Getting Ready for the Job Fair...

...and I can't find a stapler!! There is no stapler anywhere in my parents' house! I've looked in all the desks, in all the file cabinets, on all the book shelves. If there's one here, they're hiding it somewhere obscure, like under the bed.

I'm kind of nervous and am noticing for the first time the lack of support that's usually there for me. When I was doing my med school interviews, there was always a good luck text the morning of from one or both of my parents. The same thing for standaradized tests days. This literally goes way back to when I got my first cell phone. This was 1996! But not this time. And when I called both parents to see if either knew where the stapler was, no one answered the phone. Oh well.

So I am going to put on my freshly dry-cleaned suit. Well, just part of the suit. I just noticed I left the jacket in Rockford! Who does that?? But I'll have on a nice blouse and skirt at least. And I'll be heading to that fair by myself. But I have so many questions because I've never done this before. I would have a different cover letter depending on which job I was applying for if this was an online job application, but should I be carrying copies of my cover letter with me even though it wouldn't be company specific? And should I have copies of my page with just my references?

And how many copies of a resume does one really need? I printed fifteen, but I don't think I'll need that many. I looked online and didn't see a whole bunch of companies that are even offering my types of jobs (it's a science field job fair, not just research), but what if it turns out that I haven't brought enough? I'm going to bring my external hard drive in case I need to print more somewhere. And I have a document copy saved on my Blackberry in case I e-mailing it to someone right there on the spot is an option. But there's got to be something I'm leaving out because I've never done this before.

Okay, I'm going to make myself a cup of tea and calm myself... and then look for that stapler again. I'm not going to carry fifteen copies of a looseleaf resume around for hours today.