Thursday, June 5, 2008

It's a wonder I've ever been hired for a job....

Sometimes, I think it is better to leave well enough alone. I was upset when once again, I was number two for a job. It hurts when that happens because you know how close you were and it's hard to be number two. It's like almost, but not quite and we all know close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Well, after I got my nice ding email about the job interview last week, I decided I had to know why I didn't get the job. I think I must have been hit with the stupid stick because I shouldn't have asked because finding out you have a character flaw is like having someone stab you through the heart with a blunt object.

So, Mr. Nonprofit sends me back an email telling me why I didn't get the job this is what it said..." I am happy to offer this suggestion for your interviews...just relax and take the edge off so that you can come across better to the interviewers. I think you have a lot to offer, but it is hard to discern that when you come across so nervous. In any role that involves meeting people, that raised the question regarding how you will do in the first impressions. Hope this helps...good luck...Mr. Nonprofit".

Okay, how would he like to have three people firing questions at you? I mean, it's an interview. You are supposed to be nervous. I was a lot more relaxed for this interview than I have been for most. I took my adderall...I was focused and I would have hated for them to see me without the adderall. Yeah, can you say completely whacked out? I mean, cut me some slack. Just because a person is nervous in an interview doesn't mean that is how they are all the time. When I meet people, I know they aren't going to be interviewing me, I think I make a good first impression, so really, I don't understand this at all. Yes, I am a little "flighty", that is what my Mom says about me, but flighty people are still people and just because I am a little excitable, doesn't mean I would make a bad first impression.

This makes me wonder how I have ever gotten a job in my whole life. I am going to say this and you can disagree all you want, but I think the reason I have gotten jobs in my life is because the people have been destitute for someone and I just happened to fall in their lap at the right time. I had a pulse and I was breathing. I have always thought this, and now I feel like it's been affirmed.

Allow me to make my case:
My first teaching job was in a school people were afraid to work at. I was foolish enough to send in my resume, even though I knew about the reputation of the school. I thought I could change the world, and it didn't matter if I had to leave the building at 4:00 every day so I wouldn't get mugged. I should have known when the principal hired me on the spot, that I was probably the only person she had to interview and if she didn't fill the job soon, she was going to be in trouble. I had a pulse and I was breathing.

My next teaching job came down to the wire. The principal had to hire someone before school started. The job also involved teaching Kindergarten in the morning and Middle School Science in the afternoon. How many people would want to take a job like that one? Yeah, not too many. I think the other people she interviewed didn't want to have such a crazy day, so again, I was the only one insane enough to take the job. I just wanted to teach.

Job number three, well, this one, I don't know. I have some idea I was in the right place at the right time. I do know that one of the people on the interview committee didn't really think I was all that great and had it been up to him, they wouldn't have hired me. Again, I think he felt I was a little too flighty. I think they wanted to make a choice and I was there when they needed to fill the spot. They wanted to go on vacation and I had a pulse and I was breathing. Plus, I was cheap enough for them to afford on their salary base. Coming from Catholic School, even with my experience, I was still in a salary range they could handle.

This brings me to teaching job number four. I actually had gotten the big "ding" call from my last school. Yeah, they had hired someone else, even after I had walked out of the interview thinking "this job is mine." This was probably because the person who did the majority of the interviewing, was just as flighty as me. Flighty people have to stick together. We mesh well. We get one another. It was quite a shock when the Principal called and said "Sorry, we decided to go in another direction." What direction is that? Ass backward, because your Vice Principal made it sound like the job was mine. Did I say that? No, but that is how I felt. How surprised was I when the next day, they called me saying "We made a big mistake. We really meant to hire you." Okay, knowing what I know now, that meant, "We are really screwed because the person we hired left for lunch at noon after our morning staff development session and never came back. Since school starts on Monday and it's Friday at 4:35, we have to hire you so we have a warm body in the room for the students." Once again, pulse and breathing.

