letters to my critics

Regarding my disastrous Milestone interview:

Hi Ben,
Thank you for the meeting last week. I have chosen to offer the positions to two other applicants which fitted the needs we have better.

Having said that I am impressed with you, your studies, experience and results and hope we will get a chance to work together one day. I will hand over your papers to our HR Department in case a student worker is needed elsewhere in the organization.

Good luck with your studies.

Best regards,
Martin Kaufmann


Dear Martin,
I assure you the pleasure was all mine. I'm a bit disappointed, I thought I fitted your needs like the finest pair of fitted slacks. You've certainly demonstrated throughout our correspondance that your organization has plenty of people which have flawless English grammar. No need for me.

Having said that, I'm impressed with your company's ability to overlook prime talent. Thanks for flushing my papers into your HR black hole, I'll hold my breath waiting for their call.

Best,
Ben

Regarding a dinner with Morgan Stanley:

Dear Ben,
Thank you for application to join Morgan Stanley for our "Danish Summer Internship Dinner" at Restaurant FIAT. There was a high level of interest from students with many applications received for a limited number of slots and on this occasion, we regret to inform you that we are unable to take your application further.

Please be assured that your application to this event will not affect any future applications you make to Morgan Stanley should you wish to apply and we encourage you to consider Morgan Stanley's programmes that you are eligible for. For further information about Internship programmes please visit our website at www.morganstanley.com/careers/recruiting.

May we thank you for your interest in Morgan Stanley and wish you every success in your future studies.

Best Regards,
Henrik Brodsgaard


Dear Henrik,
I'm glad you undertook the arduous task of reviewing my credentials. Sorry you are "unable to take my application further," but though I may not have the intellect to join your ranks in battle, I do have the fortitude to withstand straight talk. Your euphemistic tone is condescending and insulting.

One peculiarity about your letter, the invitation to apply for a Morgan Stanley internship, provoked a question: If you've deemed me unqualified to join you for dinner, why the hell would you consider putting me on your company's payroll? I think I'll save us both some effort and assume I'm just not as elite as your organization. Time is irreplaceable, and you may be certain that I will waste none further pursuing a position with your company.

Warm regards,
Ben

Regarding a position with ATP Real Estate:

Dear Ben Jones,

Thank you very much for your application for the job as Student Analyst at ATP Real Estate. I am sorry to tell you, that we have chosen not to continue with your application.

We wish you good luck with your further job search and thank you for the interest you have shown to ATP Real Estate.

Best Regards,
Katrine Mørch

Dear Katrine,
Sorry I'm not good enough, but thanks for offering the most straight-forward and professional rejection letter I've received to date. I'm becoming quite the connoiseur in analyzing these and yours was about an 8.5. Thanks for being direct, sincere, and effective.

Cheers,
Ben




I can take rejection.
But how many times does someone have to say you're not good enough before you start to believe it?

ben jones on interviews

Let's get hypothetical. Suppose you'd like a job in Denmark since paying for anything is like getting a mule-kick to your manhood. Suppose that you meticulously craft your resume and cover letter, and your temporal investment has yielded your desired return: the interview. Suppose further (and this is, of course, just supposition) that you've been granted an interview by a company called Milestone systems that makes software to run internet-based surveillance systems. All you need to do is ace the interview and the job is yours. Suppose you were Ben Jones. You should probably:

1. Arrive on time, perhaps even a bit early
2. Dress professionally
3. Check in at reception
4. Remember your belongings as you depart
5. Write a nifty follow-up to your interviewer

Now imagine it all went horribly, horribly wrong. Instead:

1. You give yourself an hour to get to the company, knowing that it's a ways away. You take your bike with you on the suburban train because the company is at least 3 km away from the train stop. After exiting the train, you become horribly lost in a suburban labyrinth, asking 8-9 people in a languish you don't speak for directions. Ultimately, you arrive at the company 5 minutes late.
2. You have on a suit and overcoat, minus a belt since you forgot to bring one from the United States. You hope the interviewer doesn't notice. However, since Lance Armstrong would be envious of the blistering speed you've undertaken to arrive on time, you are panting like a St. Bernard and your shirt looks like your armpits are hiding geysers.
3. You can't find the main entrance and, in desperation, go through an open door with the company logo on it. This places you in the bowels of the office, where you are eventually found by employees and escorted to the front desk. Your interviewer is there waiting for you. He'll make jokes about this little mishap throughout the course of your converstaion.
4. After the interview, you decide to bike the 15 km home. Fifteen minutes into your ride, you realize that your folio is missing. In it is your passport. You bike back to the site of your already disastrous interview and, entering through the correct entrance this time, have the secretary summon your interviewer to let you back into the conference room to fetch it.
5. You don't even know what to write. Or even if you should write anything.

So instead of feeling jubilant and relieved after your interview, you get a kebab and stand outside feeling sorry for yourself. You hear back Monday. What do you think the answer will be?

