Don't put me through another "stress" interview, please!

OK, my hands are shaking as I write this. Bobs of sweat are forming on my temples. Are they bobs or globs? I don't know - I'm nervous. Just talking about stress interviews makes me crazy.

As a journalist, I've been through some stressful interviews, but always sail through because I'm on the proper side of the discussion. I am asking the questions. The stress comes because:

a) a PR has decided to get on the phone with us and thereby direct the interview (or try to) or
b) some bigshot has decided to put me on speaker (happens fifty percent of the time) and when I ask to be taken off, acts like I have a hearing disorder or
c) someone has decided he doesn't really want to answer any questions so much as suggest how I should write the story.

So given all of the preceding stressful situations you'd think I'd be equipped to just show up at some suit's office, look pretty, calm, collected (what am I collecting? armpit sweat?) and sell myself.

But I'm no Martha Stewart or the late Steve Jobs. I can get up in front of a crowd and sell them on the need to clean up the gulf or stop pouring Corexit into the water, but I can't sit or stand for forty-five minutes with the radar on my person. I-AM-NOT-COMFORTABLE-TALKING-ABOUT-MYSELF.

Is this really such a unique "problem" for journalists? I actually think it's normal, because after all most of us became writers because of our other deficits (social skills). If we were great at grabbing the spotlight, we'd be game show hosts or used car salesmen. We would not be interviewing CEOs about why their 88th attempt to make a decent PC failed, despite the ads in top technology magazines stating otherwise. We would not be gravatating toward a job where ruminating over the word "pedantic" versus "wordy" for a solid hour at 9 pm in Lower Manhattan is considered a job perk.

So please, please, job interviewers of New York hear me now. I am a good, solid, hardworking and dependable journalist. You called me into your office because you liked my clips. Do not expect me to be that person you envision when I start to speak. If I was a speaker, after all, I would not be a writer.

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