anyway.
i am preparing to head off down south for a week for easter to see my excellent grandma and that mad dog bernie, who has recently literally tripped my grandma up and caused her to end up in casualty, thanks bernie...
had a very strange couple of weeks preparing for 2 job opportunities, really good ones, very strange when you are so used to hearing absolutely nothing whatsoever, it adds a massive level of pressure that i have never felt before. i actually PREPARED for my interview in leeds, something that i have never ever done before. the interview went very well and i was offered the job a few hours later. I think that I have an affinity now with library work and seem to be very convincing as a person who can do the job.
now onto the other interview. basically i was shortlisted for a £12,000 bursary, there were 4 of us. the interview involved teaching a class in the morning, lunching with the trust and then a formal interview in the afternoon.
obviously i was stressing about this interview for 2 weeks, planning the lesson, changing my mind constantly, preparing myself for the idea that i was probably not going to get it.
when the day finally arrived, last thursday. i was pretty well prepared. simon kindly drove me to the primary school in question, far to far to walk, in the old colliery area of wakey. I arrived about 40 minutes early and the weather was doom-laden mist and rain.
headed into the school where no-one minded that i was early and i was led to a staff room for a very horrible cup of coffee. Gradually everyone from the trust arrived one by one, as did the other interviewee who was doing a lesson at the same time as me, an older man in his mid-30's from middlesborough who had prepared a much simpler lesson than me and actually seemed more nervous.
we were led into our respective classrooms, the idea being that the 6 people from the trust walked between the classes to watch us. i was given the older children which immediately made me nervous. in fact the only way that i could get through the initial stages was by going into a kind-of zombie function of detachment.
Thankfully the kids responded exactly as i had hoped they would except much much better and more enthusiastically. i set them about doing their drawings and then went around making sure everyone got the same level of attention, really enjoying seeing what they came up with.
it took a while to get them to finish up, they were really enjoying themselves and took their drawings to show their class, one girl told me she was taking it home to put it in her memory box. i was over-the-moon and had really really enjoyed it all.
headed outside as the next 2 candidates arrived to do their lesson. waited 40 mins for my bus up to the sculpture park, the weather had turned steamy and warm now. i set about rescuing a worm from the pavement and nearly missed my bus...
arrived in west bretton, the beautiful village where the insanely beautiful sculpture park is located. walked up the path (everyone was very shocked that i wasn't driving as it seems inaccessible to a driver) in the sunshine, there were lots of lambs, so teeny that they had their umbilical cords still attached, one ran over to me thinking i was it's mum and then noticed its mummy at the last minute who was pretty cross that i was going near her bub.
headed in and had a coffee, it's very hard to explain how beautiful it is there, and peaceful, and by now the weather was quite beautiful, the cafe overlooks the grounds and i watched the walkers and the dog-walkers head out into the grounds trying to calm myself down.
The significance of this bursary would be enormous to my career. it basically gives you the freedom to work and also a huge publicity boost and opportunity to create a publication. i was hoping that my connection to wakefield would help me, none of the other candidates were local so surely my connection to the locality and to the wakefield art-scene would make me a more desirable candidate, after all i have a vested interest in the community here?
met another of the candidates and sat in the lunch room waiting for the others. soon we were all four sitting together talking, a strange situation at an interview...they all seemed very nice, we were all very different entities i think so in a way i was feeling better about it knowing how much worse it is to lose a job to an unknown person who you create in your head into a perfect version of you. we had a very good lunch, an extra trustee arrived who hadn't been there in the morning and made himself known by being slightly scary. The only male candidate made me feel better about the whole thing by telling me about an interview that he did once which lasted a week and that he didn't even get. it sounded worse than this so i felt comforted. i was constantly sizing up the others though, what i had over them and what they had over me, pointlessly of course as it was impossible to know.
I was the last person to be interviewed, it was quite gruelling as i watched the others go in and come out one by one, 40 minutes each, until only i was left 2 hours later.
The interview wasn't good. i knew that when i came out and saw that i had only been in there 20-25 minutes. The guy who went before me had emerged positively elated after what felt like hours of me wandering round and round the lunch room as everything got cleared away.
i was led in to a very small room with a round table and 7 interviewers from the trust and the sculpture park. the interview didn't flow. they concentrated on an area that i hadn't considered to be massively important. I made a few good points about how i would keep the interest of older children, something i have some authority on from my jobs working with angry teens. everyone took it in turns to ask a question, some of which i really did not understand and had to clarify to the point where i felt like they thought i was a stupid child.
The interview culminated with the elderly chap who hadn't been there in the morning. He hadn't read any of my stuff and launched into me being from a 'cloistered life' saying that i had just left uni and how was i expected to cope with this. i corrected him and someone else did too, saying i had worked in schools for 4 years. this led to no alternative question and the interview fell flat.
all the stuff that i had wanted to get across was just left unsaid. i was nervous, but mostly i was confused and frustrated. the interview had no flow and i was given the distinct impression that a view had been formed about me before i opened my mouth, that i was young, inexperienced and unable to cope with the size of the task. None of which are true and none of which i had a chance to refute. I wasn't even asked about my work practice or connection to wakefield.
anyway. i left feeling utterly deflated and confused. half angry that i felt i hadn't been given a fair chance, half disappointed that i hadn't fought hard enough.
sounds like a war doesn't it?!!
anyway. my bus didn't arrive. i stood staring down the street for 2 hours. eventually simon came and rescued me by which time i was hiding in a stony hutch freezing cold!
the relief wasn't forthcoming of having this massive stress over with, instead i turned it all over and over in my mind in a typical rose-esque way.
i didn't hear anything on friday so i knew i hadn't got it, well i presumed i hadn't. saturday a 2 or 3 line letter arrived confirming it.
so that was that. the story of my interview, of the biggest interview of my entire life.
i am fine really, well i will be very soon. I think we must have been a bad fit and i would hate to spend 14 months working under a crew of people who treat me like a puppet.
anyway. i may have a bath? crazy eh?
off to london tomorrow on a £1 national express coach can't wait (not) see that was sarcasm. Bloody coach. just have to make sure i sit in the aisle this time and am not pressed into the heater by someone :(
au revoir, your disappointed but resolute compadre.