In the
morning of April 2, 1970 I arrived by bus to
Chicago, the city which would become my first love
with America. After checking my luggage at the bus
station's terminal, my first order of business was
to find a room that I could rent. Through the Chicago
Sun-Times paper, which I bought at the
station, I was able to find, late in the afternoon,
a room that I liked. It was in the North side of the
city close to Evanston. That entire part of the city
was heavily populated with Polish immigrants. The
rent for the room was, as in Pittsburgh, $50 a
month. The room was on the second floor of a house
which was occupied only by tenants. The owners of
the house lived in the next house as they owned
three (3) consecutive houses --one for them, the
second for tenants (where I was living), and the
third house for their daughter, son-in-law, and
grandson.
Because of the
security deposit required on my rent, I had no
other option but to cash the $5000 check that I
was carrying from Pittsburgh. Extremely
uncomfortable with using this option of last
resort, but nevertheless grateful to have it, I
pledged to myself that my very first priority
would be to put back the entire sum of $5000 and
send it back to Pittsburgh where it belonged.
Thus, my first priority was finding a job as soon
as possible.
Next day, on Friday, April 3, 1970, I went by
subway (known in Chicago as "The El" and standing
for the Elevated Subway, see picture at left) to
the downtown area to the State's Employment Agency
in order to find a job. After I told the clerk
that from the time I was six (6) Astronomy
was the only thing that had interested me and that
I had a degree and working experience in it, I
asked him:
"What
kind of job could I get here in Astronomy?"
To this, the
clerk in disbelief of what he had just heard,
said:
"You
could not be serious! You are kidding right? I
have openings for any kind of job, but Astronomy
... give me a break!
Staring at him
without saying a word, the clerk eventually got
the message as soon afterwards he stated: OK, let
me look anyhow."
After a few
minutes of searching, the clerk, not believing
what he had just found, stated:
"Listen,
I see here that there is an opening at
Encyclopaedia Britannica for a Research Editor
in Astronomy, and the only thing that I see here
in terms of requirement is a good background in
Astronomy. I am going to give you the address
which is not too far from here. When you go to
Britannica have with you a Resume and dress
appropriately to look professional. Good luck."
After giving me the address, I took immediately a
taxicab to Britannica. I had no idea what a Resume
was, so when I reached the Personnel Department of
Britannica I stated immediately to the woman that
was there the following:
"I am
here because the clerk from the Downtown
Employment Agency stated that you need somebody
with a good background in Astronomy."
Then, treating
the "Resume" as being some sort of disease, I
stated to the woman:
"And
I don't have a resume. Whatever that is, I am
sure that I don't have it!"
Upon hearing
this, the woman started laughing so hard that I
could see her crying of laughter! I did not know
what to make of this. After a few minutes,
recovering from her laughter and regaining her
composure, she stated in a very friendly voice:
"To
work for Britannica, you have to pass our test.
There is no exception to this. We do not care
about letters of references, fancy diplomas or
anything of that sort. For us, the most
important thing is the test which takes about
two (2) hours."
"What kind of
test do you have?" --I asked. To this, she
continued:
"Well,
if you apply for a Geography position, we have a
test in Geography, for Chemistry --we have a
test in Chemistry, and so on. You said that you
want to apply for an Astronomy position. For
that we have a test in Astronomy. Go home and
prepare for this test as you can be given this
test only once. You cannot come back and repeat
the test until you eventually pass. This is a
one shot deal."
To this I
responded: "I want to take the test right now if
this is possible." The woman concerned with my
answer stated: "Are you sure that you want to take
the test right now?", to which I responded: "Yes,
I am." Then she said: "OK then, follow me."
She put me in a
room all by myself and the test was based on a
multiple choice format. There were 100 questions
and each question had associated with it
five (5) possible answers --one of which
being the correct one. You had to be completely
out of your field not to recognize the correct
answer which was beaming right into your eyes!
After about 90 minutes, I informed the woman that
I had finished with my test. As I was prepared to
leave, the woman stopped me and said:
"Please
have a seat. I need to go into another room to
score your test. Then, I would like to talk with
you for a few minutes. Is this OK with you?"
Nodding my head
in the affirmative, the woman left with my test
sheets to another room. After about 10 minutes she
returned and informed me of my score by saying:
"You made 98 out of a hundred." To this, in
disbelief, I stated to the woman: "There was no
way that I could have missed two questions. Please
go back in that room and check again." After that,
this dialog took place:
[Woman]: "No, you
misunderstood me. You made a perfect test."
[Me]: "If it is so
perfect, now what?"