P.s. No pictures this time, I'm in the process of taking a whole bunch and will upload them all at once.

football and fractures

Imagine you've just installed a new underground dog fence for your Shih Tzu, Fifi. The mechanism works by shocking Fifi as she attempts to traverse the invisible boundary. Fifi learns from these painful encounters not to try that again and harmony is eventually acheived.

That Shih Tzu is smarter than me.

The evening was Saturday, the city crackling with energy and nervous anticipation. Denmark was playing fierce rival Sweden in a pivotal match. If Denmark won, they were assured qualification for the 2010 World Cup. The security was tighter than the Danes' abs, the pubs more packed than their muscle tees. The stage was set for a memorable evening.

The match was ultimately decided in the 78th minute by a lone goal from Denmark's Jakub Poulson. With gamefaces already on, everybody headed to the bars. We picked a particularly industral venue called Karriere Bar located in the meat-packing district to spend our evening. There was dancing, there was drinking. There was more drinking. I made the dance floor so hot my shoes melted (hey, always room for some embellishment in a blog). By 3:30, I'd had enough and decided it was time to bike home. If you've read my previous entries, you know that I've had a low to moderate success rate in escaping these impaired jaunts unscathed.

I actually made it all the way to my apartment before disaster struck. Hopefully this picture of the crime scene (the theft of my pride and dignity) is an adequate visual aid, but basically I was riding parallel to the curb and needed to hop it in order to reach the gate to my apartment complex. I failed to lift my front tire up high enough to clear the curb and, due to the angle, my bike toppled over sideways. I slammed onto the asphalt with the grace of a three-legged tipped cow, removing all the skin on my elbow and, I'm 95% sure, cracking my pelvis in the process.

So Denmark won. Yay. In other news, fall has come to Copenhagen. I still haven't found a job. And I've been mostly confined to my apartment since Saturday, feeling better but still entirely unpleasant. Even a stupid dog learns from pain not to replicate an action. Yet this reasonably intelligent human being can't seem to learn that drinking+driving=disaster. Maybe CBS should think about rescinding my academic scholarship...

Diversion #4- Emotion? Aberration.

This is a long and dense post so I'll offer the executive summary: I believe emotions are temporary aberrations from a normalized state of existence. Disturbingly, it seems like antonyms serve as our only basis for sensational description. Take this for example: if there were no sun and no lights, would darkness exist? Could you define the word "red" to a person blind since birth?

Ok, here's the backstory:

I get 13 television channels. Of these, there are 4 in Danish, 4 in Norwegian, 3 in Swedish and 2 in German. Decisions, decisions. So when The Thomas Crown Affair came on 2 nights ago (in English!) I was riveted. I know the directors and writers didn't bill the film as a thinker, that much was evident in their decision to cast ex-James Bond Pierce Brosnan in the title role. Yet some things about this particular take on the suave-thief-meets-sexy-detective genre kept it on my mind long after the credits rolled, and I finally identified them.

1. The Thomas Crown character is my picture of success. We have a lot in common: hedging our monetary prosperity on the finance industry, a love of fine art, and the desire to live impeccably well. And he has a lot of qualities I desire: unfailing confidence, thorough foresight, and the belief that the world works for him. He can also salsa dance, but that's just icing on the cake at this point. Basically, he lives the playboy lifestyle to which I aspire. That jealousy eats at me.

2. It is almost impossible for him to be happy. Consider this: I wake up in a soft bed in my heated apartment feeling, well, normal. In Africa, a slumdweller wakes up in the cot in his hut and goes outside to use the bathroom. He feels, well, normal. Is he any sadder than me? Am I any happier than him? I really doubt it. But what about this: Give him my apartment for a night, and he'd be happy. But let him stay in it for a year, and I'd be willing to bet that by night 364 he's become normalized to this new standard and feels the same as he did going to sleep in his hut. To me, emotions are felt like this:

It's nauseatingly mathematical but surprisingly relevant.

The X axis here is the state of emotional normalization, where, excluding any external event, a person's mood usually is. You're not happy, not sad, not excited, not unexcited. You just are.

The Y axis is the intensity of the emotion.

The frequency of the waves depends on the commonality of abnormal events.

The wavelength is the duration of time the emotion lasts.

In this graph, for example, maybe you won a raffle for a free lunch, but then you lost $20. Positive emotional deviation followed by a negative one.

But here's the kicker: say your spouse dies. Huge negative deviation from normality, big negative downturn experienced as "sadness." But you won't be sad indefinitely, you'll acquire a new state of normalization as your emotions either return to the x-axis or the x-axis adjusts downward permanently.

Thomas Crown's level of emotional normalization was so perversely skewed that only the most magnificent, unfathomable event (like the theft of a $100 million painting) would have generated a positive deviation. I like playing golf. I'm not good at it, but I don't get to do it often and it makes me happy. When Mr. Crown hit the golf course, he bet $100,000 on a single shot simply because, as he said, "It's a beautiful Saturday morning, gentlemen. What else are we going to do?" Give him a yacht, give a 12-year old girl a Jonas Brothers ticket. Who gets the bigger emotional spike? My money's on the girl.

I want to be Thomas Crown, and he will never be happy. That realization is why this film continues to haunt me.