Work. Well, I have a song about a friendly pirate ship rocking on the sea (rocking on the sea, rocking on the sea) stuck in my head. I have now taught peek-a-boo to five or six kids in my class, who all seem to find it just riveting. In fact, one gets so worked up that she routinely pokes herself in the eye. Cute, though. Also there is a kid who bites. I'm kind of afraid of him, which is odd, given that he is barely 12 months old and more or less comes up to my knee. Still - bloodthirsty babies. It is creepy.
But, yeah, all things considered, work is good.
Meanwhile, I have decided to teach myself German from a book that professes to allow you to teach yourself German. So far, it is a silly book and I do not appreciate its patronizing tone. I mean, think about it: what sorts of people are likely to want to teach themselves a language? Travel-y sorts of businesspeople, maybe, and nerds. In any case, of at least reasonable intelligence. I can't really think of a situation where the sort of person who doesn't know what a verb is would also be the sort of person who would elect to teach him- or herself a language.
Ergo, teach-yourself-German book, you are silly. Stop explaining to me what verbs are, because I already know. And enough with your little language learning tips. Obviously I should group vocabulary into theme-related lists. You know what else could work? You could just present them that way and then the little side box with the cartoon exclamation point would be unnecessary. The other issue I have is with the pronunciation. Would it have killed them to learn the phonetic alphabet prior to writing the book? I'm pretty sure that in the end, it would have required a lot less effort than thinking up descriptions like "purse your lips like you just ate a lemon, and then say a long 'eeee' sound but with your lips still pursed, kind of as if you actually wanted to say 'ooo', as in 'boo!'". Um, yeah. Whatever.
Nonetheless, I shall persevere because I think my brain is slipping slowly into a coma. Although... I'm pretty sure I remember saying the same thing about teaching English after having been in college. And now my job makes teaching English look positively fascinating. Sighhh. In some ways, it is nice to have free time and be able to spend long stretches of whole hours in a row just not thinking. In other ways, sometimes I think: if I have to dig some kid's half-eaten macaroni out of the sink drain while listening to people discuss nail salons for one more minute, I will break the "Wiggles" CD over someone's head (probably my own). Could be worse, though. Next thing you know I'll be working at a gas station, inhaling gas fumes, and then my brain will *really* be in a coma.
Fun fact: when we were in grade school, they used to threaten us with "you'll end up pumping gas when you grow up!" as in, "do your homework or...". But it transpires that in almost all of the other states that are not NJ, people pump their own gas anyway. I always kind of wondered... in other states, what do grade school teachers threaten kids with? My bet is McDonald's.
Anyway, on that note... bedtime.
Tuesday, September 29
Tuesday, September 15
The working world
I have recently taken a job at Kaplan as an MCAT teacher. Because working full time wasn't enough and I was bored? Because I so missed physics and orgo and all that nonsense that I could not keep myself away for another moment? Because I want to foster the development of other evil young pre-meds? Hm... boh. 'Tis a mystery.
(Okay, fine, actually, it's not. It's so that I can put "teaching MCAT prep" on the 'activities since graduation' part of med school applications. Yeah, we pre-meds are very utilitarian. And evil. Watch out. For one, we may be teaching your Kaplan course, and it's probably not because we care.)
In any case, now I'm in their training program which is six kinds of boring and involves marking up your Teacher's Book with four different colors of highlighter. I kid you not. Each color means something different but I probably can't tell you what because it is a Top Secret Kaplan Strategy and I signed my freedom of speech away on a pdf file. Anyway. The point is that I'm preparing for my next training session and I am bored, so instead of exchanging the pink highlighter for the orange one and soldiering on, I will resurrect the time-honored tradition of procrastination and share with you my impressions on the working world. (If anyone is reading beyond this point, that is kind of sad. Did you know they publish books to occupy your time? Books by people who write well and actually have something to say. I recommend looking some of those up. Unless you're procrastinating, too. In that case, by all means...)
Firstly, on commuting. I have a random piece of advice for you. If it ever comes up as a choice, like when you are buying a house or something, I would suggest living in a place that is east of where you will work - that way you will not have the sun in your eyes when you drive. My parents did not think of this and as I am back at home living with them, mammone-style, I enjoy the sun in my eyes both ways. Probably this will contribute to blindness and wrinkling. Yay.
