Tell Us Something About Yourself, Part One

Friends,

Emily & I left Mankato sometime around 5:30 in the morning to drive to Madison for my two job interviews yesterday. Emily came with as a navigator, driver-backer, interview-prepper. We rolled into Madison at 10:30. We parked under the business school building (after trying, and failing, to find a spot by the zoology building...let me say that many majors have their own building, but they don't seem to have a building for English classes, which is a crock). I changed into my snazzy duds from the thesis reading in a bathroom in the business building while the man next to me in the stall was having some gastrointestinal distress. After all that, we walked to the first interview a few blocks away.

See, I was wearing long sleeves, so it was a bit of a hot day out there. I didn't sweat through my clothes, but I did work up a good lather before settling down onto a bench outside the demo classroom (I had to give a 15 minute teaching demo). We got there about an hour or so early. Emily bolted to check out campus when a very nice secretarial lady came by, and figured that this man in a tie was here for an interview (everyone else that walked by wore flipflops). The secretary gave me a folder that held the interview questions I was to be asked, a job description, and a checklist for my technical skills. I had to check off the skill level I believed I had in each of the programs listed. Then it hit me...I probably won't get this job.

On that checklist were about 50 different things on that list. I recognized about ten. Not knew well, or could perform, but was just able to recognize. So forty of them might as well have been written in Chinese, and had an intermediate knowledge of about 5 of them (which was D2L, and some Microsoft Office stuff). Then I looked at the questions they were going to ask me.

One question was something like, "What is your philosophy for technical training and business change procedures?" And my only thought was, "What the hell is business change procedures? And do I even have a philosophy for technical training? I don't think so."

And when I was finally able to go into the lab, I found out it was a Mac lab. You want to know how many times I've used a Mac computer since the glory Apple IIe days? Once. It was yesterday during the teaching demo. I had prepared a little PowerPoint presentation about the key importance of the first sentence of a story for my teaching demo. I was told that the lesson didn't need to be technical, they just wanted to see my teaching style, so I figured I should go with a strength while showing them that I at least know how to create a PowerPoint, which in my mind is kind of technical. It took me about a minute to find the USB port on this strange Apple rectangle, so I plugged it in. My panel of interviewers came in and it was go time, baby.

Now, I've noticed something about me lately that I don't feel terribly nervous in this situations anymore. Prior doing public things, I still get butterflies, and feel genuinely nervous, and yesterday was no exception. But, while in the act, I don't feel nervous, but I sure as hell act nervous. I don't know why that is, and I'm not really sure how that works. It's like my head can't help but be a little freaked out, but my body is all-kool-and-the-gang and shit.

So, with the teaching demo, I fuck up the first slide. After the title, I inadvertently double-clicked on that stupid fucking one-button mouse and skip right past the question I was going to ask, and right to the answer of that question. It pissed me off, and threw me off my game. I even kind of flailed around for a little bit because I didn't know how to skip back a frame, something that is possible in PowerPoint, but I couldnot do it. And I think I should know how to do, considering I am applying to be a technical teacher (in my defense, that little button to go back a slide did not appear for me in the corner of the display, so I ran with it).

The rest of the demo went well. I controlled the room. I was engaging. Enlightening. Enthusiastic. Downright wonderful. Then they sat me down for the interview part. That did not go so well, I don't think.

The above philosophy question snagged me because I hadn't really thought of a way to talk around that. And to be honest, I can't spout my regular education teaching philosophy. I'm not even sure if I'd go so far as to call my ideas about teaching a philosophy at all. More of a code. So with a little assist from the interviewers rephrasing the question, I was able to stumble out of that one with an answer that I don't remember. Then into another one when I had to admit that I had little to no formal technical training, which is true.

The precious little I know about computers I have figured out on my own. And even then, it's only to figure out what I need to do. I've never gone much deeper into my explorations than that, and even then I would never say I was terribly good at what I did.

The clincher for me about knowing that I probably wouldn't get this job came when they asked me why I applied for the job. I came back with what I thought was a great damn answer about how I can help shape the way students learn by helping faculty use this software, and so on. Yeah, sounds decent, right? And would be a good answer...if only that was the job. I had made a catastrophic error in misunderstanding the job description.

Turns out, the job, primarily, is to teach university staffers how to use the new human resource software to manage things like their payroll and benefits, while increasing the profile of the department I would be working for, so others will seek them out to help with their tech needs. Well, color me ignorant. I rolled with that punch, tried to talk my way out of it, but I really felt sunk then.

I answered the other questions well. I was funny, confident, easy-spirited, thorough, jovial. A real joy to interview, trying to charm them the best I could. After the interview, I handed my technical checklist to one of the panelists. It really was embarassing. I might as well have shown up wearing clown make up and juggled bowling pins.

The way I saw it, if a person came in there with decent technical knowledge, had a technical training philosophy, and didn't somehow eat a baby during the teaching demo, then that job is theirs. I don't see how it could be any other way.

When I handed in the form, I said to the panelist, as sarcastically as I could muster, "And here's this embarassment of riches." Not the smartest thing I've ever done, but, you know, I figured I was sunk.

He replied, "We're looking more for a teacher than a technical person anyway." I don't know if that was meant to give me hope, or just being polite. I'm so used to Minnesotans being nice in that way, and I don't know if that holds true for Wisconsiners, too.

He then saw me out of the room, and talked with me a moment about where we parked, and the like. Nothing major. He went off to another interview. And I went off with Emily to my other interview for the day, not feeling too confident.

End Part One.

viva jobs.