Whirlpool and X-Files

The end of July had me remembering back to a year ago when I was finishing my MBA internship with Whirlpool. I must preface what I am about to say by saying that Whirlpool is a phenomenal company, and they treated me exceptionally. But in all honesty, I hated my internship. That's right. HATED. And the afternoon of July 27, 2007 was one of the happiest days I have had in years. I turned in my laptop, gathered up a few papers, and drove away from the office, never to return. It's just that the internship had nothing to do with anything I was interested in. I dreaded coming to work, I dreaded my project, I dreaded the rest of my career if this was how it was going to be. This is not to say that I had a bad summer. On the contrary, I had a wonderful summer in my rented beach house right on Lake Michigan and hanging with the other BYU interns and their families. It felt like a 3 month vacation...other than the fact that I went to work every day...and hated it. OK, so strike the vacation comment.

This fear of hating my job is what drove a lot of the frustration I felt last year as I interviewed and flew-back to companies, never really feeling like I had found a good fit. I wanted to love my job, and I didn't think that was too much to ask. Sure, work is work, and it's never as good as having your days to yourself, but I am not one of those people who can put up with a crappy job. This is why I am so grateful that I found a job I love. I knew as soon as I interviewed that this was the company I wanted. True that I picked this job specifically because I knew I would love it, but the fact that I'm here and I actually DO love it, more than I even thought I would, is pretty much amazing.

Another event that happened at the end of July was the premiere of the new X-Files movie!! X-Files is my favorite show of all time, and seeing Mulder and Scully together again (even though Fox really needed a gun and the plot was somehow missing the signature alien piece) put a big smile on my face. My sister recently sent me an X-Files quiz, designed to measure how well you know the show, and as I consider myself one of the biggest kinds of fans a person can be, I expected to do well. My 43% score is an embarrassment, but the quiz itself had little to do with the show. It asked ridiculous things like "what x-files star once hosted a TV special on aliens?" and "which then nobody and now famous comedian once played the role of an x-files monster even though he was so disfigured by the costume that you couldn't have recognized him anyway." OK, so maybe that's not exactly how the question was worded, but seriously, how would I know that? And how does that make me any less of an X-Phile? Anyway, long live the X-Files. Scully and Mulder forever.