Psychoanalyzed: Job Interviews in Peru

Recently, I had a job interview to teach English to children at an elementary school here in Lima. The job has a lot of attractive benefits, such as a work visa and health insurance (and probably a livable wage), but the downside is that I would be teaching 30 kids. In every class. For 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That's a lot of children, for a lot of hours of the week.

 

At least there would be muffins

Regardless of what happens with the job, the interview process has been quite an interesting experience. The actual job interview was fairly standard, and thankfully in English. However, for most jobs in Peru, you will also need to be interviewed by a psychologist, and you will feel like you're taking a trip back in time.

Psychoanalysis is still the name of the game down here, and in most interviews you will be asked to draw a picture, answer some questions on a psychometric test, and/or be given the Rorschach ink blot test. I was asked to draw a picture of a woman and write a story about her, then to repeat the process with a man. I have no idea what this is supposed to measure or if there is a right way to take the test. The only thing I know is that everyone, literally every person I asked, told me to draw the floor or the ground. Apparently, if your person isn't standing on something, he or she is unbalanced or has no security or some other nonsense.

 Kandinsky print featuring bacon

Then, my jaw dropped when the psychologist pulled out the Rorschach test. Are we living in 1960? Anyway, I was asked the classic questions: describe what you see, then what part of the ink blot you saw it in. Finally I was asked to choose my favorite and least favorite image and explain why. By the way, the psychologist didn't speak English, so this was as much a test of my Spanish as of my psyche.

Two dancing bears high-fiving in front of a sunset, obviously

I don't even have the slightest idea if I passed or not. While it was an amusing experience, it pains me to think that qualified, well-balanced applicants are routinely eliminated from consideration for good jobs based on a semi-scientific theory that was dreamed up by a 19th century coke addict and which has been pretty roundly discredited in the U.S. I don't know if I passed, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I didn't. I'm pretty sure I'm fine, despite what Herrs Frued and Rorschach might have to say about the matter.