The D-spot

Author: Dina Magaril

Of the various skill sets Middlebury may attempt to provide you with, interviewing well is not one of them. You could be a fantastic essay writer, get every question right on your biology lab, rock at cartography and even find a cure for the common cold, yet you could leave here having no communication skills whatsoever.

When applying for jobs this past summer, I had my resume printed and ready to go, and an answer to any of the possible questions my interviewer may ask me, thanks to the CSO tip sheet. I knew how to answer questions about my career path, about wanting to write, working at my school's newspaper, the challenges I faced abroad when integrating into a new culture, that one-time-I-failed story that I knew would pop up.

But I'm someone who freezes up at interviews. Be they job interviews, informational interviews, or just meetings with professors that I don't know very well, I want to curl into a tiny ball and hide under the desk. I eye the closed door, then curse under my breath when I sit down before the requisite handshake has taken place. I concentrate so hard on what I'm going to say that I lose the strain of conversation and stare blankly at my interlocutor's face.

Normally, in a social setting, I'm only slightly awkward. I can carry out my end of the conversation, and if I find someone interesting enough, one might even say I'm engaging. But there's something about being in a "professional" setting that packs on the pressure. The idea of a staged conversation, a test, if you will, in a room without windows. Why aren't meetings held at a bar? Everyone loves a bar. It's a sure bet and a guarantee that as the interview progresses there will be at least one person who will make a bigger fool out of themselves than you will. At a bar, everyone would loosen up a bit, share stories from their childhoods, discuss aspirations, and before I know it, boom, job offer.

I have yet to be interviewed in a bar. Instead, my throat adopts that scratchy quality it takes on when I'm nervous and don't know what to say next. I lose track of my thoughts and lose control of the words pummeling out of my mouth. I revert to "ums," then remember how often I've been told to stay away from ums, then revert to silence, become uncomfortable with my silence, lose my train of thought once more and then ask out of desperation to fill the void that in a moment will transform into a door slamming behind me, what was the question again?

And to top it off, I am stone cold sober. I am hyper aware of the pitiful glances, the man checking his watch in the corner, the polite nods as someone drifts away into a daydream, perhaps thinking where they'll go for dinner. I can see it in their faces as well as I can feel it in the air, in my own sweaty palms, fidgeting hands, that one compassionate smile thrown to me too late, like a scarp of meat to a dying stray.

Sadly, going on interviews is something I will need to keep working on. Unlike that one time you apply to college or take your SAT or GRE, interviewing and public speaking is something we will have to return to again and again. I wish I had some advice to offer, some secret nuggets to bestow on those who share in my phobia of interviewing, but I've got nothing. Perhaps it's a skill that will come naturally with practice. But until then, maybe I can rely on jobs that don't require person-to-person contact. I hear telemarketing is hiring.