My dear readers,

I am pleased to announce that after only four months of seemingly endless drudgery and pointless exertion, I have secured a position as a productive member of society in the year to come, assuming, of course, that you consider high school English teachers to be productive members of society.

I’ll be working at an independent (read: private) school in Virginia Beach. For the sake of their institutional credibility, we'll call it school #1 - feel free to ask me for more concrete details. Despite their decision to hire me as a full-time English teacher, it seems like a pretty good school – easily the best in Virginia Beach, and probably second-best in Hampton Roads. I’ll be teaching a variety of English courses at different levels, including a senior elective that I get to design. I am pretty pumped about that. Early favorites for topics include Russian lit, 20th century humorists, and pirates.

Anyway, for me, the job process began around January 11th, when I realized that one school’s application deadline was the next day. After that little scare, I was disciplined and organized. I did research. I made a spreadsheet. I wrote individualized, proofread cover letters. I probably sent in 10 or 12 applications. In response, I received 10-12 automated form letters thanking me for my interest in ________________ School. The silence of the auto-replies was deafening.

Admittedly, these applications were not always perfect. In an application to the Lawrenceville School, for example, I described at length how I could contribute to the Milton community. Their auto-reply seemed particularly frosty.

In the first week of March, I moved into Phase 2. I had pretty much exhausted advertised openings on the east coast, and so I switched to just emailing a letter and a resume to schools in Hampton Roads. This was much easier – I wrote one cover letter addressed to DEAR SCHOOL PERSON, describing my abilities and interest in joining SCHOOL’s vibrant education community, with its emphasis on INSERT SCHOOL SPECIALTY HERE. I made a copy for each private school in Hampton Roads, adjusted the names appropriately, and sent them in.

The hardest part was figuring out whom to email the letters to. I became a connoisseur of school websites, and by the end, I could find the headmaster’s email, name, and the school’s specialty in a minute flat. Some websites were too poorly designed and information-barren to find anything besides an embedded mapquest map of the school’s location, an application form they actually wanted me to print, fill out by hand and then scan, and low-res pictures of happy children learning – those schools were eliminated out of hand. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

This phase of the process, surprisingly, was highly successful. I applied to 9 schools and received 4 application requests. What, then, is the point of advertised openings? Are they just red herrings designed to distract applicants away from the real jobs?

Two of those interview requests became campus interview invitations and a free hotel room. I had long since told the Fulbright people that I was going to the US for job interviews in March – now I actually had a couple of real job interviews. I’m still surprised that actually worked out.

My first interview was planned for Thursday at school #1. On Tuesday, the school informed me what they wanted from my teaching demonstration: 50 minutes in an 11th grade English class “not limited to a particular topic. Just something fun.”

I panicked immediately, especially because my style of teaching literature pretty much relies on having time for the students to read something. Call me a traditionalist, but I think it’s hard to teach literature without having read any.

Fortunately, I was in Charlottesville, and I had several sources of excellent advice: my girlfriend and especially her roommate, who is towards the end of her 5-year English teaching BA/MA program. Following their advice, I decided to act like a guest speaker, and designed a class about this book I was reading called “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”

The basic idea of the book is that our brains have two systems for interpreting information. System 1 is fast, intuitive, subconscious, heuristic, and in charge. System 2 is rational, slow, conscious, fact-based, and very lazy. This means that human beings are easily mislead in predictable ways, which we in the psychology community call biases. I use “we” broadly here, as I have neither studied psychology nor finished the book. But I got the gist of it.

My plan was to use these biases to trick my students into believing a presentation filled with lies about Norway. It was a risky plan in several ways. What if there was a Norwegian in the class? What if the faculty thought I was just a crazy person who gets job interviews at secondary schools to spread misinformation about Norway?

The class started off well enough – the students absolutely bought all of the lies. I put up a map of Sweden and told them it was Norway; I told them that polar bears roamed the streets; I told them that all Norwegians’ voting rights depend on passing a ‘winter skills’ test of skiing, snow-driving, polar bear safety, and igloo building. I then asked them how accurate they thought the presentation was, and 11 of the 15 students rated it “completely accurate”.

The class discussion following my presentation was ok, but not really that good. There were three or four dominant students in the class, and I didn’t really succeed in drawing out any of the others. It didn’t help, of course, that I was being observed by the retiring teacher whose place I was applying for (the 60ish head of the department), another English teacher, the academic dean, and the head of the Upper School, all of whom were taking notes and looking judgmental.

There were two other memorable moments in my day: when they offered me the job, and the tour of campus given by the head of the global studies program. He was really interested in the global studies program, but not really in much else. For example: “Here’s the gym. It’s a gym. Pretty nice, I guess. You’ve seen gyms before.” For another: “Down there is the lower school. We could go look at it if you want.” Me: “No, that’s ok.” Him: “Yeah, fuck that.”

This was a striking contrast to my interview the next day, at school #2 – widely regarded as the best school in Hampton Roads, and probably one of the best in the entire southeast. There, everyone wears ties, students shake your hand all the time, and everyone has eerily good manners. It’s a great school, but the job was an internship, and I want to teach.

I accepted the job at school #1 on Sunday, and I’ll sign the contract sometime on Monday or Tuesday. I’m thrilled and relieved and also suddenly realizing that I am in way over my head. But there’s no time for doubts - now the girlfriend and I turn to the quixotic quest to find a walkable neighborhood with affordable 2 bedroom apartments in Virginia Beach. Wish us luck!

One last tidbit: while I was out of town, my friend Kevin went to a Norwegian party where they made sticks covered with feathers. Apparently, lots of Norwegian children make these, and then use them to beat their parents so that they (the parents, I mean) will be fertile. Pretty odd.