Undergraduate / Failed Job Interview: Common App Prompt 2 [3]

"So, what kind of sales experience do you have?"

By the time I managed to swallow the lump in my throat, I still hadn't come up with a good answer. The job description had emphasized the non-importance of prior retail experience, yet admitting to my lack of previous exposure seemed a sure way to lose. So, with a quavering voice, I forced out a lame response about having interned at a library and assisting patrons. My interviewer responded only with a terse nod, and I guessed two things right away. One, that my answer didn't hit the mark. And two, that I probably wouldn't be getting the job.

I'd envisioned myself arriving early, dazzling them with my resume and poise, and leaving with reasonable certainty that I'd done well. But when interview day came, traffic was so bad that I found myself calling ahead to warn them that I'd be late; by the time I arrived and my apologies were over, my nervousness had reached such a level that my voice shook on every syllable. And the anticipated queries about my listed experience were virtually absent, replaced by questions about customer service and upselling and loss prevention that I could only answer with uncertainty. I walked out in a sort of daze, knowing that I'd bombed it.

I spent the next few days gripped by frustration and embarrassment. The entire incident played on a loop in my mind. Each time I recalled it, I was struck by a better answer I could have used during the interview and grew more exasperated with my fumbling replies. And though my family and friends were conscientious enough not to prod me as the days passed without a job offer, I couldn't help the suspicion that they shared my disappointment with myself.

A week passed, and I accepted the reality that another candidate had landed the job. Once I had come to terms with my failure, I was able to reflect on it in a more effective way that permitted me to think of the future rather than fixating on the past. Clearly, I had been ill-prepared and failed as a result. More importantly, the root of the issue was my allowance of wishful thinking about a successful interview to become unfounded optimism and overconfidence. I had been so preoccupied with imagining success that I had not taken the proper steps to make it a reality.

With this lesson in mind, I continued my job hunt. Two months passed before I was offered an interview for a part time job similar to the one I'd missed. Over the next few days, I tailored my resume and updated my reference list, compiled a list of behavioral and traditional interview questions and impelled my friends and family into quizzing me from it until I had perfected my answers, and pinpointed the exact time interval during which to send a thank-you e-mail for maximum effect. The anxiety I felt this time around was quelled by the assurance that I was about as ready as I could be.

Of course, the interview didn't go perfectly. But it was a close match to the one I'd imagined before my first try. When I left this time, I left with the job. Neither my initial failure or the lesson I took from it prompted me to completely snuff out optimism or confidence in my abilities in the future. Rather, by shifting the source of my confidence to preparation for the worst instead of hopeful expectation of the best, I enabled myself to fulfill my desire for success.

Undergraduate / Describe your interest and experience in your chosen major (300-400 words) [3]

When I walked into my first computer science class in freshman year, I had no idea I'd fall in love. At the time, I held about as much interest in and knowledge about computers as the average teenager. My initial trepidation was only compounded by the discovery that I was one of only three girls in a room filled with males, most of whom already had programming experience. I felt somehow that I was already behind on the first day.

But as I moved past the confusion and frustration of coding and debugging my first Java programs, I found that the process had grown on me like climbing ivy. With each class and every successful program, I was more overcome with a sense of the limitless possibility that programming skill entailed. I felt that given my faculty for logical thought and by amassing enough knowledge, no creative challenge I devised or software problem I discovered would be insurmountable.

Although schedule conflicts prevented me from taking more computer science classes until senior year, that initial spark of interest compelled me to continue exploring computer science outside of school. I honed my programming skill and expanded my reportoire of languages by learning Python and delving into front-end and server-side web development. Through an after-school program at Columbia College, I also gained valuable exposure to circuitry, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These learning experienced converged, producing an intense curiosity about the theoretical underpinnings of the programming languages and concepts I use regularly and a certainty that I should pursue a degree and career in computer science.

Going forward, I aspire to utilize the abundant research and educational opportunities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the pursuit of my passion and the advancement of the field, and to encouragement of others in underrepresented groups to do the same.

I wanted to mention that I'm also black, which made me feel even more alone in my freshman class (and in the classes I'm now taking) because I've always been either the only black person there or the only black female, and I always got the sense that certain people were talking down to me or assuming that I didn't know what I was talking about even though my answers were usually correct. I would say something and people would disagree or doubt it, but then someone else would say essentially the same thing and they'd all agree.

How can I express this without it seeming forced/like I'm just trying to make myself a more desirable candidate by being a URM?