Interviewing people for jobs is always interesting and a little draining. We've been interviewing candidates for positions at the Writing Center for next year, and it's really quite fascinating to see how differently people react under what is undoubtedly a stressful situation for many of them.

I've had three different jobs in which part of my job involved interviewing. Some people walk in, completely relaxed, and you sit down and have a pleasant conversation about pedagogy, the job, the responsibilities and challenges. Others walk in with a definite "game face," and while they often give impressive, well thought-out answers to the questions I've asked, it sometimes feels like talking to someone who used to sell used cars for a living. I've actually found myself trying to calculate "bitchiness potential" with the game face folks; it's hard not to wonder if they're just acting nice.

[Side note: I actually think my own interviews are usually somewhere between these first two, depending on how much I know about the position and how comfortable I feel with the interviewers.]

Others come in seemingly unprepared to answer any question, no matter how sensible, and sputter out answers that are at best ill-advised. Why would you tell a potential employer that you want to work somewhere because it doesn't seem too stressful and you really hate grading freshman comp papers? Or that you've had trouble getting jobs in the past? Or that your best job experience was good "because you really didn't have to do anything"? These are also the people who seem absolutely shocked when we ask them to do things like look at a sample paper and tell us what they would say about it if we were students who had come to them for an appointment. They shoot us a slightly accusatory look, say, "You mean right now?" and then choke for a bit.

Then there are the people for whom interviewing is obviously a semi-traumatic experience, and these are the hard ones. You can often tell that they're really quite qualified and friendly, but you sit there and observe as they panic, see them sweating in a cool room or breaking out in hives, and watch as their minds—obviously not empty as a rule—go completely blank. It's hard to watch. I want to take them out for a beer and get them some jalapeno poppers and chat more informally so that I can actually get some basic sense of who they are.

And if they don't like beer and jalapeno poppers, well... then I'm at a loss.

I don't remember losing my faith, and I wonder sometimes if that means I never had any. I've read the accounts of people like Mary McCarthy, who remembered exactly what it felt like. She smoothed out the gaps that time creates and embellished a few of the particulars, but it is obvious that everything she felt about losing her faith was still quite present for her, present in her story.

Losing my faith was more of a matter of phasing it out. Perhaps it's because I had to make a conscious decision to acquire faith in the first place. I had moved to Texas with my brother, my mother, and her new husband, and I was quite young. I had been living in Northern California, and Dallas seemed strange to me. It was hot, and people talked funny, and they seemed to care about things that my old friends hadn't cared about. My mom had a tattoo and had been divorced more than once; this was the stuff of scandal in our conservative neighborhood. My brother and I used phrases like "oh my God" periodically, and had no idea what such utterances would do to the expressions on the faces of people around us. "Shast-aaaa!," Mrs. Reeves would call when I visited her daughter Laura, "are you taking the name of the Lord in vain in my house?"

"No, ma'am," I answered, sometimes truthfully.

Well, there seemed to be two options. We could remain heathens, forsake the Lord and His teachings, and have scorn heaped upon us by our neighbors, teachers, and schoolmates. Alternatively, we could become believers, start attending church, and carve out a bona fide place for ourselves among our Texan neighbors.

When I put it in such terms, it seems as though our decision amounted to a simple sell-out, but that's really not the case. We didn't consciously decide to Get Religion in order to make our neighbors and peers accept us. There is a point, I think, where being a disbeliever can seem much less sensible than being one of the devout. When those around you obviously regard you with a mixture of pity and horror—our souls were in danger, after all—their zeal starts to seem normal, and you wonder if they aren't perhaps right.

We did, at least.

I remember attending a Lutheran church for a while, which I thought strange because my grandparents—in their more devout moments, anyway—identified as Catholic. They still do, though they are some of the most lukewarm "non-lapsed" Catholics I've ever met. Grandma used to watch television evangelists while lying around in bed on Sundays; she hung her rosary beads from one of her bed posts. Never mind that the evangelist wasn't Catholic; it was an activity she considered spiritual. It was half-assed, no doubt, but to her, it was something. Occasionally, I listened a bit, though I liked the choirs better than the preachers, who always seemed like Richard Dawson, complete with Vaseline but plus about seventy-five pounds. Grandma had an exercise bike in her bedroom, and I used to pedal as fast as I could, which kept me busy and had the side benefit of drowning out the evangelical exhortations.

But my grandparents didn't live in Texas; they lived in San Francisco, and Texas was a different kind of realm entirely. I remember spending a great deal of time around Baptists, though I don't think we ever attended a Baptist church. I don't remember why we abandoned the Lutheran church, though I do remember going to Sunday School at a Methodist church for several years. One of its members was actually excommunicated for getting a divorce. My mom, who was on her third marriage at the time, asked why she was exempt. She was told that she had not truly found God before attending this church, so her past sins were forgiven. The implied message, of course, was that she—and anyone else listening, for that matter—had better watch their step, because this church had the power to cut them off from salvation.

What is it like to retain faith but feel like you've lost access to your community of worshippers, and perhaps to your God? That's what I wondered as the Divorced Sinner was driven out of our church. It must be horrifying to believe but feel that your belief won't do you any good. I wonder if it would be something like having a pocketful of foreign currency and not being able to spend it on groceries that you absolutely need—though I imagine it would be worse. I found myself hoping he would decide that this particular church didn't have the final word on the matter, that he would find a place for himself and for his soul.

Our friend's excommunication provided a dilemma for me to ponder that was both practical and spiritual. Yet I also found much to confuse me in biblical teachings themselves, and this confusion seemed of even greater import to me. I constantly re-read the passage in Genesis where Noah's sons get cursed for seeing him naked in his drunkenness and covering him up. Even at the tender age of seven, it seemed obvious to me that no son should be cursed for having a lush as a dad. My feelings were, in part, quite rational. They also were indicative of one of my most basic personality characteristics: I have a passionate antipathy towards injustice, and when accused of misdeeds I haven't actually performed, I will defend myself as vehemently as any cat backed into a corner. It extends to others, as well, and I couldn't help but be awfully pissed off at Noah for giving his sons such a raw deal.

I noticed hypocrisy, and I noticed injustice, and I noticed that the pressure to be Christian wasn't necessarily good for Christianity. I don't think I ever lost my faith because for me, the pressure to be Christian always felt more social than spiritual. I always harbored a pip of doubt somewhere in my heart about the whole enterprise, and this seed made shedding my religious skin quite painless after my family moved away from a city in which belief was tantamount to an entrance requirement.

Yet, while I had shed the belief, I hadn't managed to get rid of the habit of belief. I moved into new areas entirely; I experimented a little. For a while, I thought what I found was quite exciting, as it didn't seem as stringent as our Texan doctrines had. What I found had its problems, too.

(to be continued and concluded in part the deux...)