Failed

Well it's official, I failed to get the McLaren job. The crappy thing is that although I only interviewed for the controls job, the vehicle dynamics people decided "not to take my application any further." Maybe this would have been the case regardless but I know that the control people talked to the vehicle dynamics people and I can't imagine they gave me any positive reviews. Like I said it kinda sucks that interviewing for the control job, which I wasn't really expecting to get when I applied in the first place, ruined my chances of getting the vehicle dynamics job, which I was more comfortable with and better qualified for. Oh well, there isn't anything I can do about it now. I've been to the promised land and I firmly slammed the door in my own face with a horrible interview. God I wish it had not been my first interview. Why couldn't some other company I didn't want to work for give me an interview first. Well, back to finding more jobs. There have been a few nibbles here and there but nothing very concrete yet. So hopefully I can sort out something good in the next week or so.

The problem with a performance like the one I had in the McLaren interview is that it introduces all sorts of self doubts. I began to think that despite thinking of myself as reasonably intelligent I actually don't know anything. That I managed to squeak through my undergrad with the bare minimum of work and no actual knowledge retention. That I also pretty much sailed through my job in Detroit without having to think and again did just about the minimum required of me to not get fired. And that my PhD was a load of missguided research that looked quite nice because I managed to write it fairly well but actually didn't contain anything that someone in industry would find remotely relevant or interesting and has about as many holes in it as swiss cheese and once again I pulled it off without actually retaining any knowledge. I'm not sure if this really is the case. Although I can think of all sorts of holes in the research and looking back on it I can think of a million ways of improving it and giving it some credibility, patching holes etc, from what I hear, pretty much everyone who has done a PhD says the same thing. I guess you never really know what people mean when they say their work was rubbish and it could have been better by doing a few things and how that compares to how rubbish your own work was. So maybe it's not that bad. However, what I do know is this. First, I have passed my viva and handed in and completed everything I need to do so unless something goes horribly wrong, I'll get the degree. So at least three other people have read my work and consider it good enough, in fact they keep saying its actually very good (but I'm not sure if they are refering to the writing and presentation or the actual work). And second, I don't know enough to hold my own in an interview so I've got a lot of work to do in revising and studying a bunch of stuff that I should already know (and claim to know) so that I can actually understand everything properly and defend myself in an interview. Basically, fill in all the background for what I've implemented in my research so I not only understand it but can explian it to people who don't know what I've done.

So plenty of work ahead of me, and plenty of time to do it since I have nothing else to do. I just have to get of the internet and actually apply myself. So on that note, I'll see you later, once I've filled my brain with knowledge.