Winter Meetings Job Seeker Journals: Sean Banks, December 9, 2014
Throughout this year’s Winter Meetings in San Diego, four attendees of the PBEO Job Fair have agreed to keep a journal chronicling their employment-seeking experiences (meet them all HERE.). In this, his third installment, Sean Banks revels in the present, thinks about his future, and gets himself in an L. Frank Baum frame of mind.
Read all of Sean’s posts HERE.
If only Charlene could see me now.
The good luck Winter Meetings t-shirt served me well this afternoon in my noble quest to become a squire within the halls of Castle Minor League Baseball. I landed my first interview today and feel like I knocked it out of the park (like baseball, get it?). I will be awaiting my suitor’s call to take the next step.
After all, it’s a long, drawn-out process. Go to college, they said. Get a degree, they said. Apply for jobs, they said. Well, here I am applying for jobs and living the dream, taking interviews as they come and hoping for my first big break. Sounds like a pretty solid Tuesday.
I won’t bore you with the drab details of the morning. We got to the Convention Center in suit and tie and were prepared to take over the world. Not much was different today. It was a lot like yesterday. Lots of sitting. Lots of waiting. Lots of walking. Plenty of $4 Dr. Peppers. But, the time seemed to pass a little more quickly today. And for those of you still counting, I was the only one of my group of friends that had an interview. Put another mark in my win column.
What should not be lost in all of this Job Fair business, though, is that I completed all of the requirements for my health class today at the Convention Center and got my Music Literature paper turned in last night after a super long day. One week from today, I will have met all the requirements for a degree in music (provided I pass finals) and will be preparing to fly to the Dominican Republic for my study abroad and to obtain my Spanish degree. I grind at the Job Fair because I can’t wait to tell “them” how I made it. Ideally, I’ll land a job offer for a position when I get back from the DR in May and everything will be just a big mess of mushy happiness. Stay tuned for that.
Snap back to reality. Today went a lot like this: arrive, lunch, interview, sushi, bar. I’m a huge sushi fan so after the job posting room closed at five o’clock, we headed down to the marina to enjoy some raw fish by the water in the fresh air. Food always tastes a little better when you’ve had a good day. It’s also a lot easier to network. After dinner, we walked over to the Hilton and then to the Hyatt where we watched the Jon Lester news break in person and reconnected with some fellow job seekers who are trying just as hard to break in. I can’t get over how exciting this atmosphere is. I can’t get over how much I want to work in baseball for the rest of my life.
There is only one disappointing thing about this whole experience. And that’s that we have to go home tomorrow. Tomorrow night, I’ll catch a red-eye flight to Atlanta which will connect me to Evansville where, upon arrival, I’ll take the most demanding and, frankly, unnecessary final exam I’ve ever taken. Then I’ll have another final on Friday and a couple more after that. Here’s wishing the Winter Meetings were taking place all the time and we could all just live here. There’s definitely no place like home. Dorothy wasn’t wrong.
But home is where you make it. I came to the Job Fair, made the most out of these past few days, saw what I could and learned a lot. Up next? Wednesday at the Job Fair, where I hope to take the next steps toward finding my mess of mushy happiness in Minor League Baseball.
Toto, where you at, dawg?
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Stay tuned for one more update from Sean this week, which will run on the blog Friday. (Thursday is a travel day for all involved in this endeavor).
benjamin.hill@mlb.com
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