I Interviewed with the FBI

The FBI. You can hardly hear that acronym without thinking of black-suited secret agents and television crime dramas; and like most people, I'd harbored midday fantasies about how working for such an agency could dramatically improve my life. If not with the pay scale, then with the excitement.

I was an international business major in college at the time I decided to send my resume the way of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for I was facing the thought of coming out of college with a pile of student debt, a stagnant job market, and little to no prospects of a secure job right out of graduation. "Sam," I told myself, "it can't hurt, can it?" If the FBI rejected my application, I certainly couldn't have been any worse off than I already was.