Another Story, Another Giveaway

Thanks for the comments on the Katrina looking-back I rummed out of me with rum last Rumsday. I've been going through old stories I wrote in the past, because shrug. This one is from about a year back, when I was working at an isolated school just south of Seoul in Korea. They were good folk. Just made me remember how I was trying to have everyone be part of a team, so here's an affiliated giveaway to fit the theme (reading anything else here is no prereq to entering!)

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He sneaked me out of the teachers' office, sat down at a corner table with our matching mango smoothies, and asked me how I felt about leadership. I said I'm not a leader, I'm part of a team. That's how I found out I was the new head teacher at my school.

This isn't a story about that. This is a story about all the people who want to uproot their lives. You may be one of them, but I'm going to talk specifically about the ones who are trying to get themselves hired to live in this forest with me and work at the school. One of the things I've really grown to enjoy is interviewing prospective new teachers via conference phone calls. You can really get a sneak peek into the lives and motivations of people through these things, and sometimes it's touching and humanizing. We've been understaffed for months, and the hiring process here is very open: All current teachers read all applicants' resumes and score them on a highly technical O/X/? system. Earn enough O's or ?'s and you're getting an interview with the manager, the director, and the head teacher--who is just trying to build up a well-rounded team. Being down by three teachers now, once you've reached the interview stage, you'd be well on target to assume you were pretty much hired as long as you don't fuck up too badly.

The problem has been that everyone to date has fucked up. Badly. I've sifted through dozens of applications, and after sitting on the other side of the application process, I am surprised by just how damn easy and formulaic it actually is to get noticed by some people who just want to hang out with you for a year and give you some money for the trouble. From not even picking up the phone, to picking up the phone but being the boyfriend of the person we phoned (who is too busy to talk to us,) to one-word answers to nuanced questions, I have been continuously impressed by the many varied ways people manage to fuck up everything. If you're asked if you have any experience leading large groups and you don't, just be like, "No, but I'm looking forward to the opportunity and hope I can rely on everyone's experience to help me learn." Do not reply, as one grown man did, "No. But my mom does."

But sometimes some real gems shine through, and you have a pleasant back-and-forth, and you learn things about them, things that you didn't even ask and they didn't even say themselves, and they're so enthusiastic, and you can tell, and they just want to do something more with their lives than whatever they're doing now and your position somehow represents a fork in the road for them. Sometimes it's a talented twenty-something who is experienced and has creative ideas but has been frustrated at no-nonsense dead-ends with no outlets to bring them to life. Sometimes it's some fresh-faced kid who has no experience at all but is so positive and optimistic and eager to learn that their energy is just so overwhelming that you all look at each other after hanging up the phone and smile. Sometimes you wish you could ask these people more and maybe even learn from them but you have to call someone else, some asshole who probably scheduled their own interview in the middle of their daily subway commute, but you remember these perfect strangers and remember to argue strongly for them when it is time to choose. Then, as you walk down the road in the forest one day, maybe they'll catch up to you and you'll be glad that they are there now, part of the team.