Sinister: Interview

[Kieran Devaney]

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

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