"Wonderbolts Academy" and Job Searching Woes - A Retrospection · 2:16pm Jul 1st, 2022

I’ve been doing a slow, very slow rewatch of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for a few months now. And by slow, I mean extremely slow. I started re-watching it in January, after I’d graduated from college, but only turned on the television (I say that metaphorically—in actuality, I was using my phone’s Netflix app) every now and then, when I was in the mood for it.

“Those Feels” by KibbieTheGreat

It was a bit of a surreal experience to go back and watch the earlier episodes with the hindsight that comes from being in the fandom for 7 years, with writing a butt-load of stuff pony-related, and with the show being over for almost three. It was easy to tell that the showrunners and Lauren Faust herself were trying to get their footing—pacing, characterization, and plotting were, at intervals, all over the place, such that it seems to me that the sentiment that Seasons 1 and 2 were the “best” that FiM had to offer is one tinged by nostalgia, not actual critical analysis.

But I wasn’t watching the show again in order to analyze it. I fancy myself a critic, sure, but for the show proper, I was only ever “just a fan.” Not even a huge one, at that. My interest has solely been one of mere entertainment, not obsession—were I to analyze it, I feel I would readily see it falls short of not just my expectations, but my own preconceptions of it. There is something sacred in the feeling one gets in the little bouts of innocent fun one gets to feel, and that is something that an analysis of MLP:FiM would ruin for me.

Consequently, I watched the show again because I wanted to, because I remembered it’d made me happy long ago, and I wondered if, despite the obvious flaws and hiccups, it could do the same for me now.

I’m fond of the saying, “Happiness is here today, gone tomorrow,” because it reminds me that life is a transitory experience. The highs and lows are never permanent so much as they are permanently passing, and when the good things come, it’s important to be gracious and grateful towards them; subsequently, when the bad things come, it’s important to at least try to recognize that this sorrowful state will not last.

Yet I recognize, too, that the saying of, “Tomorrow’s another day,” is rather a depressing one. It may indeed be true, but it’s a hollow truth as opposed to a heartfelt one. It’s dismissive of the crises of the present, whether that be the international or national problems we see today, or, even more poignantly, the deeply personal ones locked away in the chambers of our hearts.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters

This saying rears its head when we face commonplace misfortunes. I have faced it more and more frequently since graduating college, largely because in that time since, I have been pulling my hair out applying for jobs and not getting any offers.

Perhaps this is a story we all know—the older ones among us, I mean, not so much the younger ones. We spend X number of years in college or university (in my case, three-and-a-half, thanks to an accumulation of more credit than the usual undergraduate), gathering a diploma, a degree, and debt, and then emerge into the real world starry-eyed and hoping for a chance. Our degrees shining, we seek out the fields of our choosing, write up our resumes and cover letters, and send them out, hoping for a path in.

For myself, I graduated with a BA in English and Literary Studies and a minor in Spanish Language Studies. I had also, in that time, worked at my college’s Center for Reading and Writing as a Veteran Writing Consultant and interned at two different editorial positions between two different companies.

I had a dream of working for a publishing company, primarily of the nonfiction variety, but also thought about working for medical communications, since that was something my father does, and which one of my internships had given me experience in. I figured that my robust knowledge of writing and editing, as well as a willingness to learn new skills to assist a company, would make me a viable candidate.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo

It’s never as easy as that, though. Over the past seven months, I have received plenty of interviews, both the screening kind and the kind that involves you talking to actual employers. I’ve had a majority conducted virtually, and some in-person. I’ve talked to recruiters, editorial staff, senior editors, assistant editors, coordinators, and more.

Of all of them, I have received zero job offers.

It’s hard to tell how close I was to getting them. Some recruiters only give you a copy-and-pasted generic rejection email. Others indicate that you and someone else (always unnamed) were a tough choice, but they ultimately decided to go with the other person, not you, for x or y or z reason (usually out of your control, I think).

You’d think that after these many rejections I’d have gotten used to it, but the latest one hurt me the most.