In the same vein, route 78 east is interesting in the mornings. It is like bumper-to-bumper traffic, but moving at 70 miles per hour. When I was learning to drive (a process that spanned from age 16 to roughly age 22), this used to freak me out and I never went on it. Post-Italy, I'm all ho-hum, eating my toast while merging from the ramp (or whatever that bit of road is called). (Side note: why is it that I never manage to eat meals sitting down at a table like normal people?) Also, I really should record the story of driving in Italy at some point - it involved a whole new level of ineptitude on my part. Perhaps this weekend...
Speaking of which: on weekends... after four years of round-the-clock, every-day-of-the-week studying/work in college and one year of you-must-be-available-14-hours-a-day indentured servitude as a teacher, I think I have acquired a job that allows me to glimpse at what the lives of "normal" people must be like. Essentially, you go to work during the week and come back and are kind of tired so you don't accomplish much at home, and then on the weekends you can do other stuff. It is interesting. I have not yet decided if I like it. In any case, it doesn't matter, because now I have acquired a second job and effectively done away with the free time. It's all like Erin Brokovich, single-mother-supporting-her-family over here, except I have no children and also I don't look like Julia Roberts. (Pity.)
On the work itself. Well, today a little guy crawled up my leg so I picked him up and he clapped and smiled and smelled like baby powder and was generally adorable. I wandered over to the other side of the room to grab a tissue to wipe his nose and caught sight of some pictures with a caption/sign reading something along the lines of "to utilize our creativity expression, we used musical instruments to express ourselves creatively", which made me cry inside. That's pretty much how my work day goes. Also, lots of children often cry and it is sad. Perhaps I will start singing that "raindrops on roses" song like in the movie with the von Trapps. This seemed to work even in the most dire of situations (e.g. thunderstorms, wicked stepmothers, Nazi invasions, etc.). Or maybe the "spoonful of sugar" one. It will be like Julie Andrews but with a crappy singing voice and minus the classy British accent and seventy billion octaves' worth of range. Or whatever it is that musician types call that sort of thing with the octaves and people's voices.
Yeah, now I'm making even less sense than I was when I started. Back to Kaplan's Oh-So-Secret test-prep strategies. (Gag me. Oh, med school. The things I do for you. Really.)
(Okay, fine, actually, it's not. It's so that I can put "teaching MCAT prep" on the 'activities since graduation' part of med school applications. Yeah, we pre-meds are very utilitarian. And evil. Watch out. For one, we may be teaching your Kaplan course, and it's probably not because we care.)
In any case, now I'm in their training program which is six kinds of boring and involves marking up your Teacher's Book with four different colors of highlighter. I kid you not. Each color means something different but I probably can't tell you what because it is a Top Secret Kaplan Strategy and I signed my freedom of speech away on a pdf file. Anyway. The point is that I'm preparing for my next training session and I am bored, so instead of exchanging the pink highlighter for the orange one and soldiering on, I will resurrect the time-honored tradition of procrastination and share with you my impressions on the working world. (If anyone is reading beyond this point, that is kind of sad. Did you know they publish books to occupy your time? Books by people who write well and actually have something to say. I recommend looking some of those up. Unless you're procrastinating, too. In that case, by all means...)
Firstly, on commuting. I have a random piece of advice for you. If it ever comes up as a choice, like when you are buying a house or something, I would suggest living in a place that is east of where you will work - that way you will not have the sun in your eyes when you drive. My parents did not think of this and as I am back at home living with them, mammone-style, I enjoy the sun in my eyes both ways. Probably this will contribute to blindness and wrinkling. Yay.
In the same vein, route 78 east is interesting in the mornings. It is like bumper-to-bumper traffic, but moving at 70 miles per hour. When I was learning to drive (a process that spanned from age 16 to roughly age 22), this used to freak me out and I never went on it. Post-Italy, I'm all ho-hum, eating my toast while merging from the ramp (or whatever that bit of road is called). (Side note: why is it that I never manage to eat meals sitting down at a table like normal people?) Also, I really should record the story of driving in Italy at some point - it involved a whole new level of ineptitude on my part. Perhaps this weekend...
