12-12-12

14 December 2012

I am very much excited to write. If I were not tired and up late with few hours of sleep for consecutive days, I wouldn’t sleep last night without writing anything yet for this blog J

It all started on the 12^th of December, the very momentous day of 12-12-12. I had my second level application interview with two doctors. In the morning, I almost came out late for the interview. I’m glad I was awake by past 8, almost 9am. Even if I practically have to cross the street to get there, that was enough time to make me panic. I had no preparations for the interview at all. So I really put my effort into looking presentable. And that is a big deal for me. I rarely put effort into how I look. But for the sake of employment, I did. With each tiktok closer to 10am, this thought was pounding on my head: This is the make or break moment. Sell yourself out girly, maybe they would buy you.

Taking effort to make myself presentable for the public eye wasn’t at all my creed, it makes me so self-conscious that I inevitably start comparing myself to the people around me then end up feeling bad because I’m bashing myself with insecurities. I was at pains for that interview. Looking good was already tough, how about the conversation part? Even models who chance on go-sees do not simply go there to show off their physical beauty, how much more an academic-like job would demand?

I was intensely aware of my wanting to look good, even appealing if at all. I’m becoming paranoid. 6 minutes before the interview, I was still on the street. Wah! What a nice way to make them remember you by, being the late interviewee. Ugh. Make that the late – dead-for-employment-in-this-office applicant. All in big bold red letters, flashing in my mind better than any ad could have any impact on me.

A minute before 10 am, without any breakfast at all, make that 20 hours after my last food intake, please note, food intake, not meal. It could only mean a snack. That would be a 4-cracker biscuit. So I no longer know where to blame my stomach’s revolt to, those butterflies for nervousness or the physiologic demand for something to burn. There I was, ushered into the air-conditioned employee room, and I was smiling at the research assistant, April is her name, who was my official agent for the day. The SMS I received the day before told me I was to look for her for the interview. I no longer was hesitant nowadays to immediately enter through a closed door without any sign of permission from its occupants after knocking if the door happened to be a door to an office. I realized that that extreme politeness would not be helpful. It will not show me as meek as I want to radiate but as faint-hearted. I may be faint-hearted but I refuse to be so any longer. Yay! One step forward to assertion! I am not doormat-passive anymore! One po-int there (The way Dagul always says it in Goin’ Bulilit, po-int)J

But my nervousness for the day’s interviews was already lower compared to my first application interview. For the first one, I babbled on and on, a bit incoherently I sound to myself, saying more than I was supposed to say and using more words than necessary. I was no longer thinking the way I trained myself too.

 During my high school years, I talked anything in mind. What I think, I say. Then I realized that made me very much susceptible to criticism and mistakes. I was being so transparent that I have nothing to protect myself with anymore. That’s when I implemented the new think before you speak rule. So I shut my mouth and kept all thoughts to myself and to my journal. I still can’t keep it in, really, got to get them out somehow.  But, I must’ve taken it way too far that after sometime, I rarely have any opinions at all about anything. I have given up on appraising something or having to say anything about matters simply because I believed I had no right to do so since I do not know everything about it to be qualified to say anything about anything. That was one way I killed myself but I’m not growing it back up; I am starting anew!

I have restricted my naturalness to suit my set personal criteria to become the ideal self I want to be. It had gone wrong. I ended up worse than who I was before those impositions. Being overly conscious and on guard is draining for me. I no longer want to be liked or love for someone I want to become but for who I really am. I was in a way maybe jinxing others to not like me because I was not myself. I became too timid, passive and reserved – mostly an avoider. I go to school during college as late as late can be and I’m always the first one out after classes.

I’m getting to shape again! There is freedom. I must really be a Libran – I have gone to my ends of the spectrum - from the non-conformist to the overt conservative. I will strike equilibrium in time. I am hopeful.

