I am a Googler!

This is a continuation from The Google Interview Day. Read this as another chapter in the story of my life. I really wanted to try writing in a story format, and I'm happy I gave it a shot! 

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My heart was roaring. So loud I could hear it through my earphones as I walked into work. This was going to be THE BIGGEST week in my life, and I could not share it with anyone around me. Today was the day, my recruiter, Broza, had told me on Thursday when I last spoke to him.

I walked into work, late again having overslept thinking that'll help time pass faster, anxious for what was about to unfold. I felt like Tom feasting on a whole chicken, only I was feeding on my nails. It was a fairly breezy winters day and though it should've snowed 10 feet deep based on last years snow galore, it was just crisply cold. Yes, crisp is how I'd call it because the city I was in felt much like a walk into a city that didn't know we had been through the industrial revolution. Funny, I thought, how the impending melting planet could affect this place.

I was sitting on my rather clean desk, anticipating to vacate it in a months time. I had my laptop open but I really couldn't concentrate on what my boss had given me to do. For in a month, the convoluted equations and debugging cameras wouldn't be my headache anymore. For today was going to be the day that decided the course of the rest of my life!

For the past 3 months, I had been preparing to get into Google. The biggest tech company any software engineer would want to work at, at some point in their life. For me, it is synonymous to being in paradise. With the added benefit that it's real. And like most, I always thought it would take me a lifetime's effort to get into. 

I had been through 8 grueling rounds of a judgement of my skills. All but one had gone fairly well. Today marked the 6th day of waiting on the result from the Hiring Committee. This was a group of 4 people - 4 people for me that resembled Fate Deciders sitting in the clouds, the 4 I'll never know that had the final word on what direction my life would take. Only if they said I was in, was I in. From all the research I had done, and from what Broza told me last week when I spoke to him, the Hiring Committee was the final round and I had no say, nothing I could do at all. All I could really do is distract my brain from going through all the what ifs, eating off my nails and looking like an agitated bear.

"You know, there are only so many turning points that you can reflect back in your life, and say that they changed the rest of the course of your life" as I lifted my distracted glare from my laptop.

Kaustav and Mayank looked up to me in a rather puzzled look.

"And the rabbit's out of the hat!", said Mayank bursting out into laughter. He was rather convinced I had gotten into some questionable habits, especially before coming to work everyday, but Kaustav knew something was up. Kaustav had been my flatmate for the 6 months since I had moved to Vilnius. He was formally buttoned up, as on most days, quite unlike me. He had a 90's gamer aura working for him, and though he always had his earphones plugged in, he seemed to know exactly what was going on.

"I have red eyes? Bullocks. Here's the thing..", as I continued. I've had my fair share of existentialist phases, but with all the free time and what I perceived as an inflection point in my life, the questions on control and free will were a lot stronger. All those arguments and conversations that you have in the shower questioning what humans are doing here and what reality really is had become my constant mode of operation.

"For 90% of our lives, even more if you only count our conscious hours, we're on autopilot, and we have very little control over what we do, and what can influence us. We respond to external stimulus in ways we are not sure we have control over, we (un)willingly make habits, and those habits make us. And we can never be certain of the outcome."

Mayank looked at Kaustav, burst into another bout of laughter, and then left me to my thoughts. I was scribbling on my desk with a temporary white board marker, a usual habit, but I moved my notebook and uncovered something I had inscribed earlier this week. In permanent ink were the letters T and G marked, with an arrow in between.

The rest of the day continued, though each passing minute felt like a terribly boring week where nothing happens.

And then it happened! My phone buzzed - I had maxed out the volume my email notifications, which wasn't necessarily required because I was refreshing my email every 3 seconds. I had planned out how I would read the email. I had mentally mapped the keywords "Congratulations", "Hired", "Accepted", and that's all I would look for in the email. I hadn't thought of what I would do after I found the word I was looking for though. Up until this point my brain was monkeying around the what ifs. But what I'd do 14 seconds after reading the email I did not know.

I ran. I sprinted.

I got up. Everyone around me was shocked because of the speed at which I threw my chair away.

I opened the door, in what felt like two footsteps.

In another five, I was 50 meters away from the office building. 

And then I let out a really, really loud screaming YES! And then a few more! I must've sprinted another 200 meters, before the reality of it got to me. I took a second to get my breath, and then read the email once again. Twice. It was real. It had actually happened. I just got hired by Google! 

I looked around me, and I saw two large European farm style houses, a few dogs, and then a bus pass by in the distance. I was standing in the middle of a farm road, quite unaware of the fact it was drizzling and it was far too cold to be out in a t shirt. But of course, instinct led me to wanting to read the email again. I had read it 4 times already, but my heart and mind had to see it just one more time. Broza had done a great job at keeping the email short. I then took a screenshot, as if this was only temporary, to really know this was real.

It was. It is. "I'm a Googler!", I said to myself.

A couple months later, me with my Noogler Hat at Google Zurich for the orientation!