"Tell me a story." "Oh, God, why?"

Recent college graduates (like me!) are coming to the conclusion that the world has no pity on us. Even though we all have completed at least one degree, the world is still flinging itself around the star Sol at a mind-asploding pace, and life on Earth doesn’t really care whether or not we get a job.

You walk across a stage, grab the diploma from the Dean of Students, or whoever, and then you step outside and Sallie Mae loan officers are standing right there, contract in hand, grinning at you, and holding up a sign displaying the amount you owe in student loans. Hopefully you’ve thought about all of this before and have at least applied for jobs. And, if you’re lucky enough, you’ve gotten some callbacks and have gone in for interviews. In the interview, you’ve probably been asked some questions like: “What are your strengths, weaknesses?” But sometimes you get thrown a curve ball. Sometimes they ask you something like this: “If you could be any bird, what would you be?” That’s when you start thinking about whether or not you’ve applied to be a support staff officer or an ornithologist. It is petrifying on a visceral level.

But I’m here for you.

Wow your interviewer with some outside the box answers, like the ones that follow.

Q: What do you regret the most?

A: [put on a thousand-yard stare] Letting my girlfriend drive the car that night. I should have realized that the GPS wasn’t updated. That what it thought was the Interstate was really Dead Man’s Gorge.

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