Just over a year of searching. They started hopeful, tranquil, optimistic. By the end they described themselves as salty and pessimistic, all the time.
They were living with a sibling and their partner, doing the arithmetic on tuition money already spent, telling themselves it was simply the consequence of not being better. In July two final rounds ended in rejections, one of them at a company they had worked for before — which made them question their work ethic and their personality.
Then this one interview pulled through. On Monday they signed an offer in their favourite city.
What stayed with them was the part before it: they had stopped dreaming about what their future might look like, because they could not let themselves down again. The offer did not just end the search. It gave the imagining back.