I had my fellowship interview today! I devoted the morning to deciding what to wear and my time in my office preparing a brochure about Geraldine. I tried to rehearse responses to likely interview questions all weekend long, but it wasn't until this morning that I was able to practice saying responses aloud.
My back has been hurting for the past two weeks. I injured it 13 years ago when I fell off the roof (I was putting up Christmas lights and the ladder fell out from underneath me). Sometimes the injury flares up and there's not much that I can do to make the pain go away. In the past week, I've had 4 chiropractic appointments. My back pain goes away after the adjustment, but returns as soon as I get in the car and turn my head to the left. Today my chiropractor told me that I must have high stress levels and that is why my back pain isn't disappearing. I didn't feel stressed out this week, but now that my interview is over, my back doesn't hurt and I feel better. I guess he was right.
And now for the description of my prep work: I decided to wear blue and red today. I used to have a green interview outfit that I wore for interviews, but after being turned down for 3 German teaching jobs in a row, I switched to a red cardigan with a blue floral dress and it seemed to work. Scholars don't tend to dress in exciting clothing. Think about it: librarians wear cardigans, historians wear turtlenecks, and everyone else wears a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches (and yes, I have outfits to meet each of these descriptions). I planned to wear the tweed jacket until I decided that color could help my project seem more exciting. I had the 4th interview slot of the afternoon and 5 more people had to interview after me. Red and blue seemed bright and cheery for a white conference room with no windows. I also pinned up my hair. If I didn't impress the fellowship committee with my awesome research, at least I gave them something nice to look at for 15 minutes.
I placed sticky notes in a grammar/dictionary before walking over to the library. In my mind, I planned to give each member of the committee the brochure I prepared about my project, but the interview went so quickly and the head of the committee rushed me out of the room before I could tactfully hand out my brochure. I hope the book did the trick. After all, it was a research interview for the library. The main question beside "what's your research" was "how will you use the library." The book I brought not only exemplified what I'm looking for in my project but it also proved that I actually go to the library to do my research. But more about that book later.
The actual interview was nerve wracking. A woman in black met me and brought me into the interview room. She commented on how warm it was in the interview room and how she was happy to leave it to pick me up. Hmmm.... I'm not sure how to respond to that one... I simply smiled and nodded. During my whole interview, the same woman in black kept looking at the clock behind me. At least, I assume that there was a clock behind me, because she did not maintain eye contact with me and seemed to be timing the length of my responses. She sat directly in front of me, so it was hard to ignore her. I tried to look at every member of the committee as best as I could, but that was challenging as well, especially since the members were spaced unevenly around a huge conference table.
Before I sat down, the woman in black asked me to explain my project before they asked me questions. It felt from the start that she wanted to get out of the room as soon as possible. I explained Geraldine concisely and felt relief when everyone started writing notes at the same time. The first question was how do I select which languages to use in my study. The next person asked me how I am able to collect the data with various scripts. Having the book on hand was a good way to show that the data I want does exist and that I can read it. The person farthest from me didn't really ask me a question at all, but rather spoke about his background in linguistics and did he understand typology correctly. I told him yes, and related my project to other fields and subfields of linguistics. He looked pleased. The last question was how I will use the library's resources and how would I use the funding. I expected the standard "Do you have any questions for us?" but the woman in black was shooing me out the door before I could even say thank you. Luckily the man furthest from me stood up to hand me my grammar and commented on the author, who was my former professor that passed away when I started my PhD. It gave me a chance to say "yes, I miss him, I was his student and this is a great grammar" before the woman in black was able to shove me out.
Upon leaving the room, I felt very nervous and wanted to cry. The interview went very well, I was confident the entire time and did my best, but after the fact, I realized how stressed out about it I really was. It took me about 2 hours to feel normal again. If interviewing for $5,000 is like this, what's it like to have a 24-48 hour job interview as a tenure-track candidate? How will I ever survive interviewing in a hotel room at the Linguistics Society of America meeting if I can't handle a 15 minute "tell-us-more-about-your-research" interview without wanting to vomit. I guess I'll answer those questions for you once I go on the job market.
In the meantime, I feel disappointed. Why did I get so worked up for such a short interview? I'm not going to have another chance to apply for funding for next year. If I'm not selected for this award, it won't affect my research that much but I still want to earn it. Waiting and preparing myself for a rejection e-mail or call is unpleasant, but hoping for divine intervention seems a little too wishful.
The interviews were scheduled to end 35 minutes ago. The subcommittee could still be deciding which dissertation they liked the best. They could also be out drinking alcohol somewhere... or in their offices grading.... or drinking while grading (because that's the only think that grading tends to motivate me to do). Will they notify us today or make us wait? Do they have to nominate their picks to a larger committee before they can announce the award recipients? Do they give names to the secretary and wait for her to send out the notification? Probably all of those. I will try to be patient and wait until the end of next week, but it's not going to be easy.
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