JET Interview

So, at the end of January, I got an e-mail stating that I was one of the lucky few with an interview with the JET Program. I had the interview yesterday.

We stayed the night in Salt Lake City so that there would be no chance of me getting to the interview late. When I got to the interview, they asked that I fill out a form and wait in the lobby for my interview to start. I chatted with a couple other applicants until it was time to go. When I got to the room, there was an old, long plastic table with three older Japanese people sitting behind it. Sorting through stacks of application papers, they asked me to come in and shut the door. My chair was a good five to six feet from the table, and they avoided eye contact. Clearly, they wanted to rattle me and make me feel like I was just a number to them. After I sat down (I had to ask if I could sit, as they exchanged no pleasantries), they jumped right in to the interrogation, er, interview.

Here are the questions they asked (that I can remember).

Why Japan?
Tell me what you know about Japanese pop arts.
What things did your neighbor mention about Japan? (contextual)
If you could teach the Japanese people three things about America, what would they be?
How would you explain American poverty (and 46 million uninsured) to a culture that doesn't have it?
How could you justify poverty in the context of the American dream that is supposedly available to all?
How would you explain the confusing presidential primary system? Why did Mitt Romney drop out of the race?
It seems that all your teaching has been with members of the LDS faith. How will you adjust to people that smoke, drink, and party?
How will you separate yourself from "missionary you"?
Did you request placement (why)?
What has your wife done to prepare mentally and emotionally for living in Japan?
What will she do while you're in Japan?
You may live in a place where you live 100 miles from the nearest chapel. How would you handle that?
What do you think would be the biggest challenge for you and your family if you were a JET?
Do you have any questions for us?

The most standard questions were actually the ones that tripped me up. I had come in with all sorts of knowledge about Japanese politics, history and geography, but they asked me about pop arts! Of course I know about anime, baseball and video games! But how do I say that without coming across as an anime nerd (which I most certainly am not) or a video game dork (guilty as charged)? I mentioned that I owned the Miyazaki films, but that a lot of anime was too violent for my tastes. I mentioned that I was familiar with the Dragon Quest series (why can't life have a TiVo? I'd have hit rewind right there). I wish I could have prepared myself better for the question. I know exactly why I want to go to Japan (I want to learn the language), but I said some crap about how I had a neighbor who lived in Japan (Duane George). I might have redeemed myself by mentioning that I studied Japanese at BYU and was fascinated by the culture and language. It would have been nice if I had mentioned that I really want to see Japan and learn the language (I did mention this later). The first two questions made me extremely nervous, but I quickly calmed down in time for the difficult questions.

The questions that should have been difficult were actually extremely easy to answer because of the insane amount of time I put into preparing for the interview. I've been closely following the primaries, so that was a breeze. As for the question on poverty, I mentioned the role of choice in the American dream (the system is set up for people to succeed—they just need to understand the system). I also mentioned that poverty can also have cultural ties (sometimes people choose to rely on the government and don't take advantage of all the opportunities they have). The questions about religion were also easy, since I've lived with non-Mormons for the majority of my life, and pretty much all of the people I taught were not members of the church. I've had 5 years to adjust to normal life since my mission, so I don't feel like that's an issue. I was up front in saying that my religious beliefs are deeply rooted, and that that wouldn't change. However, I'm not going there to convert the world. I'm going to teach English to kids. Let the missionaries focus on religion.

Regarding distant meeting houses, I said that we need to make sacrifices. Somehow one of the ladies interpreted that as "I would sacrifice my church attendance for the program." She asked if I meant that I would not go or if I would make the trip every week. I clarified that it was important to my family, and we would get up at 4AM and travel for hours if we had to.

Whenever possible, I let them know that I've been reading about the history of education in Japan, or anything else that was relevant. I mentioned that Stef's been just as gung-ho about it as I have.

After a somewhat shaky start (first 2-3 minutes of a 25 minute interview), I think I nailed it. We will, of course, see what happens. I'll find out early in April if I got it. In the meantime, I applied for another program as a backup plan. Now I can just focus on school! Aw, who am I kidding? These next 5-6 weeks are going to take forever!

Weekend! I prefer the weekend! Oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh!

So, here I am, all by my lonesome self. Stef and Kelsey have been in California since Tuesday, and I’ve been left to fend for myself. Stef left me a list of dinner ideas so that I wouldn’t starve, but I haven’t really had an appetite. That and I caught the oven on fire when I did try cooking. No, I’m really not that bad of a cook. There was some turkey juice (or something) on the bottom of the oven, and when I tried cooking the goop caught on fire and I had to scramble to put it out with some flour. Cereal for dinner + basketball a few times a week = lots of weight loss while Stef is gone.

It really sucks being away from Stef and Kelsey. I've been able to keep myself moderately busy, though. Up until yesterday, I worked, studied for finals (somewhat), and worked on a DVD for Rory. Finals went pretty well. We had to use an annotated bibliography that we had created a week earlier to write a 20 paragraph essay. Luckily, I overachieved during the annotated bibliography assignment and already had the paper ready, just not organized. I put the information into logical groups and had 21 paragraphs. From there, all I had to do was hand write my already completed final in class. I was the first to finish (by what seemed like a lot), and I'm pretty confident that I got 100% on it (giving me an A in the class).

