Will Heaven
A recipe for success
Unlike many of my bitter and disappointed peers, I never applied to Oxford or Cambridge. In fact, my teachers sensibly discouraged the idea. “Most decent universities turn students into scholars”, one told me, “but at Oxbridge you have to be a scholar when you arrive”.
I was no scholar. At my very unusual school (don’t ask), I was once asked to give a speech about Mozart, lasting fifteen minutes, to a room full of thirteen year-olds. A scholar would have floundered, but I cruised it. “What happened to Mozart’s corpse?”, I started. “And where, specifically, is his skull?”
Briefly putting modesty to one side, let me tell you that the room full of spotty adolescents sat up, and the ensuing talk was riveting. Sure, thanks to Wikipedia, I did mention Mozart’s forty odd symphonies and his twenty operas. However, as the supervising teacher informed me, I was demonstrating not scholarly learning, but the gifts of a budding journalist.
By choosing journalism over scholarship, I avoided the dreaded Oxbridge interview. We’ve all heard the stories. A young man walks into a don’s room; his interviewer looks witheringly at him over the top of his Daily Telegraph and says, “surprise me”. So the young man sets the don’s newspaper on fire, and is swiftly awarded a place in the college. Another one: a don stands opposite the door of his study and throws a rugby ball at his interviewees as they enter – if they catch it they’re in, but if they drop-kick it back to him they get a generous bursary.
Universities need more than rugger buggers and arsonists, and I draw only one conclusion from these stories: Oxbridge dons are egotistical maniacs. The professors there enjoy terrifying A-level students so much that the interviews become sadomasochistic – orgies of intellectual masturbation. “What’s the most interesting thing about a squirrel?”, they ask with a tweedy grin.
Luckily, we York students didn’t have to put up with this shit to get in here. But as I near the end of my degree, the prospect of job interviews in London is less than enticing. A friend a few years older than me had the worst interview of his life last week. About a year ago he was made redundant from a firm of headhunters (always the first to go in a recession) and has been working in a prep school in central London to keep himself afloat. Understandably, though, he has been trying to get back into the City and was recently interviewed at an investment bank.
“OK, so you’re teaching at a prep school”, the interviewer said ambiguously. “What have you achieved while you’ve been there?” My friend – let’s call him John – racked his brains, and came up with the one thing he had recently organised: the school’s five-a-side football competition. “I organised the whole thing myself”, he said, “and it involved all of the pupils.” Suddenly, the interviewer thumped the table and barked, “No! No! No! It didn’t involve all of the pupils did it? Because my son – Matthew – wasn’t picked for any of the fucking teams, was he?”
John thought his interviewer had looked familiar, but only just realised then – as his palms became sweatier – that this man was a parent at his school. To make matters worse, his interviewer’s son, one of the most unsporty children in the school, had point blank refused to play football, and had clearly lied to daddy about it. A sticky situation, I’m sure you will agree. Proud parents don’t often back down.
Third years will quickly find that job interviews are mini power trips for those on the other side of the desk. Because let’s face it, if you’ve been tasked with interviewing hundred of graduates, you’re probably not a very important person in the grand scheme of things. You can be as nasty as you like, and you will get away with it.
The only solution is to take the offensive. Carry a rugby ball in – and kick it at the interviewer before they get a chance to speak. If they ask about your career aims, tell them your greatest wish is to become their superior and to sack them in the most humiliating way possible. Oh, and just before you leave, set fire to a squirrel for good measure. Interviewers love surprises.
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