There’s an old TV show from the 90’s that I love called Babylon 5. I have just written and deleted many “short” explanations for why I love this show – sprinkled with all the ways in which it falls short of the standards of the Golden Age of Television which we live in now. That’s the problem with things you love, right? It’s hard to be brief about why they are awesome.
Which is what this post is about. When I taught a high school speech class, the first assignment was to share a small passion in a presentation. The exact prompt was, "Something you care about more than you know you objectively should." In the form of a rant or a burst of praise or a plea to join you in your fandom, what is something you care more about than it is objectively important?
Most students who chose a true passion struggled to keep their speeches to the 5 minute time limit.
And yet, these same students, when I got them into the mock interview, gave answers maybe 10-30 seconds long. What happened to all that overflowing passion? Where is all that energy that made it impossible for you not to go over time? Where is the inner light that fired you up so thoroughly that you talked about the collected works of Rick Riordan for the entire 40 minute class?
It's hard to be brief about things you love. So why aren't you speaking up in interviews?
You went from:
The Inquisitors and Torturers of Babylon 5
“Comes the Inquisitor” and “Intersections in Real Time” are not my favorite episodes of the series, and only the latter is among the most critically acclaimed. And yet I think about them all the time, more than almost anything else in the five seasons of Babylon 5 with its grand arcs and sweeping romance and endless philosophy. I think of individual moments in the series more often, but these are the two episodes that I think of as units, as complete arcs in themselves.
I also think of the episodes all the time because they are nightmare fuel for anyone preparing for an important interview.
These episodes remind me that this is what a lot of my students think a College Admissions Officer is like. Seriously. This guy:
Whereas, college admissions officers tend to be much more like this person:
Or this person:
Or, if you go for an alumni interview, this person:
Or, in these times of pandemic, this person:
My point being that they are, if not actually “normal” people, then people who chose this career not in the hopes of re-enacting this,
But of getting to talk to cool people for living.
Seriously, you're more likely to find admissions officers erring in the other direction.
But then, I have to admit, that the real fear is that a guy who looks like nothing more intimidating than this:
Is secretly waiting to turn into this guy, from “Intersections in Real Time”:
Spoiler alert: that sandwich is poisoned.
And it gets worse.
This episode is nightmare fuel not just for the actual fact of psychological torture for a false confession, but also because it suggests that this person,
Might just be waiting to secretly morph into this person:
Either one of these fools.
You Get That That’s Ridiculous, Right?
Seriously, it’s wild how students convince themselves that their interviewers are out to get them. I promise, it’s just not true.
I’m not saying that they don’t have bad days. And I won’t claim that we don’t have tricks of the trade. But those tricks aren’t so much about tricking you into revealing your secret flaws.
No, our tricks of the trade mostly revolve around trying to avoid yet ANOTHER interview that feels like this:
Seriously, Ron Swanson. We need you to say more than 100 words per conversation. There are times as an interviewer that I would WORSHIPPED a candidate like Leslie Knope who did the work for me, rather than making me keep having to pull who you are out of you in painful, drawn out, agonizing questions with one word answers. One boiler plate question and she goes on about her passion and ambitions for twenty minutes? Without me having to do any additional work? JACKPOT!
Honesty, when I’m conducting an interview, I don’t feel like Sebastian the Inquisitor or the Torture specialist from Babylon 5. If anything, I feel a bit like Mr. Morden running around the station trying to get everyone to give me a real answer to a simple question.
Sure, he’s evil. And sure, he only tries one standard question. But sometimes I wished I could just keep asking the same question until l annoyed the interviewee into giving me a real answer rather than some high-vocabulary but poorly disguised nonsense that amounted to nothing much in the end.
It’s a questionable takeaway from Babylon 5 as a whole, but the two questions repeated endlessly throughout the series are also what your college interview is trying to ascertain:
Who are you?
What do you want?
We can’t electric shock you or just be super annoying so you’ll answer us if we promise to go away. So we have standard questions and follow ups and modeling and endless other tactics desperately hoping for the same thing: a detailed answer. An honest to goodness ambition (even if you abandon it by December of your freshman year) or a proud and worthy accomplishment (even if you think it's nothing unique enough to impress us). Whether you think either is objectively small or large, all we want is for you to share it with us.
Please, please, please just talk to us.
Tell us who you are and what you believe. Go into detail, tell stories. I swear, by the third interview, I was ready to kiss the feet of any applicant who volunteered information instead of making me guess the perfect question to ask to trick you into saying something, anything.
Which reminds me how many times this stupid song got stuck in my head.
Interested in more tips and common errors in the college interview process? Email me at renegadewritingtutor@gmail.com for information on the first 3-workshop program to prepare you for the interview. In honor of my last job, seniors and juniors from Incarnate Word Academy in Houston get the first of the 3 sessions free. Half the battle is having the right mindset.
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