As you can tell, we’ve been a bit quiet over the last couple of days. Well, it was for a good cause. As of this morning, Evelyn accepted a position at the Arecibo Observatory. She is going to be a Systems/Telescope Operator. Which means she’ll be doing stuff like monitoring the telescope, moving the thing around, and even working on the antenna platform (which is 500 feet in the air).

It been a long saga, and now that she has accepted, we can give you the full story. (We’ve been keeping very quiet about this because it’s been a long and hard process and didn’t want to get anyones hopes up [especially our own!].)

It all started back around Thanksgiving. We were sitting in a Quiznos eating dinner when we saw an ad for a position open at the Observatory. It seemed like interesting work, something that Evelyn would enjoy, so we checked out Cornell’s site (the facility is run by Cornell University) and saw that the position was still open–with a deadline of Dec 1st. So, we quickly updated Ev’s resume, wrote up cover letters, etc, and sent them off.

We waited to hear back during December, but didn’t hear anything. That wasn’t too surprising, since most people are off during Christmas. Then we started to get into January and still hadn’t heard, so we figured that we’d have to write it off. After all, it had been nearly a month an a half since we submitted everything. Then Ev got the call for a first interview.

Her first interview was in the middle of January, where she met some of the team. Of course, her wacky work experience (ex. monitoring missles being shot at a helicoptor being suspended by kevlar cables across a canyon, driving through White Sands at 110 MPH, etc) really impressed the team. It was certainly a concern of ours that she would be out of the running being “over qualified”.

So, we waited another week–and got a call. She was asked to come in for a second interview, this time to meet with the head of the NAIC. There was a lot of focus on how she could get along with others, difficult situations, etc. Well, working on live-fire situations and having generals screaming around you is pretty good experience, so she seems to have passed that test.

Another week goes by, and we get the next call. She was asked in for a third interview. This time she learned that there were two other people in the running–a man and another woman. In fact, she even met the other two people. Kinda weird, I think, but it did give her a chance to see the others’ skills. They both seemed like very nice and smart people, but appeared to be right out of school–and could not have had the kind of real-world high-pressure experiences that Evelyn has had.

The third interview was much longer–I think I was sitting in the parking lot for over 3 hours. (No use in me seeing the museum again–I had pretty much memorized the exhibits by the 2nd interview.) She spoke with some more people, including the head of the site.

As a final test, they took the group up to the platform. This is where I wished I was up at the museum (I could have seen it all)! Evelyn got to take the little tram/trolley across to the center platform–which is about 500 feet above the dish. She got to look around up there, while the interviewers checked to see if she was afraid of heights. Of course, Ev was her usually chatty self, asking all sort of questions. (She was annoyed that I had made her wear dress shoes–she wanted to look around more.)

After the third interview we were naturally eager to hear the outcome. A week turned into two and we finally called them to see what was up. The delay was due to a big site visit they were having, so they weren’t able to get together sooner. They said “next week”.

Later that same day, we got a call from HR with the job offer. Early the next week (this current week), we got the letter. We had a number of questions (benefits, deductions, hours, taxes, etc), so we stopped by yesterday to get more info. The HR department put together a really nice package of information which answered most all of our questions. We then talked with them a bit more and went home to mull over the numbers.

After running through the numbers, and going over all the info, Ev called this morning (Friday) and accepted. We sent off the acceptance e-mail and are stopping by later today with some of the filled-out paperwork.

So, that’s the Top Secret project that we’ve been working on over the last two or so months. It’s been quite stressful and, at times, discouraging. In the end, Ev put in a lot of effort and worked very hard to earn the job. She’s very excited to be learning some new stuff and to apply her real-time “failure is not an option” experience to the position. It should be a lot of fun and I know that she’ll really “knock their socks off”. She starts on March 1st.