JET interview

It didn't seem to go as good as last year. But at least it didn't go as badly as last year.

Yeah that might not make too much sense. What I mean to say is that my answers generally weren't quite as good as they were last year. But there were fewer instances where I seemed stumped and struggling.

Seemed to be a lot more "what would you do in this situation" questions than last year. What if people tried to make you drink. What if people made you sing. Or eat some freaky food. Or make a lesson plan is 5 mins before class. Or deal with misbehaving kids. My answers were somewhat lame but not bad, mostly "go with the flow" types of answers.

Of course, as soon as the question is done and you've moved on, you suddenly think of great responses that you didn't get to make. Like when they talked about me being pretty tech-oriented, how would I do in a small middle-of-nowhere type town with infrequent dial up internet... Somehow I didn't even mention Ghana in my response!

And there were lots of other cool things I planned to say sometime in the interview that never came up.

They made me sing a song. My mind blanked, and although I know hundreds of songs, I couldn't think of any good. One came into my mind and though it was lame, it blocked me from thinking of any others. So I sang a few slow boring lines of "four strong winds". A song probably noone in japan would recognize. I even forgot some of the words. Yeah that was bad. At least it was Canadian. But I should have chosen a fun Beatles song or something.

Some direct technical questions too. "What does JET stand for?" surprised me, but apparently some people get it wrong. Asked what the most recent Japanese news headline I knew was. I had tried to look at this, but didn't have anything big and important, so I talked about Abe and N. Korea. And about chrysanthemum throne inheritance a while back. Asked me to say a few words in japanese, since I had taken a course before.

Some usual questions about how you would represent Canada (what two items would you bring?)

Less stuff related to my application letter / forms.

I was more relaxed and friendly I think this time. I've been going along with lower expectations than before, lets see how it turns out.