interviews

Today was another interesting day at school. Yes, it’s Saturday, and yes, classes have finished. Wednesday was a wonderful end to the semester (I bought in mini-M&Ms for my 6th graders), and after school we ended up going to Andrew’s for a pot-luck and to watch some American Idol and Grey’s Anatomy. Stuff like that almost makes you forget you’re in Shanghai.

Proctoring exams has been pretty uneventful, although yesterday was a mildly exciting day because I want to the fabric market. I’m having a cashmere coat made—navy blue with green lining. It’s only 550 rmb, which is about $71. Not bad, considering how many hundreds of dollars I’ve seen cashmere coats advertised for in catalogs. And it’s being custom-made!

Today, however, I had promised my services to the administration. Today was the day that the school gave tests/interviews to prospective students, and 2 weeks ago one of my administrators approached me about being one of the interviewers. For some reason, even though it was going to be on Saturday, I liked the idea so I agreed. I guess I haven’t been doing too much that’s exciting on Saturdays anyway, so I saw it as a way to be at least slightly productive with my time.

So I showed up in the high school building at 1pm, and my boss explained what I was going to be doing. Each of the new students would come in with a completed English test and a cover-sheet that each interviewer for the different subjects would write on. All I had to do was talk to them, look over their test, and determine whether I thought they should be in Native, non-native, or ESL English.

While we were waiting for the students to start arriving, I sat with my administrator and chatted for a while. It was interesting, because one of the first things he asked me was “do you drink?” I was rather taken aback by the question, and didn’t know how to answer it. Did I look hungover? I’d only had half a glass of wine last night! So I just said “um…sometimes” and waited for him to continue. He pointed to his mug full of tea and started talking about how it’s just a habit of his to drink tea all day long because it’s very healthy, and once you’re thirsty you’re already dehydrated. So…he was referring to whether or not I drink tea or water or coffee? It was weird.

Then he asked me whether or not I’m happy here, which I honestly answered in the affirmative. Ok, yeah there are a lot of things here that bug the shit out of me, but I’m not decidedly unhappy. I miss people/places at home, but I’d say that this is a good experience. The next question, of course, was “are you going to stay next year?” I thought it would be a bad idea to start explaining my law school plans, so I was diplomatic and said “I don’t know.” Apparently the contract renewal deadline is March 31. I wonder how many people are actually going to stay.

The interviews themselves were actually really enjoyable. I mostly just asked the students where they’re from, what their favorite subject is, why they’re living in Shanghai, what they like to do after school, etc. There was a cute little girl from Plymouth, Michigan that I wanted to talk to longer, but we only had about 3 to 5 minutes per student.

When it started winding down, my administrator took me to the finance room to get paid, and he made a big deal about the fact that what I was getting paid for the day was a secret and how I wasn’t supposed to tell him how much, just whether it was more or less than I expected. 700 rmb for 3 hours of work was definitely more than I expected-- $30 an hour.

The thing is, it wasn’t even the money that I liked about it, although it certainly didn’t hurt. When my two administrators asked what I thought about the interviewing process, I honestly told them that I really liked it. I don’t know, I guess one thing that I learned from canvassing for those two summers is that I really enjoy talking to people, and that it’s something that I’m good at. I enjoy hearing people’s stories, making them feel comfortable, asking them questions, and just interacting with them in general. I guess it’s funny that I hate using the telephone to call people I don’t know, but I will ring a random person’s doorbell and talk to them on their front porch for half an hour.

I don’t really know how that translates to my chosen career path (remind me what that is again?), except that no matter what I’m doing, it had better not be sitting in a room somewhere by myself filing papers or just writing. I guess it’s something important to think about.