Thursday, May 08, 2008

Following Orders

I suppose this is a problem that I've noticed about myself a long while ago. I was one of those who really had a problem with trainers instructing cultural lessons by ways of teaching the trainees how to use chopsticks or what the word "quan xi" means back in the old days of summer Pasadena. Then I had a problem with brushing important issues by ways of quietly bowing heads to the old-fashioned, state-run bureaucratic mentality in Beijing. Then the consistent annoyance with autocratic ladies sitting in the registrar office of one of the filthy richest educational institutes on earth.

Today, once again, I got myself a long (yet thankfully gentle) rebuke of not following the instructions on how to conduct an interview. Esp. got myself into trouble by not just stating the questions AS THEY ARE printed on the question sheet.

How boring, I thought, to read out questions in long, complex sentence structure that those students sitting in front of me - shaking - for sure were not going to understand at all even if I repeat them for another thousand times. So my little rebellious mind decided to rephrase questions or toss the question sheet out all together by forming my own Q's according to the flow of the conversation.

"Your interviews sounded too much like a nice little chat," said one of the comments from above. "And you jump from job to non-job back to job-related Q's!"

Sigh.

What's the point of making the students all nervous and frustrated and confidence-beaten-to-death when I already know that their English proficiency level is nothing but a very very basic one from the first few sentences uttered? Why not just have a casual chat with them and walk them gently through the interviews?

But then again, that's my point of view. And in this whole wide world, there are many points of view out there when many many many other people are involved.

It's not easy, the working world out there.

梅ちゃん at 12:33:00 AM

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