Details, Part 2

The Interview, continued

The Rest of Sunday Night:
After the taxi dropped me at the hotel, I walked down the block to have dinner at IHOP (Vive la French Toast and a Diet Coke). There was too much cigarette smoke escaping the hotel restaurant into the lobby for me to even consider eating there. Of course, at IHOP I was seated inches away from the smoking section and had to ask to move to the other side of the dining room, but it worked out fine. Back at the hotel, I enjoyed a long hot shower, read all the background information I had on XYZU, its city and county homes, and then buckled down to finally finish writing my presentation. I turned in at 2, much chagrined that I wouldn't be able to spend more than 4 or 5 hours in the extremely comfortable bed.

The Frantic Rush:
I of course hit snooze more times than I should have Monday morning, and raced out the door of my room at probably 7:47, two minutes after Bill Black was supposed to pick me up downstairs. I got to the end of the corridor and couldn't find the elevator. Certain I had taken the correct direction out my room door, I nonetheless went back to the room and down to the other end of the hall. Nothing. After several passes up and down the hall, I realized that a door at the end of the corridor leading to the elevators, which had been open the night before, was now shut. Strike One - Late for the Pickup. The car ride to campus took about 15 minutes, and we passed it making small talk.

The Interview Begins:
After entering the building by the staff entrance and taking the staff elevator to the Administrative Offices, I left my things in Bill's office and he took me on a tour of the library building. They have over 300 public workstations in the library; this for a school with 23,000 students, which I think is pretty impressive. We spent several minutes looking at the impressive replica Franklin printing press (it really works!).

After the tour, I met with the Library Dean for about 30 minutes. He told me about the history of the university, what its makeup and operation is like now, and told me about the library organization. He was very nice and seems extremely approachable.

After meeting with the Dean, I met for an hour with the Reference/Instruction Team Leader (Sharon, who I met Sunday night), and her manager, the coordinator of User Services. We talked about the job and what it entails, about some of my experience, about how things work in the library etc. They also talked about promotion and tenure, because the job is tenure track. Everyone has a one-year contract subject to continuation, and has until their fifth or sixth year to achieve tenure. At the end, Sharon asked if I was still interested in the job after hearing all about it. Of course, I was.

Sidebar:
Let me say at this point, that I really was not nervous at all during any of this. I woke up with so little time to spare, and was so focused on getting down to the lobby, that by the time I was able to think about it, I was already deep into the interview. The Sunday night scouting trip also helped.

Amenities:
As I mentioned, the library is eight years old. All of the administrative offices are in one corner of the building, though on three or four different flours. They are connected, however, by the staff elevator. There is a rather large staff lounge with tables and chairs, and a kitchen with a vending machine, full-size refrigerator (might be two of them), sink, and microwave. The user services librarians' workspaces are in a nice suite with enclosed offices and a stainless steel sink in the hallway. I hear they lobbied for a mirror above the sink, but that didn't work out.


Panic Ensues:
My one moment of terror occurred when after meeting with the two managers, we went back to Bill's office on the way to my presentation (15 to 20 minutes, on the topic of how I would apply my teaching philosophy to successfully administering a formal literacy program). In an effort to meet the strict 1+1 carryon rule, I bought a "business" tote at Target and used that as briefcase and purse. Apparently, it's too difficult to find things in a bag that big, and I don't recommend such consolidation as normal everyday practice. Anyway, when we got back to the office, I couldn't find my notes in the folder that had my handouts. I couldn't find them in my tote. So, I had to kneel down on the floor, unzip my suitcase, and I still couldn't find them. This is when panic set in. Keep in mind that I only finished writing my notes at 2am that morning, and I was in no position to speak completely without notes (Sidebar - that morning I figured out that in my haste to print my notes before I left home on Sunday, I didn't even get all the notes printed--I apparently had more than one page of notes for most slides, and whatever wouldn't fit on the first page just got left off, so I was already working from a handicapped position even before I finished writing notes). Finally, I figured out that the notes were in another compartment of my tote, so I was good to go.

to be continued . . .