<p>Re Pizzagirl, #1341, actually back on the thread that has now been closed on the MIT forum, 3 years ago, I remarked that the place I had been that smelled the most like a gymnasium locker room was the old Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. It was very poorly ventilated and they have moved long since. But that was perhaps a case of “knowing” without knowing.</p>
<p>I had heard that when some of the Oxbridge colleges were being built in the 1400’s, they did not have bathtubs for the students, because the students were only going to be there 8 weeks at a time, and wouldn’t need them. I mentioned it once and this brought at least one strong denial–so perhaps it is just a “story” they tell Americans.</p>
<p>This may be practical interview advice, but I have qualms about the importance attached to eye contact. When someone asks me a difficult question, I sometimes find it easier to think about it if I do not also have to maintain eye contact, which distracts me. I’d rather renew eye contact when I am ready to answer the question.</p>
<p>thumper, in one sentence, the point that matters most to me on this thread: </p>
<p>It is wrong to joke about personal characteristics that a person did not choose and either cannot change or will need to spend many years to change; it is especially wrong when the joke is directed “downhill” in status of any type.</p>
<p>Nothing to do with the OP or the original topic–quite a bit to do with the ensuing discussion.</p>
<p>Also, beyond the one sentence, to clarify: by “personal characteristics,” I mean neurological characteristics, cultural characteristics, and physical characteristics other than neurological ones.</p>
<p>"
This may be practical interview advice, but I have qualms about the importance attached to eye contact. When someone asks me a difficult question, I sometimes find it easier to think about it if I do not also have to maintain eye contact, which distracts me. I’d rather renew eye contact when I am ready to answer the question."</p>
<p>I look up and away as well when I am thinking hard about a question. (I even read somewhere there is meaning to which direction you look in. Don’t know if that’s true.) but if you’re resuming eye contact, then there’s no problem. It’s not making eye contact at all.</p>
<p>“wrong to joke about personal characteristics that a person did not choose and either cannot change or will need to spend many years to change”</p>
<p>So Mikayle was wrong for joking about how he had come across students who apparently have never encountered soap? Come on now. That IS a humorous way of portraying some of the characters he must have seen. </p>
<p>And I’m sure he has seen students who set new bars in terms of their nerdiness. Is nerdiness a protected class or something? Again, you’re going literal. Describing in amusing terms and poking fun at are two different things. Is he not allowed to describe the range of the characters he’s seen? Must he say “every single person I interviewed was the bomb”?</p>
<p>Simple nerdiness, no problem with jokes, Pizzagirl. The shoe fits me, and I don’t mind jokes.</p>
<p>The kind of nerdiness covered by “only vaguely etc.” sounds to me to be awfully close to describing someone on the autism spectrum. The soap issue seemed to me anyway to be part of the package. I am not sure about the interview circumstances in England–what kind of time the applicant had to “clean up.”</p>
<p>DAMTP used to smell bad (literally), due to poor ventilation and the accumulation probably over years of molecules that were “detectable by olfaction.” They’ve moved and things are different. None of the students had a personal problem, individually.</p>
I am a Catholic, not rich by any means. I get the impression from what they say at Mass that rich Catholics might undergo a slightly more extensive interview for celestial admissions. :)</p>
<p>If one wants to speak of coaching and “social conventions,” it’s also wrong to wilfully dominate a conversation, repeatedly coming back to state one’s own confusion or views, posing questions and couching it coyly, taking center stage for one and one’s particular interests to an uncomfortable extreme. Using “a wall of words,” that no one, over time, can sufficiently explain or refute. Refusing to let the conversation move forward.</p>
<p>Just wanted to add (thinking a bit slowly again): It’s not even so much the jokes, as it is joking about a set of people in the context of filing a negative report about them. A simple declination is plenty.</p>
<p>speaking of interviews, I was having a hard time getting through my job interviews after my masters. I asked my department head and he coached me through some of my mannerisms in terms of making eye contact, giving a sufficient pause to formulate an answer rather than blurt right out with answers and make mistakes etc. I suspect this is not the coaching ExieMITAlum is speaking of but more of a if someone asks you this question, this is how you answer it. When answers are very well formulated in an interview for a 17-18 year old, they have been coached.</p>
<p>Oh, come on now. Mikayle or anyone else in this situation is perfectly entitled to say - I love my job, but get a load of some of the characters and situations I get to encounter. ExieMITalum did much the same upthread in mentioning situations he had encountered in which students came across poorly. No one is generalizing beyond individual cases except for you, and you’ve already admitted you read meaning into these generalizations that wasn’t there in the original.</p>
<p>If either had said -“boy, I can’t stand going to (insert country), the kids there stink” or “I can’t stand when I have to interview Asperger’s kids, they’re only vaguely human” you’d have a point. Nothing of the sort was said at all. No generalizations were made about types.</p>
<p>I don’t think a kid should have a spiel memorized to answer questions, but it may make sense to give some thought about what you’d say in response to likely questions, such as “Why are you interested in this college?” Perhaps such difficult ones as “Where else are you applying?” or “What’s your first choice?”</p>
<p>Sometimes you can’t plan, though. My son is interviewing for graduate school in music composition. One of the interviewers asked him his opinion of the music of Roy Harris. Derr…</p>
<p>C’mon, now. Most of us are nice people here- and smart enough in a a variety of situations. I get that the words bother you. They bothered me, from another perspective. But how much do we need to return to this? Turn it over and over until we are convinced one person was brutal and the other was creamed and lost all shot at admissions? </p>
<p>When, we only know what we know- which is that one poster used some words on a public, anon forum.</p>
<p>"Sometimes you can’t plan, though. My son is interviewing for graduate school in music composition. One of the interviewers asked him his opinion of the music of Roy Harris. Derr… "</p>
<p>This is precisely what should happen in an interview. There should be questions that stump you as an 18 year old. You see people come on CC and ask why would an interviewer ask me such a question and it is because they do want to see how you react. Someone I know went for a Harvard interview and the interviewer wanted the kid’s opinion on whether he thinks all these high school kids doing research and claiming publications is getting out of hand (he may have called it a racket). What does the kid say when his resume has a few publications, trips to Intel/Siemens finals and so on? It kind of almost sounds like a personal attack but he did need to respond. He did get in and chose not to go but…</p>
<p>Actually, did the poster even say - the kids I met who clearly hadn’t encountered soap - I gave them negative reports? Or did he just say some of his interviewees had never encountered soap?</p>