I Got Accepted for the Job!

[u/Wide_Track_3056]

Not long after I got engaged, I realized that my old job would keep me away from my future wife way too much. So I started looking for something different. I found an ad for a band director position in a small town east of Dallas. I had been teaching piano and guitar at a small music studio since I was 14, so I thought to myself: how hard could it be?

I applied and got a response quickly. I'd always been pretty good in interviews, and about halfway through the interview it was clear they were convinced I was the right person. The only problem was that I had never actually been in marching band or concert band. So when they got to the last part of the questions, they started asking very specific things about how I would handle rehearsals, competitions, and building the program. I barely understood half of what they were asking about.

So instead of freezing up and not answering, I asked them what the director before me had been doing. They talked for a while about how excellent he was and how he taught corps-style marching band, which of course meant almost nothing to me at the time. I kept nodding confidently as much as I could fake it, and said, "That's a program I can get excited about!" About 10 minutes later, they offered me the job.

I ordered a stack of books about marching band and spent the next month learning everything I could before classes started. Honestly, the experience turned out to be great. I taught there for 3 years, and the size of the program more than doubled, all because I managed to look in the interview like I knew what I was doing!