There’s a review I started writing a long time ago about my one and only experience purchasing a vehicle from a dealership.
It begins: ‘Apparently it is a rite of passage for one to experience purchasing a car from a dealership for the first time without warnings, so let me save the newbies some grief and tell you exactly how your shit show is going to go.’
I proceeded to spell out every surprising and ridiculous moment of the experience. The review is brilliant and sardonic, but I never posted it. I try not to post reactionary reviews and I was very pissed off when I wrote it.
By the looks of that dealership’s ratings right now, I’d say plenty of other people have compensated for my missing 2-star review.
A first-time experience for something like purchasing a vehicle should feel pretty exciting. Yet after having mine, I hoped for it to never be repeated. But at least I’m better equipped to deal with that scenario for when I eventually need to go car shopping again.
The same can be said about job interviews.
One of the dozens of jobs I applied for during the unprecedented time last year was a general faculty position with a charter school. I really missed making art with the toddlers I worked with at my short-lived volunteering gig and the school didn’t require bachelor’s degrees for some of the posted positions. I didn’t have the recommended year of teaching experience, but I got excited at the thought of working for an educational institution.
I decided to apply because if a job opportunity can give you butterflies the same as a new romance, then it might be worth pursuing.
The initial application process was a lengthy questionnaire that tried to gauge my teaching know-how, ethics and principles in certain situations. A note prompted at the end of the application required two personal letters of recommendation.
I had never been asked for those before. I thought about who to ask and soon reached out to a couple of former colleagues I consider friends.
Two weeks later, I submitted very touching recommendations I nearly didn’t feel worthy of. On that same day, I had an interview for an office job in Dallas. 30 minutes after the interview, I was elected for the position.
I requested a few days to think it over.
The next day, I received an invite email from the school to complete a second tier of the application process. I don’t even remember what that consisted of other than applying for a more specific area of interest. Immediately following the submission, I wrote a personal email to them about how much heart and interest I had in working for an educational institution. I so much wanted to work for them rather than to accept the job prospect at hand.
I received a response from someone at the school who thanked me for writing a personal message and said she’d forward everything to the appropriate staff.
Since hearing nothing more from the school by the end of the next day, I accepted the office job in Dallas.
It possibly was the best decision at the time because the school had nothing more to offer me other than a request for a video response questionnaire weeks later.
It possibly wasn’t the best decision at the time because I knew in the bowels of my soul that the job I accepted wasn’t for me.
I really wanted to transition my career towards the nonprofit sector, but with zero other opportunites for going on 5 months, I convinced myself that this was my ticket out of mom and dad’s and on to the next chapter. Another convincing element was that the job location was most attractively placed across the street from the Dallas Art Museum. What a dream to be able to escape into the arts every work day!
The reality of finally getting to move to where I felt beckoned ultimately triumphed in tilting the scale in favor of the job offer.
I officially made one year living here and with my employer as of August.
I also turned in my resignation.
Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
So, my job didn’t turn out like it was supposed to.
The contract for the location where I was to be stationed as a bookkeeper never came to fruition. That’s right, no arts.
I spent the first month or so training at a nearby office and the following month just kind of shooting the shit with colleagues at the downtown office because there was no place to put me. I was sent to assist operations in Fort Worth for a couple weeks at some point, but then it was back to shooting the shit in the downtown office. Not so many weeks after that, one of those colleagues got fired.
As a result, I helped to cover the slack and thought this will surely become my position. To my surprise, they hired someone else to take over. I then thought I was going to get fired, but instead, wound up getting permanently placed across the street in the main office to work under the regional director. There wasn’t much to do those next couple months as it became increasingly apparent that the contract we were waiting for was a unicorn.
I think a lot of people would have enjoyed the cruise control situation I was in and, don’t get me wrong, it was fine for a while to not have a lot to occupy my time and still get paid.
But eventually there came a moment when I felt like my purpose with the company was completely moot. Ironically, the feelings of self-worth were comparable to when I was jobless and living with my parents only 6 months before.
I soon made job hunting a priority.
Duties finally picked up pace as 2021 was upon us. The company acquired a small location to manage for which I was appointed bookkeeping services. The workload picked up, but my spirits didn’t and I decided to address the dissatisfaction with my boss. I was nervous, but pleasantly surprised to find how well he received my concerns. That was the first time I regarded him in a different light. I didn’t delve too much in his personal life in those first few months we worked together, and I can probably postulate why as I recall a mild political conversation we had pretty early on. But after addressing my concerns with him, I was more engaged in personal conversation and started paying more attention to his interactions with others. He was interesting, fair and cared about his employees.
I have been blessed in all of my professional endeavors to work under good people.
I was glad to have finally relieved myself of my feelings with my boss, but continued the hunt for a new job.
The end of the first month of the new year brought a welcome surprise: I received an invitation for a zoom interview with the assistant principal and other staff of the school I had hoped to work for last year. I was exhilarated – beyond the moon excited.
