Today I'm gonna deal with the second component of the job interview process: the take home written questions. The questions are a snap, and the sort of work I would really enjoy doing if given the opportunity.
The interview was over an hour long, with three people asking me questions one after the other. I didn't feel nervous during this process, only excited and hopeful. I think it went quite well. They are interviewing other people on Monday and Tuesday, but they have vowed to contact everyone to let them know the results of the competition, which is a nice thing to do.
In regard to taking compliments, I have recently been in a situation where two different grad students were studying my work while an actor flew all the way from Australia just to be in my play. It seems the entire cast truly loves the play, which is wonderful. I am okay with compliments, especially when it comes to the script I've put so much work into. It is an intensely weird experience to be studied though. One of the students was off base in her theories, and had these interpretations that didn't gel with my actual work (as far as my personal interpretations of textual meaning), so that's even weirder. I mean, I want people to take what they find from my work, but if someone is going to ask me questions where she has an answer already in mind, and plans to write her thesis on this idea, but where the idea she's come to isn't something I intentionally imposed onto the text... that's a tricky thing. It doesn't even mean she's necessarily "wrong" either. I take meaning from the writers I love, and I don't think I ever consider their take on whether whatever meaning I'm drawing from reading their stuff is true to what they set out to do or not. I don't think it's the job of good writing to tell you something. I think it's the job off good writing to push readers to examine their own relationship to the text and ask questions. So rather than saying "uh - no - I didn't mean that when I wrote it," I find myself saying "that's an interesting thing to consider" or even worse, responding with a question like "so can you tell me how you came to that concept?" I want, more than anything, for people to come to their own conclusions, not provide pat answers, yet this leads to me talking about my work in a slightly ambiguous way, while I'm actually very exacting in regard to the meaning I've set out in my work.
Author
Topic: Today I'm gonna... (Read 1348856 times)