This thread is classic. My interview story is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. For simplicity' sake, I'm just gonna copy and paste an email I sent to a professor of mine (who also had my friend in the story in her class).
My flight was scheduled to get into Little Rock just before 11 P.M. on
Friday, Dec. 14, the night before the interview. I wasn't particularly
thrilled about that timing since I'd had a final at 8 A.M. that same
morning, and the interview day started at 8 Saturday morning. Weather in
Dallas was terrible, so my flight out of Raleigh was delayed almost an
hour. With only an hour layover before my connection, that was a
problem. Let the monumental stress begin! I met up with Anshul - he was
also interviewing at Arkansas and taking the same flight - and we
sweated out the flight to Dallas. Fortunately, we made up considerable
time while airborne, and our flight out of Dallas to Little Rock was
delayed just long enough for us to catch it. Right when we got to our
terminal, the flight was delayed another half-hour to 10:30. We went to
get a quick bite to eat, and while we were eating, the flight was
delayed until 11:10. At 11:15, the flight was cancelled.
We desperately tried to find some way to get to Little Rock in the
morning, but the earliest flight was at 2:20 the next day. While trying
to locate Anshul's luggage, I overheard two men discussing renting a car
and driving to Hot Springs which is approximately an hour outside of
Little Rock. I immediately offered to split the cost of the car if they
drove us, and we'd forged our ticket to Little Rock. It turns out that these guys were used car salesmen and were opening a dealership in Hot Springs the next morning. They fit the stereotype perfectly.
At around midnight, Anshul and I hopped in the back of a bright orange
PT Cruiser and set off towards Hot Springs in a furious storm. When we
were about 30 miles outside of Texarkana - 2.5 hours from Hot Springs -
we stopped for a bathroom break. The man driving discovered that the
from right tire was dangerously low. He then saw that the tread was
coming off the front left tire. Conveniently, the spare tire was
missing. Tires are hard to come by in rural Texas at 3 A.M. (and so is
an air compressor, apparently), so we decided to gut it out and keep
going.
As we drove, the rain intensified. By the time we had exited the highway
and were a few minutes outside of Hot Springs, rain was coming down
faster than it could drain off the roads. We nearly hydroplaned into a
ditch several times, and visibility was probably around 50 feet, at
most. Finally, though, we made it to the men's car dealership where
Anshul's parents picked us up and ferried us the final hour to Little
Rock. We got to Anshul's house at roughly 6:30: just enough time to
shower, shave, change, eat, and get to the interview.
Despite all that craziness, I think the interview went well. I think it
went exceptionally well, in fact. I didn't get any curveball questions,
and my interviewers seemed very impressed that I was there and
functioning at a fairly high level despite running on no sleep. Perhaps
the highlight of the event was one interviewer quipping "Oh, I'm sure
you'll get in somewhere," and sharing a nod and chuckle with the other
two interviewers. I feel like I gave cogent responses to everything I
was asked and made a solid impact on my interviewers. If nothing else, I
gave them a story to remember me by, that much is certain.
