Well, today’s the day. I have a phone interview with Microsoft at 5:30CDT today–about six hours from now. I am, understandably, nervous. I’ve done more to prepare for this interview than any other I’ve ever had, and I still don’t feel like I’m ready. Since I got the email setting up this up six days ago, I’ve done the following:

  • Bought Inside C# and studied–not just read–145 pages of it.
  • Staged a mock phone interview with Richard. He’s been interviewing job candidates for a decade, and he gave me a lot of good pointers.
  • Brushed up on my object-oriented programming concepts by reading sixty-something pages of Java: How to Program.
  • Read up on the rather interesting interviewing techniques Microsoft uses, and tried to prepare myself for them.
  • Prepared myself to be able to talk about anything on my resume in depth.
  • Weaselled out of work for today so that I’d have plenty of time to read, prepare, and freak out.
  • Taught myself the very basics of the Common Language Runtime. It’s interesting stuff, but I haven’t had time to get in-depth with it as much as I really need to.
  • Told pretty much everyone I know and/or work with about my interview.
  • Got a grande double-shot iced caramel latte (hooray for pretentious coffee beverages) from the coffee shop down the block to be alert while studying, only to get so hyperactive that I can’t concentrate hard enough to get through a paragraph.

Hopefully, that will be enough. These last few days have felt like going through final exams in college again. Even if the interview process ends with this phone call, at least I’ll know that I did my best.