by Ketan Sethi

Hello. I would like to share my recent experience with you all.

I appeared for the US visa interview at the US embassy about 3 weeks ago. I had completed the formalities for it about 2 months prior to that, and for a change I had no fears whatsoever. I am generally good at written English, but when it comes to oral English I don’t find myself very good. Off late I have been trying to improve upon it by regularly talking on phone with airtel and vodafone customer cares. Luckily I had some issues with airtel landline connections at home, so I was compelled to call them almost once or twice everyday for over 2 weeks. The only effort I put in was to make sure I am speaking in english, and I asked my wife to hit me on my head with a cricket bat if I ever switched back to hindi no matter what happens

Coming back to the US interview chapter, for a change I never had horror dreams or any fear of appearing for the interview, though I was damn sure I’ll be nervous when the ‘D’ day arrives. I decided I would give a call to my therapist and speak to him for a while before appearing for the interview, and in case I get stuck I will admit before the interviewer that I have a stammering habit and that I am a member of a speech clinic and trying to improve upon it. This would offload all the burden and fear from my shoulders, and that WILL help.

But even on the interview day I wasn’t nervous at all. I called up my therapist this strange problem ( that I am not nervous ). He asked me if I had fears of getting stuck, or failing to succeed at the interview, but I kept denying all that. I was like a free bird. I was not worried at all about the end result. In fact my wife (who is a normal speaker) was nervous and I was trying to calm her down. I had thought it would be the other way round

At the end all went off fine. An American interviewer spoke to us for about 7-8 minutes. For about 90% of the time he spoke to me and read all my documents etc. I was absolutely calm and patient… and whenever I thought I’ll ge stuck I applied articulation. Even my wife was pleasantly surprised the way I gave the interview. I was speaking even when it was not required :))

All in all it was a wonderful experience, and I am on cloud nine till date. I guess the only reason I was fearless was because of the following two reasons :

a) I WAS NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE END RESULT.

b) I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT MY SPEECH. I imagined the worst case scenario… at the most my speech will not go well and the interviewer would deny me the visa. So what?? Is that the end of life?? No it isn’t. Life is much more than getting a US visa.

That kept me motivated.