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| JET Adventures 3 - The interview |
| Friday, July 29, 2005 |
So I had the 5 million bits of paper they wanted, and the 10 million copies they asked for, and I'd put them all in a huge vortex of an envelope in the order they told me, and then... I twiddled my thumbs for what seemed like an eternity. I applied in October and the interview was in January.
The first part was meeting some ex-JETs and watching a video of some JETs teaching. The ex-JETS were both very keen and enthusiastic, (a bit too much so for my liking, to be honest - all the JETs I've meet here are a lot cooler and laidback though). They were good for answering questions though. You get a really short English test, mostly multiple choice - things like, how do you spell "necessary" and a list of options. I really can't see anyone having many problems with this bit.
Then the scary interview - I'd heard rumours that it was sometimes in Japanese and that they tried to trick you by behaving like naughty schoolkids, all total rubbish from my experience. There was an ex-JET and a Japanese guy from the ministry of foreign affairs. They were pretty friendly and the questions were straightforward.
They asked me how long I'd wanted to do JET for (I went on about how famous it was and how I'd wanted to do it since the dawn of time), what kinds of English things I'd like to teach (I talked about English history and the ups and downs of English food), how I'd teach something like history (I said I'd make them dress up and act out stuff like Henry the Eighth cutting off his wives heads), what I'd do if the teacher just made me read things out of a book and not let me actually teach (I said I'd start up some kind of extra-curricular English club where I could play the games I wanted with the students), how I'd cope if my supervisor tried to do too much for me (I found this a bit weird, but basically I said I'd show them that I could do stuff for myself like cook them a meal or something), and then the Japanese guy asked me about any news that I'd read on Japan (the only preparation I'd done was read the latest copy of Japan Times and there'd been a conference about the recent Tsunami) and why I'd chosen Okinawa and how I'd feel if I got somewhere like Hokkaido (I said Okinawa looked beautiful and that Hokkaido was actually my second choice).
And that was it. All done in 15 minutes. Other interviews I heard about included naming famous Japanese people and questions about the European Union (!!!) so I think I was pretty lucky really. |
posted by Alice @ 6:44 pm  |
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