About a month or so I had a job interview with an organization whose sole purpose is bringing light to domestic violence and changing laws to protect the survivors. If you know me, you know that my sole purpose for being here is to help others and this is definitely a cause I would love to support. It also doesn’t hurt that my bff works there and absolutely loves it! A week prior to the formal interview, I had an opportunity to meet with the Executive Director/CEO for an informal meeting. She was awesome! Amy couldn’t have been more spot-on about her personality. She was so warm and welcoming. She had this sincerity and humility about her that I’ve not been able to find much with someone with her education and job title. We just talked. It was nice. What was NOT nice, however, was the formal interview. When I say, I bombed…it was terrible. I mean terrible. “Tell me you’re awkward without telling me you’re awkward…I’ll go first…Have you ever cried in a job interview?” Jesus take the wheel.
There were just a lot of things logistically that weren’t right and I couldn’t recover. It happens, right? The one thing I can’t stop beating myself up over was one simple question; “How do you feel about diversity?” People who know me, know this to be a question that I should be able to answer beautifully. Except I didn’t. There were 3 of us in the meeting room and the HR director was on Zoom on a screen on the wall which was all fine and dandy. But when she came on the screen, the camera was sitting in the middle of the table focused on my big fat neck. The whole time she was talking I could see the split screen of my ear and double chin. It kind of went downhill shortly after. But between tears I mustered out something along the lines of I treat everyone the same; which is true…but that wasn’t the question. I couldn’t focus on anything besides my double chin going “gobble-gobble” like they were about to take away my Thanksgiving dinner. The whole interview sucked because of me. And I’m not beating myself up about that. I’m beating myself up because of the way I answered that one particular question. With the way I live my life, should be easy to answer. The way I feel about diversity is that I love it. I love looking into a group of people who don’t look like me, think like me, see like me. I love to learn about people from other cultures and backgrounds. I want to know about the culture; the food, the religion, the music; the traditions that differ from mine. I want to learn things about other people and how they live their day to day life. My life is diverse. My core friend group is full of people who don’t look like me. My boyfriend is Ethiopian. I work with people who don’t look like me and who don’t speak English as their primary language. I have gone to Temple with my Indian friends. I have gone to family gatherings with my Muslim friends. I have many friends from the LGBTQ community. Some of my friends are old and some young. I feel like the problem with the world today is that people are instantaneously fearful of people who don’t look like them. (I’m not going to go off on that tangent right now) Thankfully, I don’t have that problem. In all the thousands of real life conversations I’ve had with people over the years, no matter what the differences, I realize we are all chasing the same dream. We all desire love and happiness and to be understood. Those things are universal. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. Hopefully one day I can redeem myself with my real answer.
Maverick City Music was in town last night and a group of us from church were able to go. It was absolutely amazing!!! If you don’t know who they are; they are a contemporary gospel group. They are all young, and most of the group is African American. Last night, in the sea of thousands of people, everyone looked different. It was so beautiful to see. I loved every single minute of it. As I was sitting there, I was thinking to myself that THIS is what I imagine heaven to look like. ❤️
Single Sarcastic Superhero 