The interview came and I did well enough to be invited to tour the facility and perform a mock lesson. There were, however, a few things that me feeling a bit uncertain after the zoom meeting; the underwhelming pay for the position I was applying and the whiff of intelligence radiating from the individuals I had just spoken to. I felt a bit intimidated. I resolved with myself that the pay was manageable and the atmosphere of an educational environment would conjure out and nurture a matching wit.
The staff provided 4 lessons I could choose from to teach and a sample reading from a children’s book that I was to recite. I had about 14 days to prepare for the final interview. I selected the lesson on the difference between 2-dimensional shapes and 3-dimensional shapes as I thought they most closely related to the arts, which was where my primary interest was in teaching.
I actually wish I had selected the history lesson about the Battle of Thermopylae. I realized I knew a half-assed version of the story thanks to the movie, 300. Also, when I thought about it further, history is made up of stories. All I had to do was memorize the story and relay it in an invigorating fashion.
But a few days had passed when I made this realization and decided it was better to stick to shapes as I was already working out a lesson plan and creating props. Doing the research on something as seemingly simple as a comparison of 2D and 3D shapes, however, led to a lot of doubt in my ability to teach it to someone. The creative freedom to devise my teaching from scratch did me no favors as I considered what was important to include. Did I need to discuss one-dimensional shapes, or lines, as well for reference? Did I need to introduce theories or provide a brief history on geometry? What grade level am I even teaching?!
To put my nerves more on edge, I had an unfavorable Tarot reading about the prospect of the job. (Trust that was the last time I did a reading right before an interview.) The feeling that stirred after the zoom meeting surged back and I hoped that what seemed negative would turn out to be a small hurdle.
I told my boss that I had an appointment around lunch the day of the interview. I felt as prepared as I could for the presentation and excited at the possibility of the new venture. I dressed for success and even switched out my colorful tongue ring for a plain one that was harder to see and reliable to not unscrew itself, forgetting that no one would even see my mouth due to the mask mandate.
I arrived at the school and felt a teensy bit of disappointment by first impression. It was obviously not a building that was meant to be a school and the outdoor play area was a fenced off section in the parking lot. I might have thought this egregious if I hadn’t already known about the school below a parking garage near my downtown office where those children play in a sectioned off area on the second level.
I checked in with the receptionist and absorbed my surroundings as I waited in the lobby. It was clearly an office building that, upon second impression, they did a fairly good job of transforming into a school. The assistant principal arrived a short wait later and greeted me. He was very friendly and gave me the tour. He mistakenly called me by the wrong last name – which I corrected – but I felt unbothered as it was actually a common mistake when I was younger. There were a lot of things I really liked about the facility. They had prints of Renaissance art pinned in the hallways, they taught the children to take turns being helpers to acknowledge and interact with guests without disruption, and there was a chess room where students played as part of the weekly lesson plan.
As the tour wrapped up, we ran into a teacher who was going to sit in for the mock presentation. She was welcoming yet I followed her judgmental gaze as she sized me up for a second. Maybe she disapproved of my outfit.
Soon we were off to collect the remaining teachers to participate as my audience. The presentation was meant to take place in the cafeteria, but I had hoped to have access to a white board. The AP was kind enough to provide his office as the platform.
Ladies and gentlemen, this next part of the story is where all the subtle foreboding and uncertainty blends together in a beautiful, cringeworthy decent towards humiliation.
Before diving right into the presentation, I had the misfortune of first being interviewed. I had been through so many already that it never crossed my mind there would be another, and I was wholly unprepared for it since having spent all of my prep time on a lesson plan.
They were kind enough to start with small talk, so I spoke a bit about myself, from where my professional background stems, some of my interests and that I was from Houston. It came up that Houston and Dallas must be pretty similar to which I said, “no, they’re pretty different.” I was prompted to give an example of what was different. I could have talked about the personalities, food, outdoor spaces, but I instead shared the first thing that popped in my brain; the drivers here are worse.
I said nothing else and let the room fill with quiet giggles, snickering and sweaty tension at the unexpected response.
I cannot dote enough on the kindness of the AP, who looked at me pitifully, and said, “I’ve been to Houston many times and… think the drivers there do better.”
It was but maybe a question or two later when, while speaking, my tongue ring unscrewed itself.
Frenetic thoughts of how to fix this suddenly imploded through my brain like a flashing marquee moving too quickly for anyone to read. All the while I kept talking, a loose metal ball clanked around my teeth. It sounded so fucking loud in my head and I soon suspected my audience could hear something as I caught glimpse of the disciplinary director’s expression turn perplexed.
‘Oh, fuck, what I do I do,’ the marquee blinked in bright red.
I couldn’t very well hide what I needed to do, so I finished answering whatever that question was and politely excused myself to remove something that had transferred from my mask to my mouth. I spit the barbell and loose ball into my mask as I held it precariously to where my fingers could retrieve the jewelry and, by sleight of hand, make it quickly vanish in my purse pocket.
It turned out to be the least awkward thing to happen as the majority of the room could relate to being silenced mid-sentence from inhaling laundry fluff or hair off of their masks.
