The Worst Job Interview Ever

Thursday morning, admist packing for a weekend trip to Vaxjo (home of Johan and Sofia), I checked my email. Checking my email has become an obsession lately. I click that "enter" button on my gmail account and just pray that someone is about to tell me they want ME to work for them, that someone is finally going to decide my near future for me.

Sadly, my inbox is usually pretty empty of job-related matter. But Thursday morning, I had an email from the Intensity School of English in Rybnik, Poland. The subject line was "Interview".

My stomach dropped when I saw that word - it could only mean one thing! And, indeed, upon opening the email, my suspicious were confirmed. They wanted to have a phone interview with me at 8 PM that night. All I needed to do was confirm the time with them and send them the number of a landline on which they could reach me.

The five hour drive down to Vaxjo (pronounced Veh-qua), was a happy ride. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and we were back on the road, listening to music, and high on the possibility of things actually working out. ("Working out" has gradually come to mean getting a job teaching English in a nearby Eastern European country, since Sweden is an impossibility.) I'd be in Poland, Bjorn would be in Sweden, and we could easily see each other every two or three weeks. We'd just be a two hour plane ride away from each other and in the same time zone!

The day passed, and after dinner, Johan, Sofia, Bjorn, and I, all got in the car and drove a short distance to Sofia's father's office, the site of the confirmed landline where my interviewer would reach me. I sat in the small office, behind a huge l-shaped desk, for about twenty minutes, feeling giddy and nervous, and waiting for the damned phone to ring.

At 8:01 PM, the phone finally rang. Jason Michaels, from the Intensity School of English, introduced himself briefly, and the interview began. There was no small talk, no getting to know you conversation, no warm up. Just straight to the questions, the first awful one being "Why Poland?" Well, I'm an honesty girl, perhaps because I'm no good at lying, so I don't even bother trying. And it probably wasn't the right thing to do in the situation, but I told him that it frankly had a lot to do with my relationship. I told him I knew that I wanted to teach English this year, and the location really wasn't that important to me, but if I could be somewhere close to Sweden, that would be ideal. (I'm cringing as I write this - are you?)

The next question was: What qualities do you think you have that would make you a good teacher? I answered that one pretty well, I think, but this interview was already not going well. I was so thrown off by the way the conversation started (or didn't start) that my pre-interview nervousness was quadrupled. My voice was shaking ever so slightly as I spoke, and words - common, every day words, like school or happy - just vanished from my head as I tried to form sentences. I could not speak properly to save my life.

"Okay, let's now do a little exercise," Jason said, after he'd asked his first two (and only two) slightly personal questions. "I'm going to give you a word, and I want you to imagine you are teaching this word to a class of beginner English learners. I want you to define the word and use it in a sentence. The first word is the verb "cause"."

This just took me to a new level of utter panic and unpreparedness. I was NOT expecting this. I managed to stammer out some kind of definition (though I cannot recollect what on earth I said), but when it came to using it in a sentence, I just couldn't do it. I was trying to think of the most perfect sentence - one that didn't involve any complex verb structures (You can't say "could cause" to a group of beginners because they don't know "could".). I sat silently for a good 10 seconds or so before Jason Michaels said, "Okay, let's move on to the next one."

Good Jesus. Please make this interview end.

Jason Michaels' fun little word game did get a little better (a little better meaning I was at least able to say something). But he, of course, chose all confusing words - wise, compare, proud, should. Given a little time and a piece of paper, I could beautifully define these words for a group of beginners. I could probably even use them in a sentence! But in this situation...it wasn't ideal, to say the least.

We then moved into what seemed like a short grammar quiz: Do you know what a gerund is? Can you explain the difference between quick and quickly? How would you explain the difference between look and see? Can you identify the verb in the sentence, "Teaching is fun."? Um, LOOK, Jason Michaels. I am NOT an idiot, and I have had just about enough of this!

Finally, probably about 10 minutes after the phone rang, Jason Michaels told me that he was finished with "his" part of the "interview". Did I have any questions? I managed to fill up probably another ten minutes with questions, which may have redeemed me somewhat - my voice finally leveled out, and I had prepared some excellent questions, if I do say so. When I was finished, Jason Michaels informed me that they'd be making decisions in two weeks, and they'd let me know. And it was over.

As we drove back to Johan and Sofia's apartment, I just felt wretched. I felt angry, embarrassed, stupid, and amused, all at once. How did I manage to blow this ONE opportunity I was presented with? HOW? And HOW could that have been the interview? They didn't try to get to know me at all! Do they not care about personality or fit? Do they just want someone who knows what a gerund is? And hmmm, come to think of it, damnit! I completely screwed up the definition of a gerund. Ellen! I don't want to work at stupid Jason Michaels' school, anyway! He wasn't even nice! He didn't even speak English as a native language!

Yes, yes. Lessons learned. I know, I'll never be this unprepared again. Or this caught off guard. And every interview is a learning experience. Yadda yadda. But it was awful. And really weird. The next day, I woke up and thought, "Did that REALLY happen?"

And I'm probably overreacting. I probably didn't do nearly as badly as I thought I did. In the back of my head, I keep thinking that this is going to be one of those terrible ironies of life, where they come back in two weeks and offer me the job! Probably not, though.

I have come face to face with a major personality flaw of mine. I am terrible at failing. I'm terrible at rejection. I won't try to do unrealistic things, things that I'm certain won't work out for me. One bad interview makes me think perhaps I'm being ridiculous for thinking I could get a teaching job, let alone be good at it. One bad interview! So I'm conjuring up spirits of friends who are persisitent and motivated and positive, and I'm pushing ahead. We shall see.

Hope you are all well! Much love.