My re-watch of MLP has not been a consistent rewatch, I’ll admit. As my interests vary and my attention is drawn elsewhere, I find that tuning in to pony, especially, perhaps, in this unique dry spell of pony content we’re experiencing post the Make Your Mark special, is less of a focused avenue of entertainment and more of a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.

I finished Season 1 in March, and Season 2 at the end of March, but did not get started with Season 3 until May; even then it was an infrequent occurrence, and one that I did not consciously push myself towards accomplishing. I watched the premiere and was surprised that I liked it more than the ones in the previous two seasons—I may write about that at a later date—but slowly weaned off of a binge-watch until I was only up to episode 7 by early June.

This morning I watched the Season 3 episode, “Wonderbolts Academy,” which was written by Merriwether Williams (who apparently also wrote contentious episodes such as “The Mysterious Mare Do-Well” and “Spike at Your Service, but that is neither here nor there).

I watched it while drinking coffee and eating a croissant with blueberry jam, on a summer day that was rising quickly to the 90s, in the quietness of the dining room while my parents were getting their own days started. It was a situation quite reminiscent of some of my earliest, private watches of the show, back in high school, when I was an awkward teen just discovering that it was okay for a guy to like something typically girly.

Most everyone knows the story. Rainbow Dash receives an acceptance letter for Wonderbolts Academy, and goes through a particular set of trials and challenges under the orders of Spitfire, Captain of the Wonderbolts. While there, she meets a pony named Lightning Dust, who shares her bravado and competitive nature, but to a slightly more enhanced degree. Paired up, with Lightning made lead pony and Rainbow made wing pony, they embark on successfully completing each challenge, but it becomes increasingly clear to Rainbow that Lightning is not only a reckless pony, but somepony who doesn’t give much of a care towards the safety and well-being of others.

In a climactic moment, a tornado that the pair had made exceeds their ability to control it, leading to the rupture of Twilight’s balloon, and Rainbow’s friends plummeting through the sky. Rainbow saves them by whipping up a bouncy platform of balloons before the other Wonderbolts and cadets swoop in to catch them.

Lightning Dust, of course, isn’t remorseful, and rubs in Rainbow’s face the fact that her recklessness is what got her the position of being lead pony. Her argument is that this is what the Wonderbolts want, and that this is what being a Wonderbolt means. Rainbow acknowledges this with a deeply sorrowful expression, before stomping into Spitfire’s office to not only reveal what had happened, but to quit the academy altogether.

It’s one of the best speeches, perhaps, in FiM—which is saying something, given the usually campy nature of many of the speeches. But something rings quite true when Rainbow states, with the utmost conviction:

No disrespect, ma'am, but there's a difference between pushing yourself as hard as you can and being reckless. And if being reckless gets rewarded around here, if that's what it means to be a Wonderbolt, then I don't want any part of it.

One of my internships was at the company at which my dad works. It’s a medical communication company with emphasis on cancer-related research and developments, though it’s not really clinical so much as it’s journalistic. My internship there was enjoyable, though a bit bogged down by busywork, but there was a job offer for an Assistant Editor for a different department that looked up my alley.

I applied, and within a few days scored two interviews, first with the recruitment officer, then with the Senior Editor and Vice President of Content for the department. Both liked what I had to say, as well as the fact that I’d already worked with the larger company in the past, and after these two interviews, I was informed that I would be asked to take two tests before moving to the next step.

I was ecstatic. These two interviews had gone perhaps the smoothest of all the ones I’d had, and it seemed like this would be a shoe-in job.

Look, she’s so excited!

The tests they gave were different than what I expected, however. One was a logic test, designed to test your ability to critically think through problems—some online research revealed it was largely used in legal firms, to test legal students, though none of the questions were legal-based. That one proved challenging but not wholly impossible.

The second test, however, was a personality test. Not quite like a Myers-Briggs personality quiz, or a quirky BuzzFeed exam, but one that asked a series of questions that required you to choose an answer based on how closely it seemed to match your own preferences. Some answers had nothing to do with me, but I still had to answer anyway.

Photo by Brett Jordan

The recruiter had told me that I should answer this test honestly, and so I did, even if some of the questions did not particularly relate to me in any way. I completed it, sent it off, and waited.

