Like, a phrase that captures a life lesson that you’ve learned. Something that condenses the experience down into a phrase that you can use as a reminder, or maybe something you’ve shared with other people to help them.
For me, I’ve learned that you never realize that you’re living in happier times until they’re behind you.
What are some of yours?
I’ve had the same problem, and I think the difference is that interviews have additional constraints. It’s high pressure, the audience is presumably highly knowledgeable, and usually brevity is expected. Those constraints make it difficult to improvise a good explanation even in the best cases.
I’ve also taught classes on the subject so this made the difference obvious; if I had a lesson plan I could effectively explain a topic, but any sufficiently off-topic questions would be a crap shoot. I try not to over-elaborate (which I have a tendency to do) but that means accurately gauging the knowledge and experience of the audience. Sometimes in interviews this can go horribly wrong, I once realized halfway through that the interviewer and I had totally different conceptions of “microservice architecture” and I faltered with no idea of how to continue.
I guess this illustrates the fundamental difference in stance: the interviewer was acting in an oppositional role and “testing” me, it’s far from a casual discussion. Usually these interviews drill you with question after question. Sometimes, like in this case, it can be really combative. That puts anyone who’s not neurotypical at a huge disadvantage. I wouldn’t assume you don’t know the topic just because you can’t give a good explanation in that kind of environment. Programming as a field is notorious for doing a terrible job of testing for the actual knowledge needed for the role.
