Hey Amy thanks so much for sharing your side of things, I’m sorry for not getting around to reply any sooner!

And yeah, those definitely sound like two very awkward — and very constructed — situations that doesn’t resemble anything from real life. Besides, the person passing the “acting” test as you call it could turn out to be a really bad team player. If you’re setting up the scene for playing pretend you might get someone who’s really just playing pretend. Doing tests on skills, to me, sends the signal the current level has to be “high enough” and in doing so it feels like there’s no room for learning something new or improving ourselves. We all have to start somewhere — we can’t just be amazing designers right off the boat.

Again thank you and have a great day!