Question: When I decide to do a few bar tricks during my tryout for a part-time job as an SAT prep course instructor, am I:
A. mentally unhinged
B. way overconfident of my hand-eye coordination
C. just following instructions
D. demonstrating to what lengths some cash-strapped New Jerseyans will go to make ends meet.
Answer: all of the above.
Now, I earn a respectable salary in my regular job. Heck, in some states, I’d be considered filthy rich. But here in the Garden State—where even broken-down bungalows fetch upward of a quarter-million dollars and where paying property taxes is like gifting the government with a new plasma TV every few months—my income alone won’t support a family of four.
I’m explaining, not complaining. For lots of folks I know, even those in two-salary households, an extra part-time job is a full-time necessity. So each year I teach a journalism course or two at Rutgers University and take on some freelance writing work when I can. A friend who teaches SAT courses suggests I apply to the Princeton Review, the standardized-test prep-course company. The job doesn’t sound terribly strenuous, so after consulting my bank balance and flipping through my basket of bills—always a great motivator—I decide to give it a whirl.
The SAT, of course, is the Scholastic Aptitude Test. For high school students who aspire to attend a choosy college and who don’t excel in a revenue-generating sport, the SAT is where the rubber meets the road. As you may have heard, the test recently was revised. The math section was expanded to include Algebra II, and the test now includes a grammar portion and a 25-minute essay-writing component. Princeton Review instructors now teach both the math and verbal sections, which makes recruitment a bit tricky. There are, after all, only so many Bill Bradley types who are available evenings and weekends for $18 an hour. So the Princeton Review puts its instructors through an intensive refresher course designed to bring them up to speed in whichever section—math or verbal—isn’t their strong suit.
I know I require more than a little refreshing on the math end. To use the sort of analogy that will no longer appear in the new SAT:
math: my brain
water: colander
Aspiring instructors first must take an SAT-like online quiz. Those who pass this hurdle are then invited to audition, which is supposed to reveal whether they have what it takes to keep a roomful of teen-agers engaged for eleven three-hour classes they may or may not be willingly attending. You’re supposed to come to the audition prepared to teach a five-minute mini-lesson on how to do something.
My solution is not to ply my audience with alcohol, but I decide I’ll do some bar tricks—not because I know any bar tricks, but because I’m pressed for time.
The most difficult trick in my repertoire calls for getting an olive into a brandy snifter without touching the olive. It’s at once easier and more difficult than it sounds. What you do first—after making the bet—is place the overturned brandy snifter over the olive, grab the glass by the stem and spin the olive around and around. Centrifugal force will move the olive deeper into the glass. As long as you keep spinning, you actually can lift the glass off the table and the olive won’t fall out. Then all you do is flip the glass upright, and you’ve got yourself a free drink.
I can do the spinning part easily enough, but the final maneuver is a flipping nightmare. I don’t like olives, so I use grapes, which are soon whizzing around my kitchen like houseflies, splashing into our indignant cat’s water bowl and bouncing off my highly amused six-year-old daughter. I’m on the verge of calling it quits when I have a breakthrough: Like so much in life, it turns out to be all in the wrist. Before long, I can execute the maneuver with my eyes closed.
My confidence is still high when I leave work the next evening for the audition. On the way I pick up a liter of water, which will substitute for alcoholic beverages in one of my warm-up tricks. When I arrive, the auditions are already underway.
The five other applicants are all engaging and well prepared. One demonstrates self-defense techniques; another teaches us how to do word scrambles. From one applicant I learn that, for the past 40 years, I’ve been brushing my teeth the wrong way. I go last.
First I hand a match to everyone in the room. The first trick is to throw the match into the air and have it land on its side—the secret is to bend the match—only I forget to mention the throw-the-match-into-the-air part, and before I can clarify the terms of the bet, half the class is sitting there with matches balanced sideways on their desks, waiting for their free drinks. I decide to move on.
The second trick is a sort of drinking competition. You bet someone that you can drink two full glasses of beer before they can finish three shots of their favorite liquor. The loser picks up the tab. There’s just one rule: No touching each other’s glasses.
A young woman volunteers to take the bet. I proceed to pour the water into three little plastic cups I set up on the desk in front of her. Then I fill two large cups—my “beers.”
“Ready, set, go!” We both start to drink.
The secret to this trick is to polish off your first beer before your opponent gets to her third shot. Then you place your empty overturned beer glass on top of her third, still-full shot glass. She can’t remove the beer glass because of the “no touching” rule, so…checkmate. You’re free to savor your second beer.
After throwing back her second shot, my volunteer starts to cough. The coughing continues and she appears to be in distress.
“I’m allergic to water,” I hear her gasp.
Allergic to water? Is she joking? No, she’s gagging.
What fresh hell is this? I think to myself. Has my how-to-win-free-drinks demonstration become a crash course on how to administer CPR? Is this person drowning?
She finally settles down, assuring me she’s fine. Time is running out.
“I’ll bet you that I can get this grape into this glass without touching the grape,” I announce rather unconvincingly.
I place the grape on the desktop, cover the grape with the brandy snifter, rotate the stem of the glass, and…nothing happens. The grape doesn’t budge. I switch to another desk. This time, I get the grape going, and although I botch the first attempt—it’s all in the wrist, damn it—I nail it on the second try and return to my seat to polite applause.
I’m sure I’ve blown the audition. I mean, haven’t I almost killed someone? A week later, though, I receive an e-mail from the Princeton Review, inviting me to one of its upcoming intensive training programs. That means they’re ready to hire me.
By then, though, I’ve gotten around to doing some actual math. According to my calculations, $18 an hour times 3 hours per class times 11 classes amounts to less money than I first assumed. Plus there’s homework I’d have to do, for no extra pay, and an entire summer weekend I’d have to sacrifice to complete the training program.
In the end, I decide not to take the job. This Christmas, when some extra income would surely come in handy, I might regret that decision. But if the SAT taught me anything it was this: With life’s multiple choice questions, sometimes there’s more than one correct answer.
Shannon Mullen, a regular contributor, is still searching for that part-time job.
Article from December, 2005 Issue.