This week, I had two college interviews to attend, and it was certainly a nerve-wracking experience. Let's see what happened!
Friday- Fujen Univerity- French Language and Literature
On a weekday, we students who have interviews to go to are granted special leave for the whole day, regardless of when exactly the interview is going to take place. Both Angela and I have interviews at four in the afternoon, she taking finance & law and me taking French lit. Our schools were the same one, so we decided to meet up in the morning for more last minute preparations. At this point, I believe all there was lacking was the comfort we need to talk about ourselves and our own opinions. At the brunch where Angela designated as our rendezvous, we threw each other questions relating to topics like death penalty, abortion, and the sort. When students go to interviews, some would resolve to memorize a script, but that was just too polished to be something out of your own heart, which would make it less convincing to the judges, who are, in most cases, professors doing interviewing for many years. An interview is not a speech contest. What the teachers are hoping to see the gears turning in one's head, how it sparks and how one can show the difference he/she possesses in a short amount of time. Therefore, the ability to think on one's feet is way more important than that to recite a script from memory.
Angela's father drove us to the college, loosening up the time constraint I would have if I were to commute on my own.
Prior to the interview, I was led into the waiting room, where the director of the French department, was giving a speech about all the reasons why we should learn French. Not why we should be learning French at Fujen University, but why we SHOULD learn French. It talk was in French, with a college student standing by the lecturer doing oral translations for the audience. I always welcome all sorts of listening practice for both French and German, and to my own satisfaction, I could understand around 70% of the speech without the help of the translator despite knowing that the professor was probably intentionally using all the easy words, for the benefit of us and the translator alike, for she was still just a student.
It was my turn for the interview. I was first led into another room where I was to pick randomly a topic to talk about for roughly two minutes.
It was pure good luck that I got this topic: "Talk about why the French are paying so much mind to philosophical studies while here in Taiwan we only care about the basic subjects like Mandarin Chinese, math, English, and should this sort of philosophical studies be introduced to Taiwan?"
In fact, a few days ago at school, Angela, Selena, Sabrina, and I gathered together to form a discussion circle of all different recent topics, which was also in preparation for the coming interview. Selena had to go to an interview for philosophy, so we had accidentally brushed through the topic before, making it a lot easier to think of some powerful opinions. I talked about how France used to have so many renowned philosophers in the past, and how the fact had directly influenced the French culture and their way of teaching, I then said that if we the Taiwanese kept our tight grasps on only the studies that we have used for several decades, we wouldn't have anything new to think about, hence there will be no place for improvements and will just be marching the same grounds over and over. The three judges were apparently resolved to keep a stern face for the whole interview, and I hoped that they are somewhat satisfied with my answer.
Then the judge in the middle asked me about the autograph I got from a French author I mentioned in my personal statement, which to my ecstasy, was something I was familiar with. I then pulled out from my memory all the things I could remember about this autographed book: its name and the name of the author, about how the book won some award in 2010, and what the book was about. I made the impression that I am someone who values written works very much and that it was something that really happened to me.
Saturday- Chenchi University- Education
For this interview, I was less lucky to have anyone to accompany me. I gave a call to my uncle to ask if he would be able to give me a ride to the university since I had to be there before eight in the morning.
The interview was incredibly long. One would have to knock the doors of three professors for a total of twenty minutes of inspection. One professor asked me for my plans after I graduated, and I was a bit caught off guard. I stammered a little, talking about how I might be looking for programs abroad when I graduate after saying I wanted to be a teacher, and the professor launched a long talk -longer than mine- about how it was not necessary if I wanted to become a teacher because all I would need is a teacher's license. I kind of blew my interview at this point, but the third professor gave me hope. He was a friendly, welcoming guy, bringing up about his brother we also used to go to the same senior high school (ZZSH) like I do, and then he asked me about my past experiences in teaching as well as my vision as a teacher. The time was almost up, and I was asked to ask him what question do I still have for him.
The first thing that came to my mind was "What was the biggest setback one teacher can face?"
His face did lit up right then, telling me that it was a big but good question. "Being a teacher is a lot like being a parent, where you can face a lot of negative emotions, and for the rest of the part, we can teach you when you enter the school."
I was not sure if the last part of the talk was intentional or not, but it did give me hope.
Still, getting admitted to a university in Taiwan is not my destination. I still have Germany to deal with, which, honestly, was a bigger wall of bricks than the interviews in Taiwan could ever be.
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