TRANSCRIPT

You know what time it is. Here we go. It’s story time eight. I said it’s story time. Alright, now, I promised you guys that I would tell you the story about how my internship helped me get a foot in the door for my job at nasa. All right now. So what happened was when I was in university, again, I was a very hardworking student.

I actually paid my way through school. I had three jobs when I was in university because I didn’t want my parents to have to pay for anything. So one of the jobs that I had when I was in university was actually an internship and it was connected to nasa. That’s right. My internship was with NASA and one of their contractors.

Great internship. I learned a lot and a lot of experience, so I again thought to myself, Hey, this internship is going to help me get my foot in the door so that I can get a great job. So fast forward my senior year, last year of university, and we’re moving closer to graduation day. But I hadn’t gotten a job offer yet, so I was getting a little nervous again.

I had worked so hard. I thought I had done well in my internship, but I wasn’t getting any emails. I wasn’t getting any messages related to job offers. So graduation day came. I graduated still no offers, packed my things. My parents came down to my university. It was in Alabama, packed my stuff. Put it in the cars and we drove back up to Maryland.

Weeks went by about, well, two weeks went by. Still no offers, no emails, and no phone calls, and I was starting to get a little bit nervous because I had worked so hard at the internship, but they weren’t offering me a job. So I said, okay, Lord. You know, as you guys know, I’m a Christian. I started praying a lot.

I said, maybe I have to look for a job somewhere else. So I started looking for other jobs, and I remember this like it was yesterday. I was walking in my house and the phone rang, our house phone rang. I walked into my parents’ room where the house phone was, and I sat on their bed. I said, hello. I said, hi.

Can we speak to Tiffany Claiborne? I said, okay, sure. You know it’s me. And they said, how are you? I was like, I’m fine. They said, you know, how did you enjoy your internship? And that’s when I realized it was connected to the internship. So I got a little bit nervous. Again, I still remember this, even though this was literally 17 years ago.

I was sitting on the bed and my heart started to race. I said, I really enjoyed the internship. They said, yes, you actually did pretty well. I said, oh, thank you so much. And I waited and I waited. They said, well, Tiffany, um, did you enjoy your time there a lot? I said, yeah, I really did. I enjoyed my coworkers and what I learned and what I did.

They said, okay, would you like to keep working with us? Now, I didn’t wanna scream on the phone, but I was excited. I said, yes, that, that would be amazing. I would appreciate that opportunity. You know, when you’re on the phone for a professional call, you know you have to change a little bit. That would be awesome.

I would really appreciate if you all gave me that opportunity. Meanwhile, inside my heart I was like, yes, Jesus, come on now. But I didn’t wanna do all that on the phone, so I said, yes, that would be amazing. Thank you so much. So the phone call continued. They said, okay, so. What we’re going to do is we’re gonna send you an offer via email, and you please let us know if that offer is okay.

They’re talking about the month, you know, the money, amount of money. My, uh, my, um, salary. So I got off the phone, of course, I immediately called my parents. I got, I got a job, so of course I got a job offer. Again, with your family, you can be honest. You know the way you wanna speak, right? So I talked to my parents and then I got the email and the offer amount.

I said, yes, Lord. The salary was good. It was comparable for my experience. It matched where I was going to be living. It was amazing. And then that moment I realized, man, Lord, that internship really did give me a foot in the door. I now had a job with NASA because of the internship. I had while I was in university, so I will never forget the day the offer came.

I will never forget that day because there were so many weeks and months prior to that that I just didn’t think I was going to get a job offer. So maybe you’ve experienced something similar. You are waiting for a call, or maybe you did something that you thought would get your foot in the door for a specific job, but.

Then there was this period of waiting. Now, I appreciated everything that happened during my time at nasa. I loved the job, but as you all know, I left and I became an English teacher. But yes, hopefully you understood the story. Hopefully you liked it, and hopefully now you even mass. Get your foot in the door.