Disapointment :(

Well, I had my tests and interviews today and they didn't go well at all... In fact, the whole day was awful.

There were only 5 of us there (but thousands of people apply at all of the Japanese consulates around the world) so at first, I felt pretty confident.

Then, the pissing contest began, as everyone introduced themselves to each other and I found out that nearly every person there had multiple degrees from Harvard and MIT and Yale and Brown and spoke near fluent Japanese. One guy was already almost done with his PhD, had two degrees from Harvard, lives in Japan, speaks Japanese fluently, is from a Japanese family, and is even married to a Japanese woman! Immediately, I started to feel insecure.

(Now, I know that I am a smart and capable person and am every bit as good as them and even got into an ivy league school myself, but the names that they were throwing around surely count for something, and it was pretty intimidating and discouraging.)

After that, we took the Japanese test, which is broken down into 3 one-hour long tests that increase in difficulty. The entire test is written in Japanese. Well...I could only answer about half of the questions on the first test. :(

I didn't feel so bad, because one of the girls that was there could only do the first test too. (she was the only other non-ivy leaguer) We then took an English language exam, which was easy except that there were lots of typos in it which made the sections where you are supposed to identify the grammatical errors somewhat difficult. (it was hard to tell which were intentional and which were just typos and misprints)

Anyway, I was done by 11:30 with both of these tests, but my interview wasn't until 4:15, so I had to spend nearly 5 hours alone on the streets of Boston killing time in near 100 degree weather! It sucked.

Finally, I came up for my interview, and guess who was the person that went before me: super fluent Japanese married Harvard guy! Of all the luck! And I could hear through the door that they loved him and were laughing and having a great time.

When it was my turn, I went in and sat across from 3 professors and one woman from the consulate. I'm not sure why, but one of the professors grilled me super hard, didn't care for my research proposal, and was dissatisfied with my research methods. He just kept asking really specific questions and it was impossible for me to try to throw in good stuff about myself to try to get them to see all the awesome things that they wouldn't see just by looking at my application and essays.

Finally, the Japanese professor asked if he could speak Japanese to me. On the application, I checked the box for "fair" for speaking and for "poor" for reading and writing, not really knowing what exactly "fair" and "poor" meant. Well, as soon as he started speaking super fast using words I'd never heard before, I knew that clearly "fair" was the wrong choice. This was obvious to everyone there, and yet he just kept on talking. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he dumbed it down for me and asked some simple questions about where I lived when I was in Japan and stuff like that, but at that point, the whole interview was soured.

I'll find out sometime next week if I get moved on to the next round, but after the shear crappiness of today, I am expecting an impersonal rejection letter to show up in my inbox :(

I guess this means I need to make some decisions about stuff and pursue some other options...

It just sucks, because I wanted this so bad. :(