So, now I am really questioning myself and my whole work history. I don't think I have ever gotten a job because I was the best candidate for the position. I don't think I've ever been hired because of my talents or my skills. I have just been hired because I was they were so hard up for someone to fill the position and I happened to be the only person they had to pick from. It makes me think my whole professional career has been a big joke. A farce. That hurts. To know people never hired me because I was good at what I did, to finally realize, what I think I knew all along, I was never a good teacher, that hurts. Actually, I think I was probably a really bad teacher. Sure, I loved the students, but lots of people love kids and they aren't teachers. What I was doing, a substitute teacher could have done.

I sit at this crossroads with this realization staring me dead in the face: My whole career has been a joke and I feel like a big failure, a phony. How many students lives did I screw up because I wasn't the best person to be in that classroom? How many students' educations suffered because I wasn't the best teaching candidate? Talk about feeling guilty. I shudder at the thought of knowing I have messed up countless students because someone just wanted a warm body in the classroom. I know people will say, it's the principal's fault because they hired me, they are just as much to blame, if not more, because it was their decision. But I have to think I was the one who took the job, who signed the contract, who put my name on the dotted line and I'm ultimately the one to take the blame.

I guess this is a big lesson I should have learned a long time ago. I remember sitting in my methods classes during college, looking around the room thinking "I would never want that person to teach my child." What a mean person I was for thinking those thoughts. What ever gave me the right to think I was better than anyone else or I was entitled to pass judgement on my classmates? It makes me wonder how many of them were thinking "I never want my child in her class." Probably most, if not all, of them.

I am so disappointed in myself for blowing this interview, just like I think I have blown a lot of other interviews. Ultimately, it was me who was seriously flawed, it wasn't that I was up against someone who had more qualifications than me, it was that someone else realized I wasn't good enough. That is a hard pill to swallow. I feel myself choking on it, gasping for air and struggling to get the pill down because it's senseless to deny what I know is true. Might as well take it like a big girl and suck it up.

I have tried "mock" interviewing with people, but that hasn't helped. I'm just as nervous interviewing under "mock" circumstances, if not more nervous. I had to realize and accept the fact I had a problem paying attention. I had to go on medicine to help me calm myself down. Other than going on Xanax for every interview, I don't know how else I am going to be calm enough. I don't want to be drugged out during an interview because people need to know who I a really am, because the Diva on meds is vastly different from the Diva "unplugged". Imagine meeting me "unplugged" after you have interviewed me all mellowed out on Xanax? Talk about false advertising. They would be very afraid. Kind of like Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Diva....they would be scratching their heads saying "What happened to the person we interviewed? Talk about misrepresentation...what were we thinking?"

So, I am sitting at this place of uncertainty. I don't know what I should be doing and I know my whole professional career up to now has been a big joke. I don't know what I am good at, I don't know where I am supposed to be headed and I am too scared to even know where to start. It's hard to leave something you have known for eleven years, something you identified with and move into the unknown. It's even harder to realize the last eleven years have been a farce because the only reason you ever got a job was because you were breathing and had a pulse. I feel like I am a phony. I don't even know who I am.

Where do I go from here? Seriously, I don't know. I don't want to go on another interview for fear I will screw it up just as much as I screwed up the last one. I don't want a job just because I have a pulse and I am breathing. I want a job because I am good at it and someone else believes I would be an asset to their company. I want to be the candidate who people say "If we don't get her, we won't hire anyone else." I want to be wanted. I guess that is all most of us want.

I've never been a person who things have come easily to. I've always had to fight for what I wanted and fight hard for everything I have gotten. I've clawed my way through and I have had to prove people wrong all the time. I am tired of working so hard to make it and having to prove people wrong. It makes me tired. I'm worn out. I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. I don't expect everything to be handed to me on a silver platter, but it would be nice to be able to just have something go my way, for once. I don't want to kill myself to get there, or claw my nails down to the quick to hold on. I just want it to happen because it's supposed to happen, because it's right. I don't know if that is too much to ask or not, but just once, I'd like it to happen to me because I'm tired of finishing second and never being good enough. Because once you have finished second enough times enough times, you start to think no matter what you do, it's not good enough and you don't know if you should just give up and give in. Because sooner or later, not being good enough breaks you down and I'm tired of being broken. Until next time, Diva Divine

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