Recently, my friend applied to Oxford University to do maths. They gave him an interview because he got good AS grades and was predicted good A level grades. So he went off to Oxford all prepared, he even did a couple of practise interviews in school to make sure he had the interview technique down to a fine art - he was told that even though maths is quite a straightforward thing to interview for, he should still try to be witty and engaging and put across his personality in the interview. On the train on the way down he read through an undergraduates maths textbook that his maths teacher had given him, and was happily unphased by the complicated equations and graphs he saw. He knew his maths, he knew how to do the interview, this would be a cinch. When he got to Oxford there were lots of other people there for the interview too, talking to them he noticed that they were confident, with the odd hints of nervousness and awkwardness, much like himself he thought, not much to worry about in terms of competition then. When the time came for his interview he strode into the room with an air of casual confidence, but inside he found that he was more nervous than he had anticipated, his legs felt quite shaky and his head was fuzzy and a bit unclear. The room was long and imposing, typical Oxford University, a faded dark red carpet, plush, the walls lined with shelves full of leatherbound books, hard dark wooden chairs, a gilded ceiling. At one end was a large desk, behind which three stern looking figures sat, two greying men and one greying woman. "Sit Down" said the man sitting in the middle, motioning to a chair some distance away from the desk, my friend felt as though he would have to shout across the room to be heard from this distance - was this some sort of assertiveness test? Should he ask to move the chair a little closer? No. Don't be ridiculous, they don't play tricks like that here - but his head was still swimming, if they asked him a question now he wouldn't be able to answer it at all, "You are Christopher J______, yes?" the man asked in a severe tone, "Er... yeah..." my friend squirmed "... But before we carry on, I was wondering if I could tell a joke, it wont take long?" My friend knew that this was a rubbish stalling tactic, but he needed time to get settled in, compose himself and focus properly on maths before he could start properly - and besides, the practise interviewers had said that humour was sometimes a good icebreaker if you aren't connecting with the interviewer, and he certainly wasn't. The stern man in the middle looked at his colleagues who sort of half shrugged, "Well alright, go ahead" he said in his stiff, cut glass accent, and then my friend remembered, he didn't have a joke planned, his mind worked on overdrive to try and think of something for a moment until in the heat of the moment he came across a vaguely maths related joke in the back of his mind, "Ok..." he grinned "Why was six scared of seven?" he said weakly, and insantly regretted it. The man in the middle again scanned his colleagues faces, blank. "I don't know" he replied glibly, staring coldly at my friend. "Well... er..." my friend knew this wasn't going well "...because seven eight nine" he blurted, and for some reason this punchline, so long embedded in his subconscious, relegated to the 'trite and unfunny' drawer of his mind, struck a chord and he suddenly found the stupid pun absolutely hillarious and he started chuckling away to himself in that hard wooden chair in the middle of that imposing room. When he regained control he looked up at the three interviewers. They sat stony faced, unmoved by the joke, almost with an air of disgust about them. The greying woman wouldn't meet his gaze, she shuffled with some papers and pretended to write something. The man in the middle held it though, contempt and disappointment in his eyes. "Right." He said, with what my friend knew to be a hint of 'you've failed already, you might as well just go' in his voice, "Shall we begin?" The rest of the interview progressed sedately, my friend unable to find even a semblance of enthusiasm for the questions they asked, and the inerviewers the same, it was a farce, he had failed before he had even begun. Six weeks or so later a glib letter confirmed the rejection, and though he had never really wanted to go to Oxford in the first place, a bullying headmaster hungry for reputation had cajolled him into applying, he still felt sad that you can never be well prepared enough for something. - Kieran _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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