recently, I've been getting up at 7 or 7:30 anyway, but man! I didn't expect 6am to feel so awfully early! I was running a little behind, but I decided that taking the time to make a lunch was important since I would be at school all day and I didn't want to buy something.

Right before I walked out the door, I looked up the traffic and found that there were 10 minutes worth of delays, so I bolted out the door since that's about how much time I had to get there before 8am.

We've been getting a lot of weather in St Louis (I love all the snow... even if it doesn't really stick around), and this morning it was a mixture of small ice pellets and rain... and unfortunately, this weather caused crazy back-ups on the main freeway I needed to take and I didn't know of any other options.

By the time I got there, I had spent an hour on the road, and I had left a message with someone at the office at 8am knowing that it would be better to let them know where I was rather than to just not show up.

I was feeling very embarrassed and frustrated as I found my way to the right office and attempted to calm myself down. The secretary informed me that they were "a little behind" and that I could just have a seat.

A little behind?!? It was 8:15! Well, I sat there for the next 15 minutes, having relaxed a little because they hadn't been waiting on me, and trying not to think about how little time I would have before I had to race off to class.

Around 8:30, one of the women came out (I had previously met her at the Practicum Fair), said hello, and told me that they were running a little behind because the first person was late... and then it hit me: My interview wasn't really at 8am, was it? I immediately pulled out my planner and discovered that my interview had been written in as 8:30am the whole time... I had been 15 minutes early!!!!

If only I were able to trick myself consciously, rather than solely by mistake... ;)