Of course, the day of my interview was my first day taking the train. I waited on the platform with my messenger bag around my shoulder and across my chest like a true budding cosmopolitan professional. I was already nervous. There was a lot going on at the train platform. A man with a clipboard was going around asking for signatures to support his candidacy for neighborhood council, and I had to tell him no three times before he’d leave me alone. It was all very overstimulating. As the train came into view, though, I started to panic. What if I was on the wrong side of the tracks? What if I got on this train and it took me in the wrong direction? Before I had a chance to ask any of my fellow passengers, the train had arrived, the doors were opening, a conductor was yelling “all aboard,” and I was freaking out. So I stepped onto the train, one foot still on the platform, and tried asking the first person I could find if this was heading into Chicago, but she hesitated, and so did I, and the door started closing while I was still partially on the platform. I managed to get my second foot into the train before the door shut entirely, but my messenger bag, that holy symbol of young budding professionalism, got caught by the doors and trapped outside of the train, still wrapped around my torso, pinning me to the inside of the door with the strap tight against my chest like a car seat belt when you slam on the brakes. It was just slack enough for me to wriggle myself out of it, but the bag was still trapped outside of the doors, dangling out there like a loose button. I tried desperately to pry the doors open, but either I was too weak or they were too strong, because they didn’t budge. There was an emergency brake, but I’m terrible at deciding what amounts to an emergency, most of all when I’m in the middle of an emergency, and I didn’t pull it. I could do nothing but bang on the doors in exasperation and hope there’d be no tight tunnels between this station and the next.