Interviews

Darin Strauss Imitation:

If I had wanted to divulge anything that I condemn myself for, I would have done so already. I would have come right out and said it, and not withheld anything from those who wanted to know.

All the same, the escapability of admitting my shortcomings keeps me from writing them out on any piece of paper with my name attached to it. And I'd like to pretend that everything about me is normal, but that in and of itself would not be normalcy. I rarely admit my faults out loud. No one ever taught me how to do it: Hey, just tell them you can get a little neurotic sometimes. Mention the flaw in passing, Don't draw too much attention to it.

Back then, I didn't know that was how you were supposed to do it—quickly, so that the flaw can't get too comfortable. Next, change the subject as fast as you can. Or you can take a negative flaw and try to make it into a positive. “Sometimes I over-extend myself at the office” or “I can be too organized.”

Why didn't I know these guidelines back then? Why did no one debrief me? When I look back now, it strikes me as odd that I never deliberately considered the negatives. You'd think all of the time spent being self-critical would have lead me to identify the most pronounced weaknesses and attack them. Or to figure out what these pitfalls of my personality are and to accept them. But the truth is, I never really let myself think about my shortcomings. Except when someone points the finger at me, calls me out, tries to force me to see just exactly what's wrong with me. Yet when that happens, I shut them out, a world outside of my own, refusing to listen. Isn't this normal? Doesn't it make sense that we repress our recognition of our bad parts, to keep them from being too real?

So when they asked me, “What's your greatest weakness?” I sat there for a minute. I shifted my eyes to right, transfixed them up above on the ceiling. I wriggled in my seat, the interview came to a screeching halt.