Flaws
My sophomore year of college I competed for a scholarship that would cover half of my tuition and guarantee me a high-paying summer internship for the next three years in my choice of nearly any major American city.
I was one of three finalists and word got back that the Director of the Foundation would come meet me a for personal interview.
It was the first of only two interview experiences I’ve ever had, playing the part of an uncertain, resume-toting applicant. I waited in a hall outside of a break room in the old wing of Calloway. Inside the cluttered, beige, claustrophobia-inducing cave of a room I presumed he was making notations on my birth records, and surely he knew about the time I peed my pants in kindergarten because my Catholic schoolmarm forbade me to leave for the bathroom. Verboden!
I was ruined.
To my relief, the Director was an affable, Midwestern guy and put me at ease with a friendly handshake. His first questions were softballs and I didn’t know any better:
My favorite book? Upton Sinclair’s Jungle.
What’s your family like? One older sibling, two younger, but sometimes I feel like the oldest.
What would you be doing now if you weren’t in college? Underwater Explosives Specialist. Duh.
We swept through the first few innings and I already knew that I would be given an envelope fattened with large, unmarked bills. The Foundation would take care of me and my school debts would be snapped away by the Director himself.
Then, without fair warning, What are your three worst professional flaws?
I stared, confused by this strange language he was speaking. Did he just turn on me? My fantasies of working in Cleveland, or whichever city I considered glorious at the time, were slaughtered. Oh, the cruelty! Are 18-year olds even chemically capable of recognizing their flaws? Lolz, this is a joke. Wait, hold on. Really?! Can’t we talk about my favorite movie?!! Dances with Wolves!!!1
I stammered while I formulated a cornball sentence that contained ‘workaholic’ and ‘perfectionist’. Thankfully, I had one last ounce of presence and stopped short of saying it.
“I don’t know.”
He stared back at me. For a moment he held a look indicating he was willing to help me through my answer if I would only try. But I wouldn’t dare incriminate myself. To be fair, I’d never considered myself a professional, still don’t, so I had never thought about those kinds of shortcomings, and knew zilch about the stigma of admitting anything in particular. I pled the Fifth.
He picked up the stack of papers in front of him, and set the bottom edges on the table in order to straighten them. There’s the signal! The interview was over.
I received an excruciatingly thin envelope the next week informing me that another finalist was victorious. The letter cited my 3.2 grade average as a concern for the committee (a scholar had to maintain a 3.0 or higher to keep the funding). I still believe that my botched response to that cliched interview question was the fatal blow.
As it turned out, I consider myself better off for not having received the scholarship. Instead, I spent my summers either working abroad as an amateur music journalist, or for a tremendous company that nurtured me and paid even better than the Foundation promised. I devoted myself to web development, built a company with Jakob, Josh, and Ricky, and paid off the college loans myself.
However, I realized that the experience provided a free lesson that might have cost me eventually. It caused me to fish for my shortcomings and reel them in. In the seven years since, I’ve tossed around the idea of writing the Director to once again thank him for the opportunity and update him with the answer I never gave. Here’s an abridged version:
1. I’m stubborn. It affects my willingness to communicate and innovate. I cling to my ideas and often refuse to compromise. At an impasse, I’m usually waiting for my turn to talk when I should be attentive to my counterpart.
2. I’m quick to judge. Most likely spawned by inflated ego and insecurity, it manifests as unfair estimates of others’ character or capability, and sometimes leads to scarce or inept delegating.
3. I exaggerate. I’m a know-it-all and when my knowledge falls short I stretch it thin to fit. I propagate theories I don’t understand, cite data I can’t source, and generally bullshit too often.
I’m exposing this list in order to dispel some taboo others might feel. I assume friends and co-workers have already realized some of these traits in me but don’t know how to talk to me about them. My gamble is that they’ll empathize, cooperate in my self-improvement, and go so far as to call me out. Much like spraying a cat with water when you catch him scratching the couch.
I actively practice therapy on my own. For example, sensing my stubbornness a mentor once encouraged me to ‘kill my darlings’. He meant that while drafting a creative work I should experiment with deleting parts I cherish because they make me myopic and defensive to criticism. In practice, I’ve found this exercise to be helpful because it trains me to be receptive with a mind for the greater goal, which is to make something totally, not partially, wonderful with the help of others. Relatedly, I now try to consider outside opinions as research rather than criticism.
So, that’s me. What about you?
