As I mentioned in my Interview Analysis post, when I interviewed with the Indiana school, I got a bomb dropped on me the day of the interview. I was given an essay to evaluate about five hours before the interview, which I was supposed to receive the day before. At this point, I'm worried that another bomb is going to be dropped in my lap, too. I'm going to be teaching the Shakespeare class while I'm there, but I have no idea what text I'll be teaching. I asked the search chair if I could contact the Shakespeare professor with questions, but she said that she would forward my questions to her instead. In another email, I asked again if I could just contact the woman directly, and again I was told that I had to go through the search chair. Okay. Fine. But Indiana is currently experiencing Snowpocalypse, so no one is going into the university's offices, and I guess this teacher might not check email at home.
I also mentioned before that I was able to find out what texts she's teaching from the book list online. However, I don't really think I should have to conjure up a big idea for (potentially) fourteen different plays that I could lecture on. (The book list has several separate editions of plays, and then there are two books of 4 comedies and 4 tragedies. I have no idea how many of these she's teaching, but it could be up to 14 plays, or as few as 8, but I don't know which comedies or tragedies from the multi-editions she's using.) I thought I'd have two weeks to prepare for this, but every minute, I'm feeling more and more worried that I'm going to have, like, one day to prepare. If that's the case, I sure as hell hope I'll be teaching Henry IV, Part One, since I've got it practically memorized and wouldn't have to reread it. The other plays? I should at least flip through since I haven't taught Shakespeare in just over a year.
My worry is not entirely unfounded since I got that paper assignment so late before my Skype interview. I don't think I did a bad job with the questions on that paper. It's just that it would have been nice not to feel so blindsided by it. Let's hope that past is not prologue this time and that the Shakespeare teacher gets back to me ASAP. I don't even know, for instance, if I'm supposed to teach for the whole 75-minute class period, or just a short portion of that. How the hell am I supposed to prepare? How? And why the hell is my entire career dependent on people who aren't checking email? The more I write and think about it, the angrier I'm getting.
This is not to say that I wouldn't want the job. I do want the job, and I believe that people would behave differently if I were there to prod them into throwing me a bone. But at this point, I feel like I need a freaking bomb squad to get me through this job interview. Would it look bad to teach while wearing a bullet-proof vest?
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