On Interviewing

I'm starting to think I'm a little harsh.

The act of interviewing kids every hour on the hour, 6 interviews a day, 5 days a week, has taken a huge mental toll on me. I've made some sort of connection with over 150 rising high school seniors; there have been some I've absolutely loved, some I've determined to help get in (I don't tell them that), some that have reduced me to yawns, some that have reduced me to tears, and some that will only be remembered for the hilarious stories they allow me to recount at gatherings with friends.

And because of that last group of people, I fear, solely based on others' reactions to my comments, that I've become slightly jaded by the admissions process and immune to the struggles of candidates that I don't think are "good enough." It's tough, because that is essentially my job--meeting candidates and judging their personality, intellectual curiosity, and basically everything about them outside from scores and such that could be used to accept or reject them. When I have to assign numbers to people, inevitably there will be some better and worse than others.

I don't even know where I'm going with this. But I'm going to bed now, and will hopefully expand on this one day. Though of course this is just for me anyway.