waive torment me who read a full description of each of the interviews I had, just say that, with specific differences in style, all followed a similar pattern, a common format generated, probably, in the repetition year after year, the same procedure: general questions about education, youth and international work, specific questions about my teaching, my teaching experience, my current circumstances, "Why do you want to leave the country where you live?", "How do you feel about the idea of \u200b\u200bliving abroad?", "do you think you can adapt?" (Climate, region, customs).
had talked with everyone I could about these interviews, which to me, without much experience in this kind of shows, I fancied mysterious and even uncertain. People with more generous mileage gave me advice, keys, tricks, right words, taboo subjects, I can say that in a month I learned "the ABCs of a successful interview" and was instructed, with affection, something that did not perform much, a job interview.
The first-and last-remembered going back to 1992, I was a young arrogant master of the world and I feel capable of anything, so, encouraged by my sister who watched with concern my penchant for literature and my probable future of indigent poet-Byzantine I got the idea to go with my new obtained Bachelor of Law and Political Science, to offer regional sales manager for a huge crime that until now sells, shampoo, soap, toilet paper, feminine pads and other subtleties. What was he doing there? I'll never know for sure, but I think the Human Resources Manager was surprised when I asked where I saw myself in ten years and I said, loose bone, "in his post" (this step and would be General Manager of the Year car at the door or, more likely, an illustrious unemployed).
course, my job prospects were affected by minor problems, for starters, he had never sold anything in my life (unless you count the ice creams, water and soda sachet, which he sold to my mother when the boys wanted to make the park Spain that helped load the shopping basket, or perhaps the booming business of chicken sandwiches I left a few weeks because I felt that my friendship with Mario, we've managed to keep three decades, was more important than the profits we generated Lilliputians my partner and me), but I told the interviewer, with displeasure of my twenties, that "it is very easy, right?", then there was the matter of English, that the years have evolved my absolute illiteracy at more or less enlightened self-confidence that shines on me now, "was not exactly a banner defend me though, of course, I said that" anyone learn English "(as certain as inconsistent statement) and, finally, the tiny they do not know how to drive but "a matter of days" so he could drive like Niki Lauda the van they were going to give me for use in the rugged mountain roads of my country.
As it is difficult to infer, I was hired. From then on I got work as is done in Latin America, know someone who knows someone who is looking for someone to do something that you can do, a call a recommendation, an informal conversation, and presto, you are already employed by someone who, if you did it right, it will contact and reference for the next position you aspire.
said this is easy to deduce that my alarm at the interviews that came up was more than just a product of my neurosis amazed that my concern was increasing every minute, was more than a "simple and understandable nervousness" , especially after the disastrous and demoralizing interview I had with the school in the Middle East where my "no title" resulted in "not working".
However, when the desolation was weighing on his shoulders more excess kilos that normally creep, I remembered my dear friend Eddie, the cause of all this, the father of this situation that I was working at the crossroads. While walking down the hallway floor where the room was the school director in China, Eddie and clarity came to me with the simple words that cleared my picture in one of the many emails that I wrote: "Stop worrying, I know who you are and you'll do well, that's the whole meaning of the interview, be honest, I assure you, moreover, no half measures with you, or are you or hire you. " So I did.
talked with each of the interviewers with an ease that can have one in front of someone who knows some time, of course, not the freedom of the speaker with an old friend but with clarity and candor. I said what I thought and what I knew, I did not know or did not say if they asked me, I said I did not know. I fled from that old habit of assuming that we have an answer for everything and I took the "do not know" as an option is humanly possible, I realized that these people, who have spent many years doing the same in a dozen regular fairs around the world have experienced enough to realize that old weakness of wanting to look perfect against whom we are evaluating, I told my story as I know it, which is like I have lived, with its good and bad times, my successes and my failures, with great satisfaction that being a teacher has given me over time and also with those seasons where everything seems to be heading for disaster, I talked about my students as they speak of me with the same informality and closeness with which I have tried in these almost twenty years of teaching, with the daily life to which I refuse to resign, that establishing horizontal relations with boys and girls - Today many men and women, fathers and mothers with whom I keep the old friendship that began in the classroom. I thought about my students as he spoke of them, young people who do not intend nothing more to be considered as equals in the most humane sense, they do not want anything other than talk, be heard, be sure you know that before them a little longer because it has a little more experience, but over all things, is interested in them, their lives, their dreams, their sorrows, their loves and their adventures. So, inspired by these reflections, I discussed what I learned at this time, of how I became a teacher by mistake or, worse, by necessity, how was a teenager when Manolo, one of my close friends, had the idea to open Byzantine pre-college academy and began to teach history to win few cents to let me take my own life more lightly and how well student gradually, without noticing it, I was wandering from academia in academia, I was collecting names and stories and friends and one day, without much awareness of what ago, I finished high school teacher in a wonderful school where the crazies in Barranco important were the guys and not the ratings, where the concern was that students were good and not to know by heart the table of chemical elements or dates each of the battles of World War II, where the daily work of teachers was not lost in a thousand meetings "coordination" or "analysis" or "programming" but to verify that the young were well in the broadest sense of the term, friendly and feel part of a community that cared about their opinions, their experiences and fears.
In each interview, I went deep into my memories with the freedom of those who say only what he knows and he knows because he has lived and remember and relive it, I talked about how I came to the world of international schools Cecilia's hand one day I was reading poetry and believed in me, my experience in the different system but at the same time like, "because young people are young people everywhere" I narrated my experiences while working with kids different cultures, different language, traditions and beliefs even distant and often conflicting and competing, I explained how fascinating it can be to take the same class Catholics, Christians, Jews and Arabs, and how they already knew, with certainty, that dialogue, coexistence, understanding, tolerance and mutual respect for ideas are not only necessary but absolutely possible.
Driven by my own enthusiasm, I went from interview to interview with confidence that he will tell his little truth, a truth that can not be contradicted or that will never hunted at fault because, with its ups and downs, with their bad times and good morning, was what was and that's what I've seen in recent years when I was discovering as a teacher, because although I started almost by mistake, it is even more true that the teaching I was slowly gaining, which was becoming part of my life and that, without my realizing it, only I knew last year when I teach many months away from my students and my books became part of my existence.
so forth and so I talked and talked in English (still do not know how I get) and I responded with my simple truths all the questions I did, I raised my doubts, I was curious and asked who I am. "Bad, good, regular?, I do not know why I left the trial of the others, those others who were, in short, who were in me or not I was looking for work. In short, I followed the advice of Eddie, I was real or, at least as authentic as I can be a human in these times that deify the image and form, in these days of plastic and silicone.
It went very well. Well, I felt I did very well. Although the five interviews that day did not get any confirmation or any offers from China, not two of the Emirates, or Scotland or the United States, I was pleased with me and my journey, as someone taught me, "that we pay for who we are, not what we are not. "
That night, before going to lunch with Jessica, Marc and Gail, I spent the last room where the folders where we had left the notes. I found one, China wanted to talk with me again ...
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