The Interview
At the consulate there were a few other college-aged people meandering around, mostly being quiet. Though I do specifically remember one guy who I oh-so-creatively nicknamed Mr. Japan. In short, he was talking about how awsome he was and how much experience he had with… everything to anyone who would listen. And by anyone who would listen I really mean a group of girls who kept on exclaiming how unqualified they felt now that they were standing next to Mr. Japan. Excellent work, Jackass. I really hope that he didn’t make it in.

In order to stay away from Mr. Japan and his groupies, I occupied myself with trying to figure out why the TV/VCR they had set up to show promo videos about the program wasn’t working. I fixed it, threw in the first JET VHS I saw, and proceeded to watch promo videos. Other people soon sat down and watched the videos. I felt so much more useful than Mr. Japan.

It ends up that the guy I was supposed to interview after was a no-show, so with me having arrived a good 45 minutes early, I ended up interviewing well before my scheduled time. Good, they weren’t rushed.

The interviewing panel was made up of three people– two former JETs, one of whom currently worked for CLAIR, and some random Japanese woman who barely spoke at all. I had looked at many example questions posted online, so I was pretty well-prepared and knew more or less what they would ask.

I mainly remember them asking if I had to teach a lesson on America to a class, what would I teach? Of course the first thing that popped in my head was Word War II. Ehh, how about WWI? Civil War? No, no, no. No wars! Peace! Oh, the ’60’s peace movement! Hippies it was.

Overall it was a pretty relaxing interview. I chatted with one of the former JETs quite a bit, and every once in awhile one of the other two would ask a question, which I do believe I gave pretty good answers across the board to. I walked out of the interview confident that I had the job. Unfortunately I’d still have to wait two more months until I found out.

Within that timeframe I went back and forth from knowing that I had the job to getting pissed at how I handeled the interview, knowing that they would never hire me.

One night while doing my OCD check of IThinkImLost, someone mentioned that US interview result emails were being sent out. Once I knew about that, I became tethered to my computer. Unfortunately for me I happened to have a night class that night, so I had to pull myself away from the computer to head to campus.

Then again, that class was in the same building as the library with a computer lab, so right before class I checked my email one more time and… tada! I was in! I was overjoyed and ran up out of the basement to make a call or two to spread the news. I then went to class a good 15 minutes late.

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