Whiter Shade

I never try to intimidate anybody, I don't bite, and I am genuinely friendly, but let's face it: Nobody wants to hire a clerical worker who can read Greek, Old Church Slavonic, and Hittite. For the most part, nobody even wants to know what Old Church Slavonic and Hittite are.

I clearly need to come up with a new answer to the job interview question that asks me what problems I have solved during my work experience. During a recent interview, I knew better than to tell them about my work addressing the problems inherent in teaching ancient languages in a way that actively involves the students, but I couldn't think of another good problem that I had solved outside of academia, other than routine everyday problems like software glitches, copy machine meltdown, filing systems that needed serious overhaul... So there I was, telling them about working with ancient language teachers, when I went from bad to worse: I referred to the teachers of ancient languages as "we." One of my interviewers visibly turned pale.

I definitely feel like the freak of the week.