Yet Another On-Campus Interview Travel Story

Believe it or not, every on-campus interview I've had thus far has a travel story. This is the most recent from my interview in Colorado.

Okay, so . . . I can be taught. After the luggage fiasco to Wyoming and wearing the same suit for three days, I learned to CARRY ON all luggage for Alabama. However, you can't control the weather and who would have thought ATLANTA would look like Detroit on a snowy day? So, going into my interview at Colorado I was paying close attention to the weather and all things travel related. The weather was looking okay - I was just going to miss two snow storms on either side of my travel days. And the travel arrangements were all made.

Or so I thought.

When I interviewed with the schools in Wyoming and Alabama, they had me book my own tickets. However, the school in Colorado uses their own travel agency so they were in charge of booking me. The day I put in my reservation request, they sent me an e-mail that consisted of the reservation. The reservation included a notice that if the reservation needed to be changed I should contact them 24 hours in advance. Everything looked good so I had no need of getting in touch with them.

Well, 24 hours before my flight out, I go to American Airlines online in order to print my boarding pass. Instead of a boarding pass, I got a notice that said the reservation had been canceled. WHAT?

So I call American to actually speak with somebody about my reservation. Sure enough, the human operator said the same thing: the reservation had been canceled. WHY? Apparently the TICKETS WERE NEVER PURCHASED.

EXCUSE ME????

I was scheduled to fly into Denver in 24 hours for a 2 day interview and I had NO TICKETS.

I began to hyper-ventilate a little then. How the hell did this happen? What the hell was I going to do now?

Well, I figured this emergency was worthy a call to the Search Committee Chairperson so I dialed her up and explained my situation. Of course, she has no financial authority, so a phone chain began on their end to figure out what I was supposed to do. The next person I spoke to was the head of the department and he told me to try to find a reasonable flight (yeah, right) for the next day that copied as close as possible the times of my previous booking.

Well, flying out of the Wasteland was going to be a minimum of $800 so that was a no-go. I began to search flights out of Chicago and sure enough, I found a round-trip on Southwest that wasn't too awful. So, with the department head's credit card I booked my flight.

Aside from the miserable drive to and from Chicago and the cost of gas and parking the rest of my travel was uneventful.

But I have to wonder, WHY do these things keep happening to me? Is the universe really trying to tell me something? Because it sure feels like it.

My travels to and from DC weren't particularly eventful. Okay, so I spent 1.5 hours circling National due to high winds, but that's NOTHING compared to my previous trips. Why am I having so much trouble GETTING to on-campus interviews? Seriously, it's seems only about GETTING there. I get home just fine - more or less. It's all relative.

Are the planets aligned funny or something? Did I do something bad in a previous life? Did I do something bad in THIS life (hmmm . . . let's not go there)? Or maybe the universe is picking up the vibe that I'm not certain I want to be a teacher. I just don't know. Are there any nuggets of wisdom out there for me? Do I follow the old addage "If it's not hard, it's not worth doing"? Or "three strikes you're out"?

Or do I follow what my Dad said after the trip to Alabama, "No more interviews!"