A few weeks ago I applied online for an interview with USAA for a summer internship position. They granted me an interview, which took place on campus, and despite my nerves I did well enough that the interviewer told me before I left that I would be getting a second, on-site interview in San Antonio. That opportunity came last weekend.
The schedule of events emailed to me required me to be in San Antonio from 4 PM Thursday until 2 PM Friday. With travel time taken into account, I had to miss five of my classes, which I think is more than I’ve missed this calendar year. My professors understood.
The first thing on the schedule was a quick shuttle tour of USAA’s campus. Traffic in Round Rock and Austin made me 5 minutes late to the hotel where we were all meeting, but the shuttle left 10 minutes late, so I still had a few minutes to catch my breath and meet fellow potential interns before we left. We didn’t get out of the shuttle, but we were able to see the outside of the main building (which they said is second only to the Pentagon in size in the U.S.), their tennis courts and baseball fields, and some nice scenery in which deer can sometimes be seen. On the bus I sat in front of another guy from Baylor. We recognized each other from Friday afternoon frisbee games last year.
Next was dinner in the rotating restaurant at the top of the Tower of the Americas with several USAA employees. The employee to potential intern ratio was 1 to 2, judging from our table, and we had a really nice conversation during dinner. The employee I spoke with made me relaxed about the interview to come in the morning, saying it would be “almost identical” to my first one and that the interviewers would be looking for signs of character more than anything else. We also talked about personal interests, the city, and, of course, the company. The meal itself was fantastic, and the cheesecake I chose for dessert was the best I’ve ever tasted.
After dinner we were brought back to the hotel and I checked in to my three-bed, three-TV, two-bathroom room. I had brought my laptop but not its power adapter, so I settled for TV, made a Taco Cabana run, did some paranoid alarm clock checking, and went to bed.
We were shuttled back to USAA in the morning after checking out of the hotel. Before the interviews, there wasn’t much for us to do but sit in our suits, eat the continental breakfast they provided, and get more nervous. I was glad when the 45 minute interview finally came, and I was confident enough to not be too nervous.
I can’t really say how I did in the interview, since I don’t yet know whether I got the job. I gave really good answers to some of the questions (including a couple on technical issues, one on leadership, and one on ethics) and pretty mediocre answers to one or two others. I felt pretty good about the interview right after it, privately putting my chances at about 60%. (They accepted somewhere between 60 and 100 interns last summer, and they had about 240 potential interns come through in the last couple of weeks.) I’ve gotten a little less sure since then, but I chalk that up to second-guessing. I should get a call in a few days which will let me know whether my first hunch was on target.
After the interviews we were all given a very nice lunch (with key lime pie this time) and another opportunity to chat with the employees we’d talked to the night before. We were then given another tour at 1 PM, this time of the inside of the building. The tour was nice, but I was getting tired and wanted to go home. We said our goodbyes at 2, were shipped back to the hotel, and went our separate ways. Even if I don’t get the job, the overall experience was a great one for me.
I took my sweet time coming back home, opting for a route that wouldn’t take me through Austin’s traffic again. I stopped at a gas station for a root beer and a map. After driving up 281 for a while I made it to Johnson City, where I noticed a little bookstore by the highway and stopped for 30 minutes to browse and buy The Great Gatsby. A little more driving brought me to Marble Falls, where I saw several small groups of purple-clad people on the side of the road with signs reading “Go Seniors” and “Go Mustangs”. There were also a few people driving my way waving purple shirts from their windows. It looked like high school football to me, but I didn’t know where the game was. I followed the fan-filled vehicles until I noticed we had left the town. A look at my map showed me that Burnet was the next town on the highway.
When I got to Burnet I pulled into a gas station and asked if there was a game that night. The attendant said “Burnet and Marble Falls” with a smile which said “Of course there’s a game!” and kindly gave me directions to the field. I found it easily, given the traffic, and paid $6 for a ticket. As the man in line behind me said, “That’s a good six dollars.”
It was a little difficult to decide who to root for. It was the team spirit of Marble Falls that had brought the game to my attention on the road, but Burnet’s fans seemed pretty excited as well. I ended up choosing Burnet for two reasons: they were the home team, and their colors of green and white matched the Baylor jacket I was wearing much better than Marble Falls’ purple and white. A team being the underdog is usually a reason for me to pull for them, but I wouldn’t know either team’s record until the announcer spoke a few minutes after I made my decision: the Marble Falls Mustangs were 6 and 3 for the season, and the Burnet Bulldogs were 4 and 5.
I got some good snacking food during the game and learned that dill pickles, while wet, aren’t very good at washing the taste of nacho peppers out of your mouth. During play I cheered more than the average Burnet fan. The game was close until the third quarter and fun until the end, with the Bulldogs winning 28 to 0. For me, the best thing about the game was not that it was a rivalry or the last game of the season but that it gave me a three hour vacation from months of school. The rest of the trip home was safe and quiet. I arrived at my room shortly before midnight and was tired enough to go to bed without unloading my car.
This week was fairly easy, with no exams due to our approaching finals. Out of curiosity one afternoon I found a professor’s CV and opened it to see if he had written it a certain way. I noticed he had, and I also noticed that his birthday was the coming Friday. Our class happens to meet on Friday, so on a whim I spent $2 on 16 party noisemakers, enough for our class of 13, and arrived that Friday before anyone else.
As students trickled in one and two at a time, I tossed them noisemakers and gave them explanations. Most were enthusiastic, but two students declined. I couldn’t get much out of one of them other than “no, thanks” and a smile, but the other explained “I don’t feel like celebrating his birthday” (code for “I’m failing”). Our professor always asks “Are there any questions?” before he begins lecturing in earnest, so I explained that would be our cue. He also arrives right on the hour, so I felt safe passing out the noisemakers until we had a minute left. Every noisemaker was hidden in a pocket or under a notebook when he came into the room.
The “today we’re going to talk about” preliminaries seemed to take longer than usual, but he asked his question just as we expected. There was a pause of one or two seconds, since nobody wanted to blow theirs first and I was still fishing mine out of my pocket, but as soon as I led everyone else followed. He smiled broadly. “What’s the big deal?” “Happy Birthday!”, we replied. He joked for a minute about how very old he feels at 30 and then started the lecture as usual, but not before saying “Thank you. That was very kind.” It was a fun way to start class, and I hope he now has a fun story to tell.