Speaking of which: on weekends... after four years of round-the-clock, every-day-of-the-week studying/work in college and one year of you-must-be-available-14-hours-a-day indentured servitude as a teacher, I think I have acquired a job that allows me to glimpse at what the lives of "normal" people must be like. Essentially, you go to work during the week and come back and are kind of tired so you don't accomplish much at home, and then on the weekends you can do other stuff. It is interesting. I have not yet decided if I like it. In any case, it doesn't matter, because now I have acquired a second job and effectively done away with the free time. It's all like Erin Brokovich, single-mother-supporting-her-family over here, except I have no children and also I don't look like Julia Roberts. (Pity.)
On the work itself. Well, today a little guy crawled up my leg so I picked him up and he clapped and smiled and smelled like baby powder and was generally adorable. I wandered over to the other side of the room to grab a tissue to wipe his nose and caught sight of some pictures with a caption/sign reading something along the lines of "to utilize our creativity expression, we used musical instruments to express ourselves creatively", which made me cry inside. That's pretty much how my work day goes. Also, lots of children often cry and it is sad. Perhaps I will start singing that "raindrops on roses" song like in the movie with the von Trapps. This seemed to work even in the most dire of situations (e.g. thunderstorms, wicked stepmothers, Nazi invasions, etc.). Or maybe the "spoonful of sugar" one. It will be like Julie Andrews but with a crappy singing voice and minus the classy British accent and seventy billion octaves' worth of range. Or whatever it is that musician types call that sort of thing with the octaves and people's voices.
Yeah, now I'm making even less sense than I was when I started. Back to Kaplan's Oh-So-Secret test-prep strategies. (Gag me. Oh, med school. The things I do for you. Really.)
Saturday, September 12
Job
So, now I work in a daycare (as a result of that interview from the last post, in case anyone's keeping count). This is also why I have been all MIA since then. Anyway, having worked there for two weeks, I have: learned the names of approximately 60 children in five different age groups, identified all of the convenient sources of caffeine in the school's vicinity, absorbed about three quarts of baby saliva into my clothes, and contracted what will probably be the first of many sore throats from the wee ones.
Actually, this could be a good public service announcement: this is what a bachelor's degree from a reasonably good college will do for you these days, kids - hourly wages for a job that involves absorbing a lot of baby saliva into your clothes. So, really, you could go ahead and skip the bachelor's degree. The girl in the room across from mine has some kind of associate's degree and I'm pretty sure the one who was helping out in my room yesterday probably had trouble finishing high school.
That's mean. I'm sorry.
And I'm not even really bitter about the whole thing, to tell you (who?) the truth. I actually like this job a lot more than I thought I would. There is a lot of diaper-changing and nose-wiping and spoon-feeding and hand-washing and rocking to sleep and sometimes it is tedious and sometimes it is chaotic but when a crying kid reaches up his arms at you and puts his head down on your shoulder the moment you've picked him up... well, let's just say evolution has done quite a number on us girls and it must fulfil some kind of very gooey, mommy-type instinct.
All in all, I would say it evens out. For example, today I was with the pre-schoolers almost all day. Their usual routine seems to involve a lot of running around and chasing each other and hitting each other over the head with blocks and then whining about it. On the plus side, they can feed themselves, but they were an irritating experience overall. For the last hour, though, I got sent to the infant room and rocked a six-month-old to sleep and she wiggled around there and smelled like baby powder and was delightful in general. Also the palmar-grasp reflex is a lot of fun. (There - that's that bachelor's degree coming through for you. If your education did not encompass reflexes in early infant development, google it. There should be some funny videos out there, because in theory babies can support their entire bodyweight just hanging onto something.)
The only trouble is that on occasion, I feel slightly over-educated and non-fitting-in. Most of the time I don't mind it. It's fine. We're changing diapers and feeding kids; knowing what the palmar grasp reflex is and why it develops is not really necessary. Every once in a while, though, when I am tired and cranky and a lot of kids are crying, I get annoyed. For example, the other day I received the following memo in my "cubby" (what am I, five?): "all teacher's must submit self-bios so that we can proofread them before parent's night". Now. Is that not even the slightest bit poetic in its irony? If you have no idea what I am talking about, read the next paragraph. If the part of you that understands English is already hurting a little bit, skip to the one after (or, alternatively, go do something productive with your time).
