I was horribly nervous for my interview for the Martin Dale award. My stomach churned, my hands shook, my voice trembled. I also forgot things, one of which was the research proposal I'd printed to show the committee. I discovered it later that night, lost among my maps, and frantically emailed the dean asking if they would still accept the exhibit for consideration. The reply — "Yes, but can you bring it over now? We're about to decide" — arrived in the middle of a German exam. I tore out of the art museum and skidded into Wu Dining Hall just in time, huffing and puffing, to consign the forgotten submission to the deliberating group.
The most obvious foreign term this story evokes might be schadenfreude, pleasure at the misfortune of others — in this case, mine. However, there exists another, even more illuminating expression. Denis Diderot coined the phrase l'esprit d'escalier, or the "wit of the staircase," to refer to the agonizing phenomenon in which one thinks of a clever repartee just after the conversation has ended. Apparently, Enlightenment-era drawing rooms were located in a house's upper stories, and the moment of inspiration came on the way out. The Collins Robert French Dictionary further translates avoir l'esprit d'escalier, to have — or perhaps suffer — the wit of the staircase, as characteristic of one who is "slow on the repartee" or possesses a "plodding mind."
Perhaps my interview scenario lacks the excitement of returning barbs, but it retains the main crux: finding the perfect response when it can no longer be given. After an interview I lie in bed late into the night, kept awake by a procession of unwelcome epiphanies that leave me eager to re-script every aspect of the encounter.
Anyone who's experienced bicker can commiserate. With less than 10 minutes to make an impression the stakes are high, and unfortunately, stupid responses to members' questions are the most memorable. It's inevitable that the creative, spunky answer revelatory of your scintillating personality will come to you while your mouth is full of pizza, as you sit in Frist mulling the session over afterwards.
Seniors might also wish for their own personal prompter to combat the unwelcome concern of the well-meaning yet obnoxious. Inquiries into plans for the coming year, staying power of relationships, and the state of the thesis range from touchy to taboo. It's often only after the beleaguered one has stopped fuming that he can put his finger on the retort guaranteed to put the nosy's nose out of joint.
Sometimes, however, one does get a second chance to have the last word. The Dale committee did allow me to correct my omission. Rejected from the Butler RCA applicant pool, I interviewed again for a Mathey college position; this time I knew exactly what to say and how to deliver it, having rehearsed the responses I'd previously flubbed. There's at least one Internet site, and probably many more, where people can post their own embarrassing stories and tardy responses. Sharing their wit of the staircase with the world allows them to revise history, to vindicate themselves even years after the incident.
It may be true that into every life a little speechlessness must fall. A few days after the Dale fiasco, I ran into my dean and apologized again, profusely, for my error. "What you forgot seemed much more important to you than it did to us," she told me. Perhaps the wit of the staircase is always this way: of greater consequence to the speaker's pride than the listener's pleasure, less necessary to supply a lacking repartee than to rewrite a moment of humiliation. Emily Stolzenberg is a sophomore from Morgantown, W. Va. She can be reached at estolzen@princeton.edu.
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