After finishing, I had a two hour break before work, so I decided to take a crack at the math exemption exam. My major doesn't require anything other than pre-college math, and I had some study materials at home that I was going to use to prepare. Since I was already at school and it would only cost my 10 bucks to try the test (which I could take again next semester if I bombed), I headed over to the testing center and sat down with the test. It was an eye-opening experience, for sure. I only remember half of the material at first. As I completed more and more, certain principles slowly came back to me. I needed a 70% to pass the test and avoid having to take math: I got a 70%. So, now I've just got my tech writing class and my American Heritage independent study course to finish next semester. Then I'm done. Done with school. At least until grad school. Maybe.

Rory went around with a camera and had people share their testimonies, and I extracted the video and brought it back home with the hopes of making a DVD out of it. I used Photoshop to create menus, with Van Gogh's Starry Night as the background (which I felt was unobtrusive to the theme). I fiddled with Adobe Audition to make a 30-second looping clip of Baptism by Michael Dowdle on acoustic guitar, which plays in the menus. I used Premier Pro to edit the video and add lighting, since most of the recordings were done at night. I imported the DVD menu and the finished video into Adobe Encore and created chapter points at the beginning of each speaker's clip. I arranged the workflow so that it all worked together and with the buttons on a standard DVD player remote. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I feel pretty confident about making my own DVDs with the Adobe Production Studio. The one area I'd like to explore is mastering. I'd like to be able to get rid of background noise and amplify the volume of the voices. If I ever get a digital video camera, I'll make it a point to use microphones for any video projects I have. It'd also be nice to learn how to get the best lighting. Maybe I'll get a DV Camera before we go to Japan so that I can have projects there. I'm sure the fam would love to see some good footage from wherever it is that we live.

I often wonder what kinds of things I could have studied. Graphic design, computer programming... Honestly, I think there are a ton of things that I could have done. I don't know if I'd want to do those full-time, though. There's something nice about just being able to do all sorts of cool things, whether I get paid for them or not. I don't regret studying linguistics at all; I know that things will work out. I've got a lot of opportunities for growth, and that's all I can ask for. As long as there are things to learn and job opportunities on the horizon, I can't complain. I've had a lot of success at the bank, so I know that with my Japanese (once we get back) and Spanish experience, I could get a really good job.

When I turned in my paper, my teacher asked me if I was interested in studying Mayan languages. She suggested that I go to grad school if I was interested in Guatemalan langauges. If I do, I know where to go for a letter of recommendation.

Guys' night

Jeremy and Tom Roderick came over Tuesday night and we had a guys’ night until about 1:30. We kicked the night off with some Halo 2, with Tom and Jeremy pretty much abusing me at will. The problem with that game is that everybody else has played it more. Even though I’m pretty good at controlling my guy and aiming, everybody else knows how to navigate through the maps and find the overshields. When we turned overshields off and allowed rocket launchers, I held my own.

After Halo, we popped in FIFA 2007 and played some soccer. As fun as that game is, it might just be the most difficult sports game I’ve ever played. The control is easy enough, but the computer is so amazingly hard to defeat. They scored in the 90th minute to beat us three or four games in a row. It didn’t help that Tom kept forgetting that you couldn’t slide tackle at will. By the end of each game, I think we were two or three players down from all the yellow and red cards we got.

Frustrated at the impossibility of FIFA, popped in NHL 2K7 and turned off penalties, icing, and fatigue. Then we proceeded to open-ice check anyone and anything that got in our way. We had a jolly good time thrashing the computer.

Back!

We're back from California, and it's cold! They mentioned on the plane that it was 28 degrees, and when we stepped outside, it really hit us. There was a bit of snow on the ground in some parts, but for the most part it was just cold. We went to bed on Friday, and when we woke up, the whole town was covered in snow. It's freezing!

This is Kelsey's first real experience with the snow. It was cold and snowy when she was born, but she didn't go outside for a couple of months. She seems to react fine to the cold, but she hasn't yet gotten snow in her hands.

Finals are coming up soon, so I'm going to disappear for a couple of weeks. I'm so excited for the semester to end and for Christmas to come. We had a blast spending time with family in California and look forward to seeing everybody again soon. While we were out there, Dad gave us the laptop that I'm typing this on. It has some issues with an intermittent display, but I've made a temporary fix.

Time to watch the Christmas devotional!

I'm a normal person again

After crazy weeks of project-preparing, I'm finally normal again. I gave my senior paper presentation yesterday, which went pretty well. My midterms are done and I made it out alive. Now I just need to do as much schoolwork as possible to get it all out of the way. Then I can focus on my independent study.

Next week we leave for California. We're excited!

I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream

We prepared the JET Application and sent it electronically, and now just have to submit the signed hard copies of it. We won't know if I'm accepted until April. If we don't, we'll find another way to get over there.

Spiderman 3

Why can't movies be good anymore? Do we need dancing emo spidey? Since when did Venom make people jazz pianists? Too many villains. We don't care. Melodrama. Blah. Venom sucked.

Lame-o.