interview redux (very long and incredibly boring)

So, the interview.

After days of freaking out re: lack of school experience, my presentation not being written until the morning before (finishing acetates ten minutes before leaving the house - great plan!) and feeling horrendously under prepared I actually managed to feel incredibly calm on the morning of the interview. This calmness was not affected by the unbelievably creepy guy at the bus stop who struck up a conversation with me about my book and then proceeded to s-l-o-w-l-y unbutton his jacket while looking me directly in the eye. It was fucking creepy and had the bus not arrived at that particular moment I'm about 80% sure my day would have started with a flasher. Excellent. I had to run to work before my actual interview so that I could sneak into the printing room and make copies of all my documents (literally every piece of ID available to me as well as qualifications, past pay slips, tax records etc, I'll give them points for being thorough) I managed to only get spotted by one of my managers in work, on my day off, wearing a suit. Wonder if she suspected anything?

Typically I arrived about twenty minutes early so I sat at the bus stop reading my flasher-magnet book and checking my watch every three seconds, when that became too much for me I wandered down to have a look at the scary religious folks handing out free food. The area around the college itself is seriously pretty - there's a big green park (Russel Square, where this show is set) and a ton of other colleges so there are always massive gaggles of students wandering around. All in all a lovely atmosphere. It was then that my Mother chose to call me and start the following conversation:

"Hello darling, I just wanted to wish you luck and to say that even if you don't get a place, which you will, I'm just so proud of you for getting an interview on the course. I know you don't like things to be so competitive but I know you'll do fine."

"What are you talking about, Mother?"

"Your course. The league tables.... Young lady, did you apply to college to train for your future career without even looking at the league tables?"

"Maybe."

Yeah. She had a look through the league tables for PGCE (post graduate certificate in education - that's the course I applied for) courses and apparently I applied to the best course in London. I didn't know this. I chose providers pretty much at random based on geographical location to make sure that my school placements would be within the Greater London area. I was not prepared to hear this. Calm mood shattered. I had prepared for an "average course" interview, not a "top course" interview. There was no way in hell I'd done enough preparation to be up against people who actually knew what they were talking about. But! No time to worry on with the interview.

I met a girl waiting for the lift who looked decidedly uncomfortable in a suit, a sure sign of an interview candidate. What I should have done, if I had any kind of killer instinct whatsoever, was size her up and attempt to psyche her out. What I actually did was lean over and ask the following:

"On a scale of one-to-utter meltdown how freaked out are you right about now?"

She gave a perfect reply ("eight and a half, nine by the time we reach the sixth floor") and I decided that breaking the cardinal rule of "don't talk to other candidates lest you freak yourself out" was probably a good idea. A neuroscientist like me, applying to teach Biology, she'd started preparing two days previously and hadn't spent the last three years volunteering in schools. At least there was going to be one person like me. We arrived on the right floor bang on time and met the other candidates. Lots of awkward smiles and questions as to which subject everyone was specialising in (2 physicists, 3 chemists, one half physicist-half chemist, one half chemist-half biologist (moi) and five biologists). We were shepherded into the meeting room and left to our own devices while our interviewers "prepared" (ominous much?).

I think silence reigned for about six seconds before three of us started talking at once. In a room full of people who were willingly going to stand up in front of a class of eighteen year olds in an attempt to convince them that the inner workings of the human ear is the most fascinating thing they'll ever study (it isn't) there were bound to be some talkative people. We immediately started comparing notes, discussing presentation topics, lamenting (or celebrating) the fact that presentations were going to be one on one, finding out who'd been working where and just generally talking ourselves down from a state of supreme nervousness. In fact it took our primary interviewer a few tries to get us to shut up.

From then on the atmosphere was absolutely lovely, (helped by the first point of the interviewers' presentation which informed us that this was not a competitive process and that they could feasibly take everyone in the room if they liked us enough and we meet their specifications) whenever someone left the room to present or interview there was a chorus of "good luck"s and whenever someone returned they either spent five minutes reassuring the room how nice the interviewer was or running through every question they'd been asked. I don't know when it happened but at some point the day became fun.

The interview had a few different sections: first up a mini ice breaker (standard "tell us your name and something about yourself" fare) followed by a presentation from the college explaining things like term times, how placements functioned and were assigned, the structure of the course etc. Next we had a group discussion which was based on some basic science questions we'd been sent in our interview pack - stuff like "where do stars come from?", "A tree is made of air and water - is this correct?" and "Why is mercury a liquid when all the other metals are solids at room temperature?". I remember those three because those were the three we were asked. I think I spoke at least once for every question while some people in the room only piped up once they were called on. There was one guy, a physicist who was quite a bit older and had been working as a technician in a school for years, who kept going off onto huge rambling and very technical explanations that unfortunately had obviously been memorised. I had to bite my lip a few times to stop myself from butting in, especially when it was to defend myself (we were encouraged to point out flaws in the previous speakers' answers) but I managed OK and didn't make myself look like too much of an idiot.

Next we were given a writing task with questions to answer based on a specific situation we'd already been given. An individual writing task. I think we all turned in identical essays. One of the guys suggested a group answer a la Breakfast Club signed with vague descriptions of ourselves. He was ace. But then I tend to think that about anyone who complains that they now have to cut the jokes out of their presentations. Anyway, the writing task was ongoing whilst we were called out to either give our presentations or to be interviewed formally.

My presentation was first. I was a little nervous about giving a presentation to just one person as I generally perform best to a crowd. My worries were completely unfounded though as I nailed it. To. The. Wall. I think my concluding remark was something along the lines of "and that's why stem cells are so awesome"... I'm guessing I got points for enthusiasm. And, as it's my pet topic I was able to answer all the questions I got asked so I'm really glad I didn't just write up a topic from the A-level course.

After the presentation came the interview, which was the section I was really dreading. The way the course is run you have to be capable of teaching all three core sciences (including some geology and astronomy thrown in for good measure) up to GCSE level (which is age 16) you then get to teach your specialist subject at A-level. I utterly sucked at the physics questions and froze up on a question about global warming which is a massive deal as the course is so intensive that they really don't have time to go over any subject knowledge at all - you're expected to know it going in. Which I didn't. The other issue was my lack of school time. The interviewer happened to know my secondary school which means she knew exactly how small the class sizes and how well behaved all the students were - she warned me that it would be a massive culture shock going in to an inner city comprehensive (a fact that I am acutely aware of, believe me) and stressed how incredibly important it is for me to get class experience as soon as possible regardless of how the interview went. The last subject we discussed was my flexibility at A-level. As I'm a biochemist I'm qualified to specialise in both Chemistry and Biology, and Chemistry is a major shortage subject. I explained that I'd be willing to take extra classes to qualify in Chemistry as well if they needed me to as I understand the importance of having competent and enthusiastic teachers in the harder science subjects but that I'd still want to at least audit the Biology specific modules.

So yeah, that was pretty much the scope of it.

Hmmmmm... I feel like I'm missing out a detail... now what was it? Something about the internet... maybe a letter...?

Oh yes! I remember:

I got in. To do Biology. Come September I'll be well on my way. Now the real work begins. I have to spend my summer re learning everything I've ever forgotten about Physics and really brushing up on my Chemistry. I also need to go shopping for some dark, long sleeved, collared shirts to hide the tattoo (which got ever so slightly bigger on Monday with plans to extend it even further) and some smart-ish sensible trousers. Because evidently the subject matter and class control aren't the issues here. Nope, it's how I'll look that's really important.

I confuse and scare myself sometimes.