Second of Seven in The Entitlement of Soul Discovery

As per yesterday’s assignment, I’m supposed to write 7 of these stories that are supposed to guide me on what my interests are – or more importantly, what my transferrable skills are. The order follows thusly:
1. A goal I wanted to accomplish
2. Some kind of hurdle or obstacle
3. Step by step, how did you achieve your goal?
4. A description of the result
5. Any measurable/quantifiable statement from the outcome

Here goes the second of the seven.

A few weeks ago, I was job hunting when I came across on particular ad where it said that the company needed some Adobe Illustrator experience. I had successfully passed the assessment on LinkedIn and thought that would be enough to “prove” my skills.
I got a call back from the company, stating that they wanted to see samples of my previous work. I have none. So I had to come up with a portfolio of work that I had done in the Adobe suit of products in as little as 5 days. I had to refresh my memory of how they all worked (I’m still wondering how I passed those assessments, but here we are) in that time period as well. To add on to that, I did not have the money to get these programs installed.
Firstly, I went to good old Reddit to ask the community over there what I should do, as in how would I obtain the programs for as little cost as possible. It had been a while since I had been a pirate, and I knew that things had changed since I last sailed on the internet high seas. Many of them were helpful in pointing me to the right torrents to get in order to obtain them because screw you, Adobe, and your high price points. I obtained the programs, but now I was faced with the next problem: develop a portfolio of work in 4 days.
I barely spent more than 2 minutes away from my computer for that weekend. I watched countless YouTube videos and read many articles about what functions did what, how design worked, and then created several pieces. In my mind, they were… alright. They weren’t on the level of a graphic design artist by any means, but they filled the requirements. I did IG posts, FB posts, zine articles, various other pieces. I managed to get it all done in time and submitted it to the recruiter in charge of handling the position.
Only to be told 5 minutes later that they were outsourcing the position.
I was pissed.
I had spent all that time and those resources doing something that no one was even going to look at? ::rage flip table::
On the upside, now I know how to mediocrely design things. It’s a skill that I would love to become more well versed in, and I have a starting portfolio to put on my website. I may not have gotten the job, but now I’m developing another skill that is in demand right now.