The Time I Lost My Voice Before a Job Interview

 

What I’ve Been Doing Lately

For the past few months, I submitted dozens of applications for job positions that best fitted my interest and areas of specialisation. I’m leaning towards the roles of an English language educator and stretching my job scope as far as a content writer. And until just recently, I received interview requests and assessments as part of the initial screening process. 

These were the moments I had been waiting for in a long time since the start of the year. I said yes to about any interviews I received because at this point of time, and the number of resumes, CVs and cover letters I painstakingly prepared, and looking at the development of the pandemic to our economy, I wasn’t about to be too picky with the opportunities that come my way. As much as I pushed it out of my head, I can also feel the subtle ticking of the clock as each day passes by and I’ve yet to find a stable job to support myself.

Of course, I’m fortunate enough that I’m living with my family who can still support me and that my freelance proofreading business (The Owls: Proofreading & Translation) is enough to temporarily sustain my personal finances. However, having said that, I make it my goal to be financially independent with a job that I can develop my skills and knowledge to another level. To put it simply, I want money (lol) and I want to be as busy as I can on a day-to-day basis. Soon, if possible.

The Story

So my story goes on like this. I had an interview this week and I spent the weekend before that to prepare slides for mock teaching, read as many online articles as I could to get the gears in my brain to work again and be familiarised with a writing style that I liked and impress the panels. I really wanted to make a lasting good impression on my interviewers and basically, show off everything that I got.

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Two days prior to my interview, I miraculously made my mind up to get back to exercising again. I haven’t done anything physically active since Raya (heck, perhaps even before Ramadan). I did some light exercises in the small confines of my room. This will probably sound… dumb  if I were to lightly describe it, because as I was beginning to speed up my exercise routine, my mouth became dry (this is normal right) and I tried to swallow saliva down my throat to get it to become normal. Unfortunately, it went down the wrong pipe and I was coughing like a madwoman to get the liquid out of my lungs(?).

Sigh, this isn’t looking pretty. But anyway…

I don’t think potentially dying from swallowing saliva down to my lungs was what caused the damage. In fact, I think it was the way that I violently coughed it out that did it. By the time that I stopped coughing (hopefully, my neighbours didn’t think I was actually dying), the damage was done and I felt my voice box or whatever they call it swollen. I didn’t think much of it and drank water to calm myself down. Later that evening, I had some light coughs here and there and around midnight on a voice chat with my friends, I knew for sure that my voice was slowly diminishing.

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My mum advised me the next day to constantly gargle on warm salt water and drink lots of madu kelulut (honey from stingless bees) that I concocted into tea. The home remedies helped a lot although I still sounded like a truck less than 24 hours before the job interview.

And My Interview Went...

Fine, I suppose? Not talking as much the day before helped and my voice sounded a lot better on the day I had my online interview. It was still rusty but it could have been worse. I was beyond relieved that at the very least the panel could still understand me. I wasn’t coughing anymore either so that was one less thing to worry about.

Once I left the chat window, I drank more warm water and napped. I still had a slight fever from the exercise-choked-on-water ordeal. Safe to say, I will avoid going through that again. Especially just days before an important event. NEVER AGAIN.