TITLE: You Can Learn A Lot About People Just By Talking With Them
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: January 15, 2023 12:07 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 This morning on the exercise bike, I read a big chunk of 
<a href="https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/daniel-gross/">
   Daniel Gross and Tyler Talk Talent</a>,
 from the Conversations with Tyler series.  The focus of this
 conversation is how to identify talent, as prelude to the release
 of their book on that topic.

 The bit I've read so far has been like most Conversations with
 Tyler: interesting ideas with Cowen occasionally offering an
 offbeat idea seemingly for the sake of being offbeat.  For
 example, if the person he is interviewing has read Shakespeare,
 he might say,

<blockquote><em>
 "Well, my hypothesis is that in <b>Romeo and Juliet</b>, Romeo
 and Juliet don't actually love each other at all.  Does the play
 still make sense?"  Just see what they have to say.  It's a way of
 testing their second-order understanding of situations, diversity
 of characters.
</em></blockquote>

 This is a bit much for my taste, but the motivating idea behind
 talking to people about drama or literature is sound:

<blockquote><em>
 It's not something they can prepare for.  They can't really fake
 it.  If they don't understand the topic, well, you can switch to
 something else.  But if you can't find <b>anything</b> they can
 understand, you figure, well, maybe they don't have that much
 depth or understanding of other people's characters.
</em></blockquote>

 It seems to me that this style of interviewing runs a risk of not
 being equitable to all candidates, and at the very least places
 high demands on both the interviewee and the interviewer.  That
 said, Gross summarizes the potential value of talking to people
 about movies, music, and other popular culture in interviews:

<blockquote><em>
 I think that works because you can learn a lot from what someone
 says -- they're not likely to make up a story -- but it's also
 fun, and it is a common thing many people share, even in this
 era of HBO and Netflix.
</em></blockquote>

 This exchange reminded me of perhaps my favorite interview of all
 time, one in which I occupied the hot seat.

 I was a senior in high school, hoping to study architecture at Ball
 State University.  (Actual architecture... the software thing would
 come later.)  I was a pretty good student, so I applied for Ball
 State's Whitinger Scholarship, one of the university's top awards.
 
 My initial application resulted in me being invited to campus for a
 personal interview.  First, I sat to write an essay over the course
 of an hour, or perhaps half an hour.  To be honest, I don't remember
 many details from that part of the day, only sitting in a room by
 myself for a while with a blue book and writing away.  I wrote a
 lot of essays in those days.

 Then I met with Dr. Warren Vander Hill, the director of the Honors
 College, for an interview.  I'd had a few experiences on college
 campuses in the previous couple of years, but I still felt a little
 out of my element.  Though I came from a home that valued reading
 and learning, my family background was not academic.

 On a shelf behind Dr. Vander Hill, I noticed a picture of him in a
 Hope College basketball jersey, dribbling during a college game.  I
 casually asked him about it and learned that he had played Division
 III varsity ball as an undergrad.  I just now searched online in
 hopes of confirming my memory and learned that he is still #8 on
<a href="https://hope.prestosports.com/sports/mbkb/history/single_and_career_scoring">
   the list of Hope's all-time career scoring leaders</a>.
 I don't recall him slipping that fact into our chat...  (Back then,
 he would have been #2!)

 Anyway, we started talking basketball.  Somehow, the conversation
 turned to
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Robertson">
   Oscar Robertson</a>,
 one of the NBA's all-time great players.  He starred at Indianapolis's
 all-black Crispus Attucks High School and led the school to a state
 championship in 1955.  From there, we talked about a lot of things
 -- the integration of college athletics, the civil rights movement,
 the state of the world in 1982 -- but it all seemed to revolve around
 basketball.

 The time flew.  Suddenly, the interview period was over, and I headed
 home.  I enjoyed the conversation quite a bit, but on the hour drive,
 I wondered if I'd squandered my chances at the scholarship by using
 my interview time to talk sports.  A few weeks later, though, I
 received a letter saying that I had been selected as one of the
 recipients.

 That was the beginning of four very good years for me.  Maybe I can
 trace some of that fortune to a conversation about sports.  I
 certainly owe a debt to the skill of the person who interviewed me.

 I got to know Dr. Vander Hill better over the next four years and
 slowly realized that he had probably known exactly what he was doing
 in that interview.  He had found a common interest we shared and
 used it to start a conversation that opened up into bigger ideas.
 I couldn't have prepared answers for this conversation.  He could
 see that I wasn't making up a story, that I was genuinely interested
 in the issues we were discussing and was, perhaps, genuinely
 interesting.  The interview was a lot of fun, for both of us, I
 think, and he learned a lot about me from just talking.

 I learned a lot from Dr. Vander Hill over the years, though what I
 learned from him that day took a few years to sink in.
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