SEMINARY INTERVIEWS

My seminary is famous for asking about your favorite mitzvah and if you were a tree, which would you be.

My friend got neither of those questions. I got both. I’m not sure whether it’s good or bad that I rehearsed answers, because on the one hand I wasn’t blindsided and on the other hand my interviewer’s eyebrows shot up that I immediately had a super intricate answer of which tree I’d like to be.

Then again, I got in, so I guess that’s that… 🙂

I said I would be a psychiatry. She asked me why, and I said ’cause you people are crazy.

I said that I wanted to be like the tree in the gemara- “ilan ilan bamah avarechecha”- both in the sense that I wanted to be that kind of a credit to my own parents and that I want to be the kind of person about whom you can say this one day.

It was ridiculously sappy. I still can’t believe I did it.

writersoul- I would think that the interviewer saw right through it… no? They usually know when you prepared answers in advance.

I’m actually one of those who gets really nervous and doesn’t interview well, so I was lucky to apply to only one seminary where I knew I was getting in. My sister B’H is much better with interviews than I am, and she seems to have gotten through her 3 interviews pretty well. She was asked several on-the-spot questions which would have caught me for a loop, but she was able to think on her feet and respond well.

technical20: I’m 100% sure she did. She liked me anyway, though, and she told us later that that question (along with favorite mitzvah, etc) is famous enough that she expects rehearsed answers, though she finds the impromptu ones more entertaining…

My interviews generally went well, though. My other questions were answered off-the-cuff and I somehow managed 🙂

. . . if you were a tree, which would you be.

The giant redwood.

The larch.

The fir.

The mighty scots pine.