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The Fourth Wall
Opportunity
Clare Tauriello
Career Services Coordinator
It’s everything your mother
ever told you: If you slurp your
soup, are rude to a waiter, or talk
with your mouth full, you'll be
in big trouble. :
For job seekers, navigating
the ritual of the interview lunch
could help determine a
candidate’s future. Grace and
composure during a formal meal
could mean the difference
between landing a job and
pounding the pavement.
How much do you know
about etiquette? Career Services
and your Student Activities Fee
are sponsoring an Etiquette
Dinner in the Heritage Room on
Wednesday, April 6 at Spm.
In the business world and in
a meal setting, etiquette is an
important aspect of how you
relate to other professionals in
the workplace. Particularly in an
interview setting but also in day
to day interactions, people
notice how you carry yourself.
When you are eating in a
professional setting, (and it
wouldn’t hurt at other times too!)
napkins should be on your lap to
catch crumbs and drips. Begin
eating when the host or hostess
has been served and picks up a
fork as the signal to begin.
If you have to lean forward or
strain in any way to reach an
item on the table, it’s probably
better to ask someone to pass it
to you, as it would be bad news
to have an unnecessary spill or
accident. It is best to avoid
alcohol and smoking during a
business meeting or an
interview, even if colleagues or
others are drinking or smoking.
You want to present yourself as
professionally as possible.
And then there is the
silverware. Isn’t it
overwhelming sometimes when
you sit down at a meal and you
are not sure which piece to begin
with? You need to think about
going from the outside in when
it comes to each course. The
number of pieces of silverware
indicates the number of courses
that will be served.
Table manners may be a
simple matter, but social graces
are just as important in making a
good impression during the job
interview. Have you had the
experience of shaking
someone’s hand and you get a
limp handshake? What does that
convey? It means that they may
not be feeling confident and are
somewhat awkward when it
comes to social interaction.
Would you want to work with
that person everyday?
Maintaining eye contact is
important at an introduction as
well. Connection with others is
key to your success in an
interview as well as in the
workplace.
Lastly, a word about dress for
an interview. You need to dress
for the interview the way others
dress in that particular
workplace. For women, that
means generally solid,
conservative colors, neat
hairstyle, and hosiery if you
have a suit on, not too much
make-up, manicured nails and no
perfume. For men that means
conservative colors again, neat
hairstyle and facial hair, no
aftershave, and neat nails. Often,
students ask me, “what’s wrong
with a little perfume or
aftershave in an interview
setting?” I tell them that you
want the employer to focus on
the interview and not on how you
smell. Also, you don’t want to
leave an aroma after you leave!
These are just the basic tips,
but there are plenty more secrets
to a successful interview lunch.
Sign up for the Etiquette Dinner
or stop by Career Services in
General Studies. Call Career
Services at 749-6056 for more
information.
(814)231-9000
*Study Lounge
*Fitness Room
*Super Location
*Laundry on-site
*Free Cable TV
a)
Lose, Lose, Lose:
Stephen Zemyan
Ideally, course evaluations
should offer opportunities for
students to provide worthwhile
feedback and constructive
criticism to their instructors, so
improve their courses for their
future students in significant
ways. Regrettably, the SRTE
instrument fails both the students
and the faculty in this regard.
For a typical course, any
conscientious instructor might
spend over two hundred hours
teaching a class, preparing for it,
writing and grading exams, and
conducting office hours. Yet, the
faculty is required to ask the
students to evaluate the results
of these continuous efforts over
the entire semester in about five
minutes by filling in ovals on a
scan sheet. How could the
results of this patently absurd
exercise be anything but
superficial and therefore
essentially useless?
Mountains of specious SRTE
data have been generated, and I
seriously doubt that even one
course. has... ever. been
significantly improved as a
consequence. The central
purpose of course evaluation —
providing thoughtful
assessments of key componeuts
of a course to its instructor — has
been displaced by the inferior
purpose of generating easily
digestible data for
being used as pawns to generate
it. The candle of reason has been
extinguished by pseudo-
statistical expediency.
Students should be pounding
the table, demanding the
opportunity to provide
substantive and contributive
feedback to their instructors. We
would love to hear specific
information about what works
and what doesn’t. Most of the
faculty are genuinely dedicated
to their profession and crave
constructive criticism intended
to improve the quality of their
courses. It is enormously
gratifying for the faculty to see
students solve problems, discuss
theories, or think clearly about
topics as a result of classroom
experiences, and we would
sincerely like to improve our
presentations.
In any rational scheme of
course evaluation, the needs of
the students and the faculty
would be met. At present,
however, there exists a surreal
subordination to and an over-
reliance upon the SRTE
instrument. Its regular use
supplants a key evaluative
component of the instructional
process. It provides an
opportunity to express hastily
formulated vague impressions,
rather than considered insight.
The mandated use of this plastic
substitute is absolutely
incomprehensible to me.
Speaking personally, I have
always taken my lecturing and
grading duties seriously, but I
have never taken my SRTE
scores seriously, whether they
were high or low, because the
SRTE instrument is essentially
worthless to me as an evaluative
tool. To illustrate my contention,
if I receive a score of 5.43 for
my “effective use of examples,”
what am I to do with this
information? Which ones of the
300 examples that I presented:
during the semester need is in
need of revision? Is a score of
5.73 or 5.13 received in the
subsequent semester really an
indication that I am doing
“better” or ‘worse? in
explaining the material, or of
anything else? As a
mathematician, I regret to report
that I have no idea what to do
with these numbers or how to
interpret them.
Everyone loses. The students
lose the opportunity to express
their worthwhile opinions
regarding course content and
instruction, and to contribute to
the improvement of their courses
for future students. The faculty
loses the opportunity to consider
and apply their valuable advice,
and the administration loses the
opportunity to understand,
appreciate, and reward the
valuable educational
contributions that the faculty
provides on a daily basis to the
students. If there was ever a
lose-lose-lose situation, this is it.