A Day Late and About $40,000 Short

Right now my life feels like the first part of this Gatorade commercial. I certainly just proved its point about being a fraction off.
(For those of you who aren’t into sports the first part of the commercial has famous endings in sports changed via CGI, i.e. Instead of Michael Jordan making a buzzer beater against Cleveland in the 1989 playoffs he misses it.)

As proof for the statement and video above I offer you this unfortunate tale from yesterday.
I was spending my Saturday morning getting stuff together to mail back home, a shirt that needs to be sewn, my old cell phone so my niece could use it, and a couple other random items. As I was about to put the phone in the box I decided that I should check it in case there were any messages on it from people who don’t have my new cell number yet. I’ve had my new number for almost a month, but it had been about a week since I last checked it for messages so I figured there could be somebody out there who hadn’t gotten the update.

I checked the voicemails and found out that on Monday the Reed Smith office called wanting to set up an interview regarding a fellowship that I had applied for a little over a month ago (before I got my new cell number). This fellowship was a diversity fellowship that required essays on adversity that I’ve had to overcome and another one on my commitment to community service. Luckily for me I’ve got a pretty good life story for the adversity essay and I’ve handed out my fair share of food to the homeless. If I were lucky enough to be picked the fellowship would provide in state tuition for my next two years at pitt (saving me $39,402), and get me a job as a summer associate with Reed Smith next summer (not sure how much that pays, but the experience alone is worth more than at least 8 of my toes and 4 of my fingers combined). The unfortunate part is that they wanted to set up an interview with me on Friday, as we have already established it was Saturday when I finally got the message. Yup, I had just screwed myself out of a chance at one of the best legal opportunities I’ll see for quite a while. Sure, I may never have an opportunity like this again, but at least I did prove that I am the ultimate adversity candidate since even when I get a great opportunity because of overcoming adversity someone, something, or I myself, as in this case, will find a way to keep it from happening.

P.S. For those wondering, yes I did email the person in charge of the fellowship, and no, it didn’t make a difference. However they did thank me for solving the mystery as to why I hadn’t called them back.