Two days later, I received an email. That’s rather quick, for a job response time. Perhaps that should have alerted me that something was wrong—but I opened it anyway.

Unfortunately they had chosen to go in a different direction. My resume would be held in their files if another position opened up.

I was crushed.

Of course, “Wonderbolts Academy” doesn’t end with Rainbow just quitting. Spitfire chases her down, scolds her for not letting her respond, then gives her own speech about the true meaning of being a Wonderbolt: it’s not about pushing yourself, but pushing yourself in the right direction.

She declares Rainbow is a true leader, then removes Lightning’s leader pin and places it on Rainbow. Lightning goes away in shame; Rainbow goes away in pride.

Happy Dash is happy

I’m not sure of the initial reaction to this episode’s ending, but looking back at it now, I wonder if this decision ultimately sealed the fate of Rainbow’s character arc in future episodes and seasons. For as much as it might feel cathartic for her to actually earn a position in the Academy and to become a lead pony, I cannot help but now think that this erased future potential for drama regarding Rainbow’s dream of joining the Wonderbolts.

As we all know, she does join the Wonderbolts, officially, in “Newbie Dash” (Season Six), though that episode was not without its issues. But this effectively means that by that point, she had accomplished her dream of joining. More than that, while that episode’s inherent conflict was that the ‘Bolts were not at all like she imagined, that same conflict really happens in this one, suggesting a bit of redundancy.

Not to mention that post “Wonderbolts Academy,” there have been plenty of times where the Wonderbolts have become the subject of scrutiny. One notable example is found in “Rarity Investigates!” in Season Five, which has Rainbow accused of stealing Spitfire’s place in the aerial show. It’s a good episode on its own, but has the unfortunate problem of making the Wonderbolts out to be a reactionary, almost brainless group quick to fall into the narrative that the true culprit, Wind Rider, pushes into place. Implicitly it presents the argument that the ‘Bolts are still not the ponies that Rainbow believes them to be, that they still are reckless, if not in their performance, than in their beliefs.

Perhaps, then, it would have been more interesting for Rainbow, at the end of “Wonderbolts Academy,” not to have been made lead pony. The drama of meeting her heroes, working with them, and realizing that they aren’t really the ponies she thought they were, or that the ideals of the Wonderbolts do not necessarily align with her own, would have no doubt been a source of great internal conflict for her.

She could still have joined the Wonderbolts later, but could have focused on essentially re-forming the group’s philosophy and pushing it in this “better direction” to which Spitfire alludes, rather than being subjugated to a bunch of jokes and crass “locker room” humor which we saw in “Newbie Dash.”

(Of course, perhaps because Season 3 was marketed as the final season early on, that might be why everything felt “wrapped up” for her then.)

Later I was told by my dad that the HR representatives found “red flags” in my personality test which indicated I would not be a good fit for the company. But my dad, having worked at the company for eight years, had no real understanding of the test, or what HR was having me do with them.

When I explained how seemingly innocuous the test was, how many of the questions could not pertain to me, and how I was simply trying to be “honest,” as the recruiter had told me, he expressed confusion alongside my own. But then he wondered if some of my answers indicated that I simply didn’t have the mentality that the company was looking for—or really, the “personality.”

“Day 22: Confusion Pinkypie” [sic] by Exobass

He spoke about how it’s a fast-paced environment, and I admitted that one of the questions asked about if I went at my own pace when it came to assignments; to which I had answered, I did. But I had interpreted that question as asking, essentially, what is your pace, and I stressed that my pace has always been fast. My previous work experience revealed this and I had stressed this to my interviewers as well.

When my dad suggested that this was one of the red flags, I became angry, because that made no sense as a red flag. The question didn’t ask what my pace was, just that if I worked at my own pace—it did not ask if I could perform quickly; it did not evaluate speed or precision. It made a general statement and asked me to provide a general answer; and this, I was now told, was somehow wrong?

Going over more of the questions in my head, I realized that some answers could be construed to not align with the company’s core values. This was something my dad further suggested. But I rebutted by saying the test seemed completely contrary to the company’s core values itself, and he asked why that seemed to be the case.