Then on the second interview I had in my entire life which I mentioned in so, I am not photogenic, (if it would be on a person-to-person basis, this would be my 4^th interview. In my first interview, it was a combo application interview: the head research assistant first. She is my friend and we had talked many times before. Then they demanded from me an on-the-spot application letter. I made an entire page. I must be so nervous I was able to add a joke in that letter. Blah with the formality. On the second screening, the research associate discussed with me. I had this interview by September and I believe that his demand to describe myself which I haven’t been able to answer directly and ended up to him fishing, “How would your friends describe you?” really was important for me to push on with self-realization. All that I told him would be that my friends, I was thinking then Ling and Cze, would tell anyone I was talkative. Would they actually say that? I still am not sure. I must’ve used up too many words, he didn’t dare to ask more qualities. And finally, the team leader, whom I ignorantly addressed in my application letter as an MD because she’s a doctor only to discover belatedly as earned from a PhD, told me I was hired. ) That time, I was so quiet. I averted my eyes, and only answered with a nod or a no or a yes. It was very curt and cut-off. Maybe the employer was in dire need and he had no other applicants to choose from so I was given the interview time. Tugsh! Have I just pulled my leg? I am unconsciously denigrating myself again. But no worries, I am excited to tell you why J

This second application interview, the team leader screened me off first before requiring his associates to meet up with me hence my interview on 12-12-12. The first of the two doctors who interviewed me that day (All those who interviewed me for this employment position are doctors, medical doctors. All male. *Cringe*I am again threatened. I prefer to have women as my bosses. But no matter, I will adapt. I will no longer keep myself to those unreasonable limits.) spent about 45 minutes with me.

I was more conscious of my nails then. They’re red! Gab and I painted them Sunday. (I avoided having painted nails. At home during breaks, I painted my nails everyday with a new color. But before I was to travel for school for the start of the sem, I acetone them off. I must be experiencing location related dissociation. Nail polish itself makes me too self-conscious what more if they’re RED! I agreed with Gab then because I actually liked the hue and I did not wipe them off because for me it signifies my breaking out of my being so uptight. ) I am comfortable with my hands on the cool marble table even if they’re sweaty and creating steam outlines. The doctor was looking at my nails! Maybe because I was looking at it that he also directed his attention there. What would he think about me because of my nails? Funny how occurrences all seem like a novel already when I retell them. But in real life, all the dread I felt then at that moment from my red nails or for anything else that made me feel so was happening with various duration. The distress from the nails was short-lived because I became busy really thinking about the answers to the questions and in communicating per se. On the side, I was thinking if the strain I felt showed in my face during all the interviews I had, including that moment. I wish I could see myself as I was having my interview.

I was nervous. But not as much as with the team leader where I barely spoke up. This time I was actually having a conversation, even if not that much coherent as I usually do. Nothing wrong there, we’ve just met. Somehow, after the interview, I remembered I read that supposedly, after being ushered in for the interview or even before I leave, I was to shake hands with the interviewer. The first doctor, the team leader, didn’t bother with that. And I was petrified to initiate. Then, when I was already waiting for the 2^nd research associate-doctor-interviewer of the day and was bidding April bye- I’m-off-to-the-lobby-to-wait, the doctor remembered it. How could he? I can’t take that time back now.

The palm was up-turned and open in the all-too easy to recognize, unmistakable gesture of an invitation to shake hands. I was staring at it but I simply pulled my hand out to shake with that hand. I sensed he first pulled away to make me feel less inconvenienced. He knows I’m tensed. My hand was so cold. It was out of my mind that I have cold hands until I felt his hand was way warmer than mine but not as warm as I expected a man’s hand to be (My dad is always hot, that would be as hot as I could get when I’m running a fever; no wonder, he’s sweaty. But I’m sweaty too! That’s unfair!).

