novascosha

The interview. This seems to be the topic everyone wants to know, talk, hear about. So I guess I'll say a lil something. When we arrived at the hotel in San Fran, I'm not sure if the front desk lady thought we were gay or that she was actually doing us a favor but she up-graded us to the 6th floor, the nicest floor. Which I would be fine with that, but it only had one queen bed instead of the agreed upon two twins. So the night before the interview was spent trying to not have Dan's naughty bits touch me. I experienced some very strange dreams that night. I dont remember them very well now, but it involved not be able to go base jumping because the guy before me died.
While getting ready the only coffee I could find was Starbucks, the worse tasting coffee on motha-earth. Nova was less than a block away from the hotel so we arrive way too early and took an aside through an asian pocket park. There were a bunch of grandmas doing tai chi and there was a ginormous statue of a bald guy.
Finally when we arrived 20 mins early everyone was already there. We sat and bs'ed with a guy named John that had worked for Nova before.
The first portion of the interview was learning a lil about how Nova opperates and what it will be like living in Japan. This was kind of fun. We played little games and did ice breaker exercises, it was like being in kindergarten.
The 2nd part was learning about how the classes would be run and how to choose a lesson plan. This part made the job seem pretty easy. They have everything you need to do all written out so I'm pretty sure just about anyone could handle it.
Then came the individual interviews. mine came up quick, but Dan had to wait till 2 o'clock. So while i went in Dan hung out in the waiting room. It started out with Devani asking some general questions about my application and where I would like to be placed if i were to get accepted. Then came the "rapid response" part. This involved her asking me questions such as "what do you think of on the job criticism?" Then I had to answer with 1-3 word answers. When that was over she would ask me to elaborate on the answers she thought were interesting.
At this point I pulled out some amazing swift footed answers to these rediculous questions, using key terms to relate everything to teaching. I summoned up all the advice I have been given about how to interview well and Shaq-attacked it.
So in the end I feel that it went pretty well. But I will have to wait a month or so to find out if I actually did any grood. Hopefully around March I will be joining Jon, Ayumi, Eric, Ems, Ronn, Tawnya, Azu, D, and anyone else I know that will be living in Japan. That means you Hero

Peace
Mike