“MLP - FiM: Fluttershy No.1” by chir-miru

That test, I argued, now presumes personality to be concrete—that it cannot be adapted to changing environments or situations. Yet, personality is not something set in stone; it’s something that a person is able to not only control, but utilize outside of usual comfort zones. An introvert can work a generally extroverted position with a few grumbles here and there—but they are capable. A person can work at a fast pace and consider it slow by their standards even if, according to the company, it’s pretty fast.

That one of the company’s core values was Innovation, yet, the test did not think I could innovate myself, seemed particularly hypocritical. It also suggested that the test was trying to put me and other candidates into a neat box rather than allowing for a diverse set of personalities to work together towards a goal.

This seemed highly irresponsible to me, even though I am not an HR recruiter. Sure, your goal is to get the best candidate for the position, but why rely on a test to do that and not interviews or, God forbid, experience on the job? Why refuse me the chance to prove myself?

And the order of events also struck me as strange. That this test came after two interviews felt counter-intuitive. If it was designed to weed out potential candidates, wouldn’t it be better to have candidates take the test first, determine who would fit, and then move them through the actual interview process?

By the end of my rebuttal, I could see that my dad was also befuddled with the process just as much as I was. And I was bitter about the whole thing. More than that, though, I felt utterly humiliated.

What the personality test and “failing” it had said, effectively, was that this field I wanted to work in—medical communications—I could not, simply because I didn’t have the personality for it. It resorted to an algorithmic expression of success, or potential success, over human evidence and ingenuity. It determined me a bad candidate not because of a bad skillset or a lack of experience (which would have been false anyway), but because of a supposedly bad personality.

Not a personality whose quality was determined through my interactions with the recruiter or the other employers, but rather, by a test, whose parameters were not designed by a human with consideration for open-ended responses, but by effectively a bot and a computer that did not take into account that people are more than the three answers a question gives; that people are more than what options a multiple-choice quiz can provide.

Watching “Wonderbolts Academy” today was… cathartic, in a way. I could relate more to Rainbow Dash in this episode alone than in all subsequent other episodes. Even my work with Elements of Justice hasn’t made my view of her any different (she’s not the “worst pony,” and that’s a dumb thing anyway, but she’s not my favorite).

It was her speech that struck me the most, though, because I realized that that, effectively, was what I’d been railing against these past two weeks since that job rejection. I’d had in my mind this idea of this company, based on what my dad said, what I thought I knew from my internship, and the core values that the company paraded about.

But what I realized was that they preferred candidates who would lie on a personality test just to get in—they had a mindset of putting candidates into neat boxes and ordering them around. They touted diversity in everything but personality, and when it came down to it, would rather use a silver bullet in the form of a badly constructed personality test than let the human being taking it prove their worth in the only way that matters: through the work at hand.

That this company should hold this contradictory view revealed, to me, that this wasn’t a company I wanted to work for.

Not necessarily a relevant image, but this was cool

That isn’t something I believe in, this artificial construction and clinical consideration of the human being. Perhaps that’s because I’m a creative spirit, but I dislike letting such artistic generalizations get in the way of reality. Walt Whitman wrote that all people contain multitudes—everyone is multi-faceted—and I believe that, too.

My worth as a person should not be stripped away in order to join some larger organization or group. My job should not come at the expense of my being. Perhaps that is idealistic, even a bit naive—or perhaps it is more true now than ever, more necessary. Is it so entitled to ask the world to treat us as we would, ourselves, want to be treated?

If being part of the medical communications field means kowtowing to impersonal deconstructions of the individual, if that’s what it means to get anywhere in that business, then I don’t think that’s what I want to do. I don’t want any part of it. I’d rather be poor in money and keep my dignity intact than subject myself to that kind of dehumanizing humiliation.

Perhaps this is what drew many to adore Rainbow early on, and why her later appearances in the show prove contentious examples of her character. Because her ultimate trait, loyalty is also the source of her most exaggerated weakness, that of selfishness; yet there is perhaps little else more noble than the belief that you must, above all things, be loyal to yourself and what you believe.