I can’t even remember if the notion of being invited to shake hands registered in my brain. It was instinctive and though I was still the passive, timid person I would want to whisk away by degrees, I surprised myself that I reached out the hand as if it was the most natural thing to do. The casualness with which I bade myself out of the room to April was knocked-off by the truth that my hands are cold and the interviewee knows it. I can do nothing about it.

By this time, I was no longer hungry. I sat on the lobby bench and took out my newly bought box of 8 crayons. I was making out the lobby in the back page of my diary. On the part where my part-time employers decided to write when we were in a pinch and they needed paper. I allowed them to carry off my sacred journal. I know that they wouldn’t bother reading it. I wrote there in cursive. 

Running the tip of the crayon through the ink permeated paper, I was calm. I was no longer nervous that I would want to throw up (not as much as I did when I was with the team leader). I just knew I was nervous.

I had small talk with the lobby guard. I told him I was coloring off (I was sketching) because my hands are cold. Colder than the way it is now as I type. Well, if I’m getting hired they’ll know sooner that it’s natural for my hands to get clammy. My hands get cold easily. Not only when I am nervous does it get cold. When I stay in a cold place long enough, they mimic the coolness of the surroundings or maybe they absorb the coldness of the environment. That idea always made me wonder if I was cold-blooded. Aren’t mammals warm blooded? What could be wrong with me that the cold catches up on me easily? I also get cold all over fast. It just starts off with the hands.

When the last interviewer for the year passed by the lobby, I had a hint that it was him. I slipped on one by one each color to the box in single file. Then decided to write instead. It would be awkward to be interviewed by someone with you as the applicant who first saw you holding crayons and contentedly doodling with it. At the least he will think I’m juvenile, worse I’m nuts. I just can figure out what he might think of but I kept it anyway before April even called me back to the ‘battery room’ as I termed the executive director’s office which was where I had the past two interviews. With a feeling of familiarity, I was audacious to jest April, “for a time there I was thinking if I had to get my name changed into a month in the calendar” since the recent employed female research assistants of the team are named June Rose and April. They are the only ones I’ve met yet. Then I was close to the end with my professional look of carefully curled up hair to frame the face before tying it up in the back now gone because my hair is wet and I want it to dry already.

This next interview was shorter. But intense. I had back-up for the impetus of self-definition: “How do you see yourself 20 years from now?” what I thought at that question was my grade 5 self, preparing a composition of how I was going to be a lawyer or a journalist. I was that bold then. But it became too bold for my taste. Why?

I was usually the first choice candidate of my teachers back then in high school for extemporaneous speech contests outside the school. No more eliminations required. By default, I was the school’s representative. But the first one I had, it was televised even in the local network, I was a blabbering fool, not getting to the point of my speech and going overtime because whoever was in charge of signaling times-up forgot to give his warning that I kept on and on. I won 2^nd place – equivalent to a non-satisfactory silver medal and a badge of see-this-fool award from dignitaries of the city’s rotary club before the mocking of people who were bored enough to tune their sets to the local channel. The next one was for the division schools press conference. I lost again, 2^nd place. Each time I was thinking, what could be wrong? I was giving my best but it wasn’t for 1^st place. Are my competitors really better? Of course I haven’t seen myself talking on the platform before the audience. Why won’t I win first? And funny but I always lost to male contestants. Is it because I don’t have a modulated voice? It wasn’t hard for me to come up with the hypothesis of societal male prejudice. (I would have to deal with that as well. I am already giving too much hints!) That must’ve played a part in my decision that in college, I will be different. I must be speaking too much; I have to think first before I speak. I had that different I wanted to try and it is non-satisfactory.

Back to the moment, I told the doctor without any dilly-dallying that I can’t see myself yet. The vision was hazy but it showed that I would be settled in doing what I really want to be doing for the rest of my life. Right now I just don’t know what it is yet because I’m simply exploring. Without any more questions because I told him I already had my fill of it from his interview predecessors, we left the very cold battery room. And I had no handshake from him to my relief.