Curse missed opportunities.

So I received some very bittersweet news today. I was awoken by a phone call from an unknown number, and as I've been hunting for jobs I took a second to slap myself properly awake and coherent before answering. They kept calling themselves the U.S. Mission, and I couldn't tell precisely who they were at first, but I played along hoping they'd say.

It was the United Nations, calling to ask if I wanted an internship in their Records and Research department. They told me that it was more behind-the-scenes and that it involved access to an enormous library of any sort of publication imaginable, and that the nature of the job was to compile reports that policy-makers in Washington, D.C. would use. I could also develop my own research project and sit in on a couple of meetings a week if I wanted. They also admitted that one of their big endeavors right now was a data entry project, switching from index cards to digital, and that everyone-- even the department chief I was talking to-- was working on it in their spare time, but he had no intentions of forcing an intern to do that eight hours a day, five days a week. He asked if I had any questions, and I asked a few and then thanked him before he transferred me back to an Indian girl curiously named Sheila who worked out the logistics behind the interns and their hiring.

I asked if there were any positions in Washington, D.C. available, confessing I hadn't looked at a single school in the NYC area and would it be possible to get back to her before accepting? She seemed irritated, saying that I had until Monday at the latest but she understood, and that I was set on going to D.C. instead. She noted that I should have been aware that the opportunity was in the NYC area, but that I could always apply again in the future. And that was that.

My mother was thrilled; she's been telling people for months now, purely coincidentally, that "my son's going to work for the United Nations one day"; my brother gave his typical blasé response.