1,000 Greatest Drivers: Ayrton Senna
Probably thousands of people could have written this better...
Once again, I finished the column right before midnight but not the intro. I walked about ten miles around Syracuse today (yesterday) pounding the pavement and I did not really do a very good job of it. First, I had my job interview at the Rescue Mission store. I don’t think I got it even though I was the first person they interviewed because I didn’t have a fast enough answer for where I wanted to be in 3 to 5 years, I didn’t have enough follow-up questions with them, and I still probably spoke in my flat monotone. Next, I went to Exceptional Family Resources where I spoke with a vocational rehabilitation counselor who I’d worked with before over ten years ago and he’s going to try to help me. I decided to go there first because one of my high school classmates Irene (who also co-edited the junior high Horizons Literary Magazine with me) is also working there. After that, I decided I was going to visit a bunch of temp agencies and drop off resumes, but I only actually made it to one (CNYWorks, which is connected to the Onondaga County unemployment office) despite walking for hours. I walked to Manpower, but it seemed like the building was under construction and being renovated. I walked to Robert Half Associates, but they had seemingly vacated the building where Google Maps said that they were. There was one employment agency that was on my map that seemed to be solely for people who were getting out of the hospital. A couple of the other buildings weren’t marked. It seems like none of the employment agencies were marked so even though my map was indicating that’s where they were, I didn’t know which building to go into and I ended up just having a totally wasted day. I almost wandered onto Interstate 690 because one of the agencies seemed to be on the opposite side of the interstate and I could not figure out how to walk around and get there, but I backed out before I realized I was doing that. It was very frustrating that my first day back in reality was such a struggle, and then I kept calling my mom at the nursing home after I got home and kept getting a busy signal because I think she slightly left it off the hook. Well, I’ll be visiting again tomorrow and I did schedule another meeting at CNYWorks for May 8 early in the day so hopefully I can go there, then swing to some of the other places once I find them (since none of the buildings seemed to be marked except CNYWorks) or maybe I should just call them. I don’t know. Or maybe I should look at online temp agencies instead? Those must exist.
I know my dad keeps telling me that he thinks I still have employable skills. I very much beg to differ at this point since I think any professional employer would see me as damaged goods. He’s trying to push me to learn Power Query and is saying that if I learn modern Excel tools, I’ll be employable again. Everything I read from people on Reddit seems to be that trades and actual programming languages are the only valuable skills and it seems like most of these people (who I am convinced know more than I do since they are actually employed in the tech industry) look down on things like Excel and act like it’s worthless although my dad says it’s been worthwhile for him. Of course he’s 65, and I think the threshold for the technical knowledge people need to get a job at his age is vastly less than the threshold for the technical knowledge people need at mine. My goal has been trying to get Public Service Loan Forgiveness and he’s telling me he thinks I’ll be so unlikely to actually get it that I should be focusing on maximizing income instead. I mean if I felt that way, I’d have obviously given up this project a long time ago and not stupidly declined to work for my ex-high school classmate at his defense firm because I didn’t want to contribute to blowing up more of the Middle East…
Anyway, here’s the Senna post (typically a few minutes late). With a driver like this, I know I have to be careful and considerate. To be honest, with my F1 knowledge which isn’t as much as it should be since I was much more of an expert in NASCAR and IndyCar, I feel 3 million people could have written this better. But I do think I’ve revealed some aspects of his career that many of my fellow stats bros have overlooked. Note to F1metrics: Ayrton Senna is not worse than Nico Hülkenberg. Note to self: Ayrton Senna is not worse than Mark Taylor. I had Senna second in my original model, but Juan Manuel Fangio has jumped him in later updates.
