I changed my mind once about writing up an account of the day, the very long day, of my interview, but two things have caused me to reconsider … again. First, I wrote up an account of last year’s MLA interviews [http://brad-lifesnippets.blogspot.com/2013/01/2013-boston-convention-highlights.html], and it would be consistent to do it again. The more important thing is that people still want to know, and it’s a rather interesting story besides. So here it is.
It was 10 degrees when I stepped off the train. My suit jacket was adequate, but just the same I wanted to get indoors fast. It was 9:30 AM, and my interview was set for later that morning. I’d been traveling since 6:30 or so. Normally, this isn’t all that interesting except for the fact that I’d only gotten home from North Carolina at midnight. The recent blizzards in the Midwest had delayed our travels so that I cut it very close on my train trip. Note, when you’re blind and you have to hustle out the door and into a cab in a business suit at 5:30 AM on a frigid morning in January, there is only one logical question you need to ask the cab driver, “how’s my tie?”
Stepping out of my taxy at the hotel, I walked into the place and went to sit in the lobby. That’s when the fun began. In fact, looking back on it, I should have really known that the day was going to be interesting from the lobby onwards. What’s so interesting about a hotel lobby, you ask? Fair question. They put the lobby on the 5th floor. Now doesn’t that just make sense? Who wouldn’t put a lobby, the reservation desk, a bar, and a store on the 5th floor? Silly me for not expecting it. I felt left footed, and for a while, it stayed that way.
I bellied up to the bar and sipped a hard diet coke. Unlike characters in my stories or my rpg’s, I don’t drink coffee, not even latte. But the diet coke was free. My next task, according to my instructions, was to call the search committee chair and ask for the room number. But when? Call too early, and I’ll possibly disrupt a previous job interview. Bad form. Call too late, and I might not have time to make it to the room before my interview time. Also bad form. I got clever and asked the reservation desk for the room number. I wasn’t clever enough, however, because I didn’t anticipate that they’d refuse, apologies included, to give me the information.
I made my call 15 minutes beforehand, excusing myself from a chat with a philosophy prof from the balmy state of North Dakota to do it. No dice. The SC chair didn’t answer. Now what? Call again? I compromised. Rather than ring his cell a second time and possibly give him the worst reason to remember my name, the kind of reason that invariably leads to a lack of employment, I asked the hotel to phone the room. They did, and the professor asked for a few extra minutes and told the hotel clerk that yes, I could be given the room number.
The room I needed was only one floor above my head. So, confident in my ability to navigate a set of hotel corridors, I politely turned down the offer of an escort and took the elevator. This time, my logic was flawed. The sixth floor of that hotel, rather than being a standard floor plan, is built like a mezzanine which overlooks the very sensible fifth floor lobby. The rooms on floor 6 are built on small branching side hallways that ring the central mezzanine. Visually, I’m sure it’s lovely. For a blind man and a guide dog it’s … interesting. Eventually, someone asked me if I needed help, and believe me, I did. I told him the room number I needed. To keep him from knocking on the door on my behalf, which often happens, I added, “I just need to locate the room though. They’re not ready for me yet.” A new voice added, “ah, but we are ready for you.” It was the chair who had come out of his room and spotted me.
With all of these events having taken place, I was something less than Joe Chill when I walked in there. My first act was to apologize for my two disruptive phone calls. The professor assured me that, on the contrary, my calls were no disruption and that my behavior had been quite reasonable and correct given the situation. Not being a Betazoid (a trek reference for those of you who watch it), I simply had to accept that he was telling the truth and get on with it.
The interview itself went fairly well as far as I can tell. It wasn’t easy by any means, though I found relevant ways to make my blindness a selling point during the talk. They tested my German at one point as expected, and at the end I had the chance to ask questions. I chose to break the EOE and ADA barriers from my side and offered them the chance at the end to ask any blindness-related questions concerning my job performance that they’d like. This was entirely my decision and could have had any number of outcomes. The outcomes it had were that the professors told me that they assumed that if I’d made it this far, I must have effective ways of doing research and managing a classroom. I left around the 50-minute mark.
Leaving the hotel turned out to be even more interesting than arriving. I found myself in an elevator that at first didn’t appear to go lower than floor 6. Finally, someone else got on at 8 and found the 1-button, located on the opposite side of the car from the main button panel. Again, I found myself dealing with the height of logical and efficient building design. This fellow, a doctoral candidate in Brit Lit, volunteered to help me find the exit. This time, I accepted the offer. We couldn’t find it. After traipsing about the first floor for ten minutes, up one escalator and down another, we finally found someone who could point us to the doors. They were, naturally, in the opposite direction from where we’d been going. I looked at him, grinned, and said, “you know, there’s an absurdity here. We have however many advanced degrees between us, and we can’t find the main doors of a building? Makes you question higher education, doesn’t it?” Two minutes later, I was speeding away in a cab.
I spent the rest of the afternoon lazily working my way through a plate of goat vindaloo, being mindful of the bones, at one of the city's better Indian restaurants. Taking a cab to the train station, I got there around 3:00 and confidently expected to catch my 4:05 train home. Once again, my logic was in error. I had failed to consider the weather. It’d begun to snow again, the last gasp of the snow storm that’d pounded the region since the previous Sunday. Half a dozen trains were canceled, some for the third or fourth time in as many days. Mine was delayed by an hour and a half.
I spent much of that time sitting in the concourse and chatting with a professor from a university in the southern part of the state. Our conversation was wide-ranging and interesting, covering everything from ethics in advertising (non-existent) to the difference between Buddhist and Christian conceptions of human goodness or its lack. We agreed wholeheartedly about advertising, and not so much about human sin or human goodness. But it was a very friendly and respectful conversation. Possibly, the highlight of the delay was one particular announcement. We’d already been informed of the train’s delay. An hour later, we heard this, “We have an update for you on train 393. Your train will be delayed. Repeat, your train will be delayed.” I looked at her and asked whether, logically, the word update implies new information. She laughed and we actually went on to consider the question of whether we’d been ‘updated” or not. It’s what happens when you put two academics of any rank together for an extended period of time.
I got home at 8:30, tired and irritable. It was snowing again. When the trip started, I had promised my wife that we’d go on a celebratory date when I got home. We almost didn’t make it, but we did, in fact. I took a cab home, got her in the car, and walked into our favorite local restaurant at about 9:00 Pm, still dressed in coat and tie and with Delaney still in harness. We had a great time, arriving home around 10:30. The dog was showing the effects of that brutal day for the next day or so.
I can’t say what will happen with the interview. What makes the story worth telling here probably isn’t the interview per se, but everything that surrounded and followed it. As my godmother once astutely observed, “Brad, if these things are going to happen to anybody, they’re going to happen to you.” So, keep praying, because it’s not over until it’s over. I wrote them a thank-you note today, thanking them for the chance to interview, which is always good to do, I think. And that wraps it up!
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