First Person

To See Myself as Others See Me

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By Grant Greene

The last time I interviewed for a job I was 18. I had applied for an opening at the B. Dalton Booksellers. The manager, thin and mustached, took me into the stockroom/lunchroom, and guided me through the interview, which couldn't have broken 20 minutes. He clearly wanted to hire me, so he fed me the answers I had trouble with. I learned some valuable lessons in this interview. First, if asked why you want to work in a bookstore, don't say, "Because I love books." Lie. Say, "Because I have a passion for customer service." I also learned that résumés get you nowhere, even at minimum wage: I only got the interview in the first place because my mom knew the manager.

I must say, with all modesty, that I was fantastically successful, snagging the coveted post of "bookseller," with its hourly wage of $5.75 (plus bonuses!). In fact, retail bookselling suited me surprisingly well. I always have the assurance that, whatever may happen in the academic job market, I know how to work a cash register.

Nonetheless, I have found myself a bit unsure of how well my triumphant interview at the mall has prepared me for my first year on the academic job market. I am fairly sure my job search will not go as smoothly, especially as my mother has few connections on religious-studies hiring committees.

Since my big conference (the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature) was fast approaching, I spent some hours holed up in the Barnes & Noble, skimming books on interviewing. I also looked into arranging a practice interview on campus. Our Graduate Career Services, on the cutting edge, offers to videotape mock interviews, thus allowing me to see with my own eyes every nervous twitch, to hear the tensed pinch in my voice, to see with clarity all my flaws, over and over. I could even keep it for posterity, like the video of my wedding. But I could only imagine myself watching it like a child watching a horror film, balled up on the couch, half-hiding my eyes, waiting for the gruesome scenes to pass. This struck me as unnecessarily painful, so I declined.

Instead, I independently arranged a mock interview with some professors. My dissertation adviser compiled a list of questions -- friendly and hostile -- that were likely to come up in a conference interview. I gave them a great deal of thought, and spent hours developing concise, politic answers. I thought I had my shtick pretty tight so I arranged a time for the mock interview with a few professors -- a New Testament professor, my adviser in Early Christianity, a professor of Old Testament, and an administrator.

The committee was running a bit late, and I sat in the hall suppressing an urge to review my notes. When they finally arrived we entered the conference room and made small talk, most of which centered around my lack of interview offers. The past three weeks had been an increasingly disheartening wait for "the call," reminiscent of applying to graduate school, except it was the answering machine rather than the mail that I rushed to check every day. One professor had taken to asking me every week, "Do you have any interviews yet?" This week was my third embarrassed, "No." At this point it was painfully obvious that I would be going to the prom without a date.

Since I had no interviews arranged, we arbitrarily picked a school for the sake of role-playing and proceeded. The questions started easy, "Tell us about your research?" "What is your best teaching experience? Your worst?" I felt like George W. Bush in an elementary-school photo-op. Easy questions lobbed, and quick answers bunted back. I felt a little relief as each question passed; all I needed to do was last 20 minutes. I spoke of my research, my teaching experience, my passion for teaching writing and the liberal arts. It was going well, I felt.

The final question, however, floored me. "How would you handle a student who did not feel, for religious reasons, that she could approach the New Testament critically or historically." Now, this is a question that I should have prepared for, since this is a problem that all scholars of Early Christianity must deal with. But frankly it had completely slipped my mind.

I have not taught New Testament in years, and have (to the detriment of my career, I fear) rather marginalized myself from the field (having moved instead into the less theologically controversial terra nova of Late Antiquity). In my first New Testament course as an undergraduate, for instance, one of the students handed out religious pamphlets after the final exam, deriding the so-called historical facts rammed down our throats in the course, urging us to remember that the Bible was God's infallible and literal word, whatever our (no doubt leftist and godless) professor had claimed. I know a New Testament professor in Florida whose students have held prayer vigils outside his house.

I have struggled with these students myself, students who want to turn class into confessional Bible study, and who have openly worried about the salvation of my soul (e.g., asking me during a writing conference, "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"). I have little sympathy for these types, especially because most of my colleagues, students and faculty members alike, are quite religious Christians and Jews, yet they don't have hang-ups about historical criticism and rational thought.

I can't really remember how I answered the question; there was some dead air and a rather terse answer explaining that this was a history course, and that the students would be expected to approach the material historically. Anyway, I fear that my animus against my own field swelled up when I was asked this question. From the looks of the committee I got the feeling that this was not a job-winning tactic.

Then came the critique.

First, my attempt to keep my answers to five sentences was not successful. I came off as terse and aloof, rather than prepared, efficient, and respectful of the committee's time. This actually is perfectly fair. I was terse and aloof, in my opinion a perfectly appropriate defense mechanism for having no job interviews. I need, I was told, to keep my answers brief, yet at the same time convey the impression that I would keep talking forever if they didn't stop me. (Good luck on this one.)

Second, I need to show more sympathy to my students' religious concerns. My "because I say so" attitude won't cut it with students or search committees. Instead, I need to "respectfully listen to my students' concerns." How this solves the problem of students who refuse to approach a history class as history, I don't know. I doubt that biology professors are encouraged to accommodate students who refuse to accept evolution. It was, however, an amusing flip into bizarro-world to hear a bunch of graduate-school professors speak of "listening to" and "respecting" their students, something I have seen precious little of in the past six years.

Finally, I completely failed to mention or evince any enthusiasm whatsoever for my field, apart from my research. I spoke passionately of teaching writing, of the importance of a liberal-arts education, my love of teaching ancient languages, yet never once said that I enjoyed teaching religious studies. This, I gathered, is a problem.

As painful as the experience was at times, I am glad to have done it. Even without a videotape, it allowed me to see myself as others did: defensive, aloof, no longer passionate about the field that I was ostensibly to pass on to a younger generation. I know that I wouldn't hire me with that attitude.

It thus gave me a kick in the butt to change my approach, to reprogram myself from bitter graduate student to enthusiastic young scholar. I focused again on the interests that brought me to religious studies in the first place, rather than the frustrations, the minutiae, the creativity-crushing weight of graduate school. I tried to think of myself in two ways at once -- as a young professor who was a confident teacher and scholar -- and as I was back in my undergraduate days, when I had a love of liberal learning but was not yet immersed in the solipsism and politics of academe. In other words, I tried to think of myself as anything but a graduate student.

My mock interview helped. Two days before the conference I got a message on my machine inviting me for an interview with a respected Southern college. To my surprise, the interview was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, a highlight of the conference, a collegial, light-hearted conversation with interesting people. They even liked me enough to invite me for a second conference interview. Not enough, however, to invite me to the campus.

"Two-faced jerks," my grad-school persona mumbles. But outwardly I am all smiles. I am an enthusiastic young scholar.