Thirty Seconds. Sixty-Nine Days.

It took less than thirty seconds to read the rejection. It took sixty-nine days to understand what it meant—and what it didn't.

A sixty-nine-day international school recruitment process did not end with the job I had hoped for.

But it made me realize something I hadn't expected: a result can decide whether you get a job, but it cannot erase what was true along the way.

One: The Weight of an Email

The email took less than thirty seconds to read. I know because I looked at the clock.

Thank you for your interest... We regret to inform you...

Like every rejection email, it was polite. So polite that it almost concealed what those few lines represented: sixty-nine days of waiting, interviews, refreshing my inbox, and slowly allowing myself to imagine a different future. At first, I thought I'd lost a job. It took me much longer to realize what I had almost lost instead: trust in myself.

For sixty-nine days, I had been waiting for an outcome. When it finally came, I found myself looking back at everything that had happened along the way, questioning things I had once felt confident about. At the time, I didn't know what to make of that feeling. I only knew that I was beginning to doubt myself, and I didn't know yet that what would eventually steady me would not be another offer, or someone telling me, "You're good enough."

It would be a sentence I had said to my students countless times—a sentence I had never imagined I would one day need to say to myself.

Two: We Met Through Education

On April 18, an interview invitation landed in my inbox. Two days later, I walked into the school for the first time. Waiting for me were the principal, the Head of Curriculum, and two members from Human Resources. I had prepared myself for an interview, but what I walked into felt more like a conversation. No one hurried through my résumé or worked their way down a list of rehearsed questions. Instead, we talked about teaching - how children learn to think, not simply how they learn to answer, how differentiated instruction can meet students where they are and how artificial intelligence might support teachers without replacing their judgment.

When they asked about my own work, I found myself talking less about qualifications and more about the experiences that had shaped me. I shared stories from the cross-cultural language exchange projects I had helped develop between students in Taiwan and Vietnam - projects where language became more than vocabulary and grammar. It became a way for students to become curious about one another and build connections across cultures. By the end of the conversation, I had almost forgotten I was trying to impress anyone. I was simply talking about the work I loved.

A week later, it was time for my demo lesson. That morning, I reached for the brightest shirt I have (orange). I wanted the children to see a teacher and not simply another adult there for an interview. Someone willing to explore with them, laugh with them, and let the lesson unfold with them. When I walked into the classroom, the second-period Chinese lesson had just begun. Sixteen Grade 3 students sat quietly at their desks, carefully forming Chinese characters, one stroke at a time. I didn't begin with vocabulary or sentence patterns. Instead, I opened the first slide.

Nine dogs with nine different expressions.

“Which one looks like you today?”

The room changed almost instantly and hands flew into the air.

“I'm this one!” “I'm the happy dog!”

The classroom that had been quiet only moments before suddenly filled with voices. For the next 45 minutes, I barely stayed at the front. Instead, I walked among the students, asking questions rather than giving answers.

“What’s the difference between a giant panda and an Asian black bear?”

One child noticed their appearance. Another talked about where they lived. Then someone raised a hand.

“The panda represents China... so does the Asian black bear belong to Vietnam?”

Within seconds, the room erupted. Ideas bounced from one student to another. Children compared observations, questioned one another, changed their minds, and built on each other's ideas. Every now and then, someone would ask:

“Teacher, what's the answer?”

I smiled and asked...

“What do you think?” “Ask your partner first. ”

“Does anyone see it differently?”

Before long, the stronger students had quietly become little teachers themselves. No one had assigned them that role. They simply had room to step into it. 

The loudest laughter came during a game of animal charades. One child marched to the front and acted out an animal.

“Panda!” “Rabbit!”

“No!” “Try again!”

Even the principal, who had been observing from the back of the classroom, couldn't resist joining in. 

For a few minutes, I forgot I was being observed. Then came my favorite part. The students picked up their activity sheets and began walking around the classroom, interviewing one another in Chinese.

“What animal do you like?” “I like pandas.”

Simple questions. Simple answers, but the room was full of Chinese. Not because I was speaking, but because they were. Then I noticed a little girl. At the beginning of the lesson, she had hardly looked up from her desk nor had she volunteered or spoken much. Now she quietly stood, walked over to a classmate, and asked:

“What animal do you like?”

It was the first time she had spoken on her own. No applause followed. No one else probably noticed. I did.

Before the bell rang, we ended the lesson with our Chinese class chant. The children laughed and jumped, shouting the final sentence so loudly that I was certain the hallway could hear us. Somewhere in the middle of all that laughter, I forgot I was there for an interview.

The lesson ended. I gathered my materials and was getting ready to leave when one of the children reached for my hand. “Teacher,” she asked, “will you come back next time?” I smiled and wished I had known the answer. I had barely stepped into the hallway when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around to see the Head of Curriculum. He smiled and said:

“As a teacher, I learned so much from your lesson today.”

I stood there for a few seconds, taking it in. Only later did I understand why that sentence stayed with me. It didn't change the outcome. But it reminded me that something real had happened in that classroom. And I would need to remember that later.

Three: The Final Round—When We Stopped Talking About Education

The days that followed were busy and strangely long. We began discussing salary, housing allowance, and reference checks. I was finishing my work at the end of the school year while refreshing my inbox again and again. Finally, I received the message: the Board wanted to meet with me for a final interview. By then, I had almost allowed myself to imagine August. Standing in that classroom, teaching those children.