[Woman]: "Oh, you will be
called for an interview. And since you did not
know what a resume was, it is my job and my
responsibility to explain to you what an
interview is. In about ten (10) days you
will receive a postcard from us informing you of
the place and the time of the interview."
After the woman
from the Personnel Office explained to me the
purpose, the scope, and the format of a job
interview, I knew that I would not have a prayer
in passing successfully such an interview. The
major culprit was my horrendous accent which was
so heavy that the great majority of people were
having a hard time understanding me. Any job I
could have conceived, but not the one of an Editor
for the prestigious Encyclopaedia Britannica. I
visualized that in the moment that I would open my
mouth, my interview would be over as I could not
have imagined a person who would hire me for that
position with the accent that I had. And since I
could not have gotten rid of my accent overnight,
I had to find a solution for this seemingly
insurmountable obstacle that I was facing.
Pondering over
these ideas, I took long walks in the city mostly
to observe how Americans behaved when they were
engaged in a conversation. And to my astonishment,
by contrast to Italians, I noticed that Americans,
during a conversation, do not use their hands at
all as a form of gesticulation but instead they
use heavily their head, nodding the head in a most
prominent way and interjecting so often with the
awful "ah-uh!" sound. In my perception that I was
able to form from my visual observations, a common
American conversation in Chicago would look like
this: while one was talking, the other person very
frequently nodded his or her head and was saying
"ah-uh!, ah-uh!" repeatedly. When the conversation
was over, the person doing the talking would say
to the other person who said nothing except
"ah-uh, ah-uh ", "Nice talking with you!"
Based upon this
perception, I reasoned therefore that my only
chance of passing the upcoming interview was to
employ the "ah-uh" routine! Thus, my plan for the
upcoming interview was as follows: No matter what,
throughout the entire interview I would stick only
to "ah-uh" interjections for as many times as
needed and then, at the very end, I would say a
simple sentence expressing my desire to work for
Britannica. And the sentence that I chose to use
at the end of my interview was that "I will be
very happy to have the opportunity to work for
Encyclopaedia Britannica." For hours and hours,
for a week or so, I rehearsed this very simple
sentence. And to make sure that people were able
to understand me, I stopped a number of them on
the street and asked: "Do you know what I am
saying?" And some of those who chose to reply
stated: "Yes, that you are a nut!"
On Monday April
13, 1970, I got the postcard from Britannica that
on Thursday, April 16, I should come for an
interview. I was prepared with my script to the
finest points. The interview that I was scheduled
to have was with the Research Science Coordinator
of Britannica--an extremely nice woman in her late
twenties or early thirties, an American born of
Swedish descent. The woman, in an extremely
friendly voice, began congratulating me on my
excellent score on the Astronomy test and on my
knowledge of so many languages (Hungarian, French,
Italian, Romanian, Russian, and English). Then,
she stated:
"Listen,
when an article comes to Britannica, we have an
English Editor, a Grammar Editor, a Punctuation
Editor, a Layman Editor --in all some
seven (7) editors. When we get an article
in Astronomy, we need somebody with a strong
Astronomy background to check, after all the
editing has been done, whether the edited
article is sound from a scientific standpoint.
You see, sometimes the English Editor in
rearranging the structure of a sentence may,
inadvertently, destroy the scientific meaning or
the entire content of that sentence. Or, we may
have other situations where a diagram or a
formula has been misplaced from one page into
another. Since no one knows the Astronomy stuff
those errors would not be detected by any of us.
It is therefore your job to make sure that the
text makes sense from a scientific point of
view, that the text and diagrams correspond, and
so on.. You forget about the grammar, you forget
about the punctuation, you need only be
concerned that the text is making sense from the
scientific point of view and nothing else."
I acknowledged
all this with "ah-uh" and the nodding of my head
as needed. The woman then went on explaining to me
how the Research Department was the core of
Britannica and how other departments were
integrated with each other and with the research
center. After some 45 minutes of countless "ah-uh"
on my part and recognizing that the woman had
exhausted every imaginable subject with respect to
this opening and that the interview was about to
be over, I stated to her "You know what!" to which
the woman hearing me for the first time speaking
exclaimed: "What?" To this, following my script, I
said:
"I will be very happy to have the opportunity to
work for Encyclopaedia Britannica."
"You got the
job! --the woman replied. You will start to work
on Monday [April 20, 1970]. Congratulations!"
Extremely happy
of the outcome, I left her office with a simple
"Thank You." A tremendous door of opportunities
had just been opened for me. My title "Research
Editor in Astronomy for Encyclopaedia Britannica"
sounded really good. I was on cloud nine!
