post-interview blues

I went in for an interview yesterday for a p/t job at a local library. I was feeling ambivalent about the job since (1) it entails work that is primarily not my area of interest (e.g., not a lot of interaction with patrons, mostly computer work) and (2) I'm worried that adding 20 hrs to the mix might upset my oh-so-nice balance of work & play I have going right now. However, money is certainly tight and a few extra dollars wouldn't hurt. Plus it would be good to get some *real* experience under my belt.

So going in to the interview I felt pretty good about things. If I get the job, great and if I don't, that's probably ok too. Fast forward to today and all that very-logical reasoning is out the window. First I had trouble sleeping the night before and then was very nervous, especially when I went into the interview - a panel of people asking me a series of formulaic questions (e.g., give an example of a time when you acted independently). All the preparation I had done on the specifics about the job itself were more or less useless because it was a government job and so they had to ask the same questions to every applicant. Worse, I started to get flustered and things went from bad to worse. I couldn't think of answers to the questions and really wished I could just ask for a do-over :)

So now I'm trying to put it all behind me. Maybe I am making too much out of it and maybe I wasn't so bad as I think. It's annoying though - had I aced the interview, I could have kept my philosophical attitude towards the job. Now it's really bugging me, especially because I know I could do the job easily - but I don't think that came across at all in the interview.