On the day of the interview, I put on a black-and-white suit and walked into the meeting room. When the door opened, I paused. The principal was not there. Neither was the Head of Curriculum who had encouraged me throughout the process. Instead I was facing fifteen members of a School Board sat around a large round conference table, quietly looking at me.

In the earlier interviews, we had talked about education. This time, no one asked about my teaching.

One of the board members asked: “You're Taiwanese. Why don't you teach at Taipei School in Ho Chi Minh City? ”

I shared my educational philosophy and explained that I wanted to teach in a student-centered environment grounded in inquiry-based learning. As I answered, he kept his head down, looking at the documents in front of him. I didn't know whether my answer addressed what he was really asking.

When I finished, he didn't respond, but simply looked up and asked the same question again, this time in a hurried tone. “Why not Taipei School?” 

I paused. 

Even today, I still don't know what answer he was actually looking for.

Four: When I Became My Own Student

On June 25, the email arrived.

Thank you for your interest... We regret to inform you...

This time, I didn't close it right away. I just sat there, staring at the screen for a while after I reached the end. Of course I was disappointed, but what truly hurt wasn't simply losing a job. It was knowing that after sixty-nine days of investing so much time, energy, and hope, I still hadn't made it to the finish line.

For the next few days, I replayed the final interview in my mind. Every answer. Every pause. Every sentence. I searched for what had gone wrong—the turning point, the small detail that might have changed the outcome. Maybe I should have answered differently. Maybe I should have explained myself better. Maybe I had missed something.

Slowly, almost without noticing, I stopped questioning the interview. I started questioning myself. The degrees I had once been proud of. My teaching license. Years of teaching in international schools. The cross-cultural language exchange programs I had built. Achievements I had once been proud of began to feel strangely insignificant. Looking back now, I can see the difference. I wasn't reflecting. I was negating myself.

What caught me off guard was the role I had suddenly found myself playing. For years, I had been the teacher—the one kneeling beside a child who had fallen. “It's okay. Let's try again.” The one reminding a student after a disappointing test: “One test score cannot define what you're capable of.” The one helping children find reasons to believe in themselves when they had stopped believing. I always thought those words were something I gave to my students. Until one day, I realized: I was the one who needed to hear them.

Somewhere during those sixty-nine days, I had quietly become the student. The one desperate to get the answer right. I rewrote my résumé. Again, practiced my introduction. Again, edited thank-you emails late into the night. Again, I was trying to shape myself into the candidate I thought an ideal school was looking for. I believed that if I prepared carefully enough, worked hard enough, and got everything right, the outcome would eventually prove that I was enough.

But reality didn't follow the script. Sometimes there is no better sentence to rewrite, or another answer to perfect. Sometimes, all that's left is an email that takes less than thirty seconds to read—and the much harder work of deciding what it means.

Five: Finding the Evidence

There was a sentence I had said to my students so many times that it had almost become instinctive: “When you face a problem, don't rush to find the answer. Look for the evidence first.”

After the rejection email, I realized I was the one who needed that lesson. So I began looking for evidence too. Not for someone to tell me, “You're actually good enough.” I began to look for what had actually happened during those sixty-nine days.

I remembered the classroom, the laughter, the children who had forgotten they were supposed to be meeting a guest teacher. I remembered the principal putting aside her role as an observer and joining the animal guessing game. I remembered the girl who had barely spoken at the beginning of the lesson, then walked across the room and asked a classmate her first question in Chinese. I remembered standing in the hallway after the demo lesson when the Scottish Head of Curriculum looked at me and said:“As a teacher, I learned so much from your lesson today.”

A few days later, someone from Human Resources wrote to me privately: “Personally, I always felt you were a great fit for the position.”

None of those words changed the outcome. They weren't meant to. But they reminded me of something I had almost forgotten: An outcome can determine whether you get a particular job, but it cannot erase what has already happened. Being turned down didn't mean I wasn't capable, It meant one opportunity had come to an end. Those were not the same thing.

And I kept moving forward. I kept learning, added another endorsement to my U.S. teaching license, and began pursuing an IB Educator Certificate. But more importantly, I stopped asking: “How can I become the teacher they were looking for?” And began asking: “What kind of teacher do I want to continue being?”

The questions were different, so were the answers.

Epilogue: A Classroom with Only One Student

One afternoon, I sat quietly at my desk, staring into space. For the first time in weeks, I stopped trying to figure out what had gone wrong. I simply sat there. And in that silence, I realized: I needed to be taught too. Only this time, the student wasn't someone else. It was me.

So I began to treat myself the way I had always treated my students. I didn't force myself to bounce back. I didn't rush to send out another application either. I simply made myself a cup of tea and sat quietly, the way I would sit beside a child who had cried until there were no words left.

Then I told myself: “You've done well. This time, we don't have to be perfect.”

I hadn't become a good teacher because one school chose me. And I hadn't suddenly lost everything I had built over the years because one school rejected me. Those sixty-nine days didn't give me a job, but they led me back to a teacher I had almost forgotten— a teacher who had spent years teaching children to believe in themselves, and who, finally, learned to say those words to herself.