I answered some things ok after that, but nerves were getting the better of me the longer the interroga- interview went on. I allowed uncomfortable pauses to linger as I tried to come up with the right answers, until finally the headmistress asked what did I think a classical education meant. I recalled that question from the original job application. Too bad I didn’t recall the answer. I quickly replied, “oh, just teachings of the olden days,” thinking of classical literature and music, but knowing that wasn’t right in the context. I said nothing else and made eye contact around the room as my cheeks flushed.
I was crashing and burning but intent on looking unphased.
I don’t even remember how many more questions I suffered through before I had the chance to ask my own. I don’t even remember what all I asked other than the one question that made me look ever more foolish.
I had noticed some pamphlets for an after-school program while waiting in the lobby. I didn’t read them and wondered if this was an afterhours opportunity to work with kids one on one and make a little extra money. Turns out it was a sort of daycare provision for parents and teachers. The headmistress asked me if I had any children.
I said, “no,” and looked around the room without explaining myself.
Crickets.
At least that dead silence marked the end of the Q&A. The moment had finally come to embarrass myself further at the white board. Picture this; you are in a room with 8 professional educators who know everything about everything and you’re going to teach them something you spent 14 days putting together. You’re doomed.
With notes in hand, I began the lesson. I first attempted to engage my audience by addressing them directly and asking questions to entice participation. I then drew some 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes on the board while I spoke. As I went through the lesson, some of the teachers tried to mimic students by shouting silly things. I thought I was doing ok with the lesson and responding to them.
Until evidently I made a mistake somewhere as the slightly judgmental teacher raised her hand and asked a question. I provided an answer to which she retorted another question out of confusion. I made another drawing on the board and discussed my point, and then looked back at her face. I had rendered her speechless. Not like a proud, satisfied speechless, but more like the look of Billy Madison’s principal who proclaimed the audience dumber for having heard his answer speechless. I didn’t ask her to explain her confusion and so I’ll never know what I did or said incorrectly.
I soon turned attention to the props I made to further emphasize some key differences already mentioned, and passed them out for the teachers to study. I asked them to name the shapes they had and then match the 2D shapes with their 3D counterparts. They did as I requested and my presentation concluded.
The faculty gave me some feedback on how the classroom experience would typically happen in kindergarten – which is the age group they teach the difference of 2D and 3D shapes. It would have been helpful to know the grade in advance. My research for the presentation was a mixed range of grade levels that apparently didn’t mix well.
I don’t need to tell you that I had not done super based on the feedback.
The headmistress made a few more notes before thanking me for my time and asked one of the teachers to accompany me to the exit. I got in my car and just sat there for a minute mulling over the past hour, relieved to be free of one of the most mortifying moments of my adult life – an absolute train wreck.
About halfway back to work, I realized I hadn’t performed the second part of the interview which was supposed to be a sample reading from a children’s book. My stomach flipped. What little lingering hope I had for the position dissipated.
I can’t remember if I cried on the way back to work or if I managed to reserve it for after. I felt terrible. I felt stupid. I felt like that entire room of people thought I was stupid. Most of them never saw my full face and I’m grateful for it.
My neighbor and I met up the next day and I remember telling her how awful the interview went, sans all the details. She insisted it couldn’t have been that bad. Girrrrl, what do you think now?
I still don’t think enough time has passed to fully bury that humiliation from February. It was probably a tiny bit of a blessing for me that the Great Texas Blizzard hit soon after to help me snap out of my internal misery.
At least I always find a silver lining in the worst situations. This one was so bad I actually found two; I will never encounter an interview of that shameful magnitude ever again – unless I do – in which case, I’m better equipped to handle it (by excusing myself to the restroom and running away).
Since then, I have had about 5 other interviews for varying financial positions. The job market is booming, but I’ve been very selective in my search. I want something that provides some perks I’ve been feeling FOMO about (such as the coveted work from home culture) and something that is working towards a good cause.
Despite the unpromising call backs for employment, I made the executive decision last month to turn in my resignation.
My workload eventually improved to be a full-fledged job, but I wasn’t happy in my post. The position overall just wasn’t a good match for me.
Knowing that I would soon be facing unemployment, and with my lease near its end, I turned in my notice to vacate the apartment a mere week after submitting my resignation. I considered whether I was going to keep powering through a dissatisfying work situation or was I going to make a leap and let fate decide the next move.
I made a leap.
I believe that nothing can happen if we don’t participate in trying to make things happen, but I know that we can’t make things happen. We can only try. If something is meant to be, then it will find a way without us meddling too much.
These decisions were not made brashly in an instant or without worry. I weighed my choices, spoke to my parents, considered my mental health and decided to do what I thought best for myself.
This is what prompted the interest to put advertisements on my site. I wasn’t expecting to make a living from advert revenue based on the current amount of traffic, but any penny earned is one less out of my savings. Any income is better than none and the smallest preparation can come in handy when facing a crossroads.
Am I prepared for a dramatic change? Yes. Do I want it? No. I am not very interested in uprooting my life again so soon.
It’s been a bit of a rough ride here in Dallas, but the job search continues as I hope for a miracle to keep me around the area a while longer.
Keep your fingers crossed for me!
