I'm interviewing for a Junior Marketing position. I'm 5 years out of college with plenty of admin/customer service experience, and I'm looking to grow my marketing/brand voice muscles, since I am a writer. I had thoroughly and meticulously written out notes. Since the first interview was pretty standard, I was expecting more in-depth questions about the job and who I was in a work capacity. It's a very small company, so once I moved up to a second interview, the questions were being asked by the president. He asked one word I'd use to describe myself.

But when I went for my notes, he said, "it's okay if you speak from the heart." I did the best I could. I improvised, because I wanted them to know I could think on my feet. I had an okay answer, I felt I rambled a bit.

The other questions were almost all personal, up to the point where he asked about my childhood, which is not easy for me to talk about due to some hardships. "Who are you parents and how have they impacted you?" I froze. I'm pretty sure I stared straight at the camera for like a full minute, like Jim on "The Office", only I was terrified. All I said was "my parents have a very specific idea of who I am and who they want me to be, and that they're always right about me, when that is in fact not always the case. This had led to me doubting my own judgment, something I have been working on for a number of years."

Then, 4 hours later, I'm sitting here freaking out because I only focused on the negatives. I could've told them my parents got me into reading and made me eager to seek out learning opportunities. That they emphasized the importance of long-term thinking and education. But I didn't highlight positives, and now I'm afraid they think I have "issues" or am whatever the opposite of a barrel of laughs is.

There were other standard things, like how to deal with difficult people, which I had an okay example of, because I deal with difficult people every day at my current job (I'm a receptionist).

TL;DR I was dying from anxiety the whole time, there was a great deal of sweating, and also I am sick and spent most of last night up with a stomach bug. I'm afraid I just blew everything. I felt so confident prepping those notes. Then I was thrown off script, and I know this was on purpose, and I just feel so awful. I felt like I was being hunted for sport, and the whole thing was a booby trap interview. My gut is telling me that they liked me, but my anxiety is telling me someone else is or has already come through who really blew it out of the water. Not sure what's what.