"So Miss Precious, what's your five year plan?" the interviewer asked.
"My five year plan?" I dumbly repeated or at least I sounded dumb to me.
"Where do you see yourself in five years?" she rephrased.
It's not like I didn't hear her the first time, I just needed a couple of seconds to quickly come up with an appropriate answer. This interview was going pretty well until now, my stomach growled at this point reminding me of the hunger pangs earlier. My stomach suffers when I'm nervous.
So far I hadn't stuttered until I had to answer this. In all fairness, I wasn't prepared for this interview. Right before it was my turn, I had revised my lines in my head, I was going to blow their minds with my lines, smile and exaggerated passion for the job. But I had failed to study basic interview questions and practice the answers.
I should have had a template answer but here I was, in front of the fast talking interviewer wondering what the actual fuck I'm going to be doing with my life for the next five years. How was I going to tell my interviewer I had ideas but no actual plans? A plan has to be some sort of call to action right? That which you actually intend to do with laid down steps.
How was I to say I'm really just winging it and didn't have concrete plans for the near future? A few months ago I thought I did have it figured out a bit but some things didn't go as planned and now it feels like I'm back to my starting point.
I came up with an answer about starting my own fashion brand and then added bagging a Master in Public health when she looked like the fashion thing was just not enough. She pointed out to me she has her five year plan set and how she'd achieve one after the other. Lucky you ma'am, I wish I was that conventional but outchea, we just winging it for now.