The memo made me a little annoyed at first: they dare to suggest that they're going to proofread what *I* write when *that* is how *they* write? But then I just laughed. I could have forgiven the misplaced apostrophe in "parent's". Okay, so it sounds like there is only one parent coming and to me it's a little grating, but... I get that the apostrophe at the very end of the word can be disconcerting to some (should be "parents'"). What really kills me is the "teacher's" as plural. Especially when "self-bios" doesn't seem to give them any trouble. Proofread, mon oeuil. Yes, I am often a snob. But you have to admit that here they were really asking for it.
Anyway. I have fallen in love with my regular kids and look forward to seeing them every day and will probably be happy working here if I manage not to smack any of my colleagues and/or superiors over the head with a container of wet-wipes for their egregious abuse of the English language and/or child development theory. Speaking of that last... I will leave you with a conversation that I witnessed yesterday with the toddlers.
How NOT to teach a foreign language:
Teacher: So, did you like that book about the dinosaur at bedtime?
Kids: Yeah!
Teacher: Hey, does anyone know how to say "bed" in Spanish?
Kids: *blank stares*
Teacher: It's "cama"! Can you say "cama"?
Kids (dutifully): Cama.
Teacher: Good job! Now you know how to say bed in Spanish!
Child: What's Spanish?
Actually, this could be a good public service announcement: this is what a bachelor's degree from a reasonably good college will do for you these days, kids - hourly wages for a job that involves absorbing a lot of baby saliva into your clothes. So, really, you could go ahead and skip the bachelor's degree. The girl in the room across from mine has some kind of associate's degree and I'm pretty sure the one who was helping out in my room yesterday probably had trouble finishing high school.
That's mean. I'm sorry.
And I'm not even really bitter about the whole thing, to tell you (who?) the truth. I actually like this job a lot more than I thought I would. There is a lot of diaper-changing and nose-wiping and spoon-feeding and hand-washing and rocking to sleep and sometimes it is tedious and sometimes it is chaotic but when a crying kid reaches up his arms at you and puts his head down on your shoulder the moment you've picked him up... well, let's just say evolution has done quite a number on us girls and it must fulfil some kind of very gooey, mommy-type instinct.
All in all, I would say it evens out. For example, today I was with the pre-schoolers almost all day. Their usual routine seems to involve a lot of running around and chasing each other and hitting each other over the head with blocks and then whining about it. On the plus side, they can feed themselves, but they were an irritating experience overall. For the last hour, though, I got sent to the infant room and rocked a six-month-old to sleep and she wiggled around there and smelled like baby powder and was delightful in general. Also the palmar-grasp reflex is a lot of fun. (There - that's that bachelor's degree coming through for you. If your education did not encompass reflexes in early infant development, google it. There should be some funny videos out there, because in theory babies can support their entire bodyweight just hanging onto something.)
The only trouble is that on occasion, I feel slightly over-educated and non-fitting-in. Most of the time I don't mind it. It's fine. We're changing diapers and feeding kids; knowing what the palmar grasp reflex is and why it develops is not really necessary. Every once in a while, though, when I am tired and cranky and a lot of kids are crying, I get annoyed. For example, the other day I received the following memo in my "cubby" (what am I, five?): "all teacher's must submit self-bios so that we can proofread them before parent's night". Now. Is that not even the slightest bit poetic in its irony? If you have no idea what I am talking about, read the next paragraph. If the part of you that understands English is already hurting a little bit, skip to the one after (or, alternatively, go do something productive with your time).
The memo made me a little annoyed at first: they dare to suggest that they're going to proofread what *I* write when *that* is how *they* write? But then I just laughed. I could have forgiven the misplaced apostrophe in "parent's". Okay, so it sounds like there is only one parent coming and to me it's a little grating, but... I get that the apostrophe at the very end of the word can be disconcerting to some (should be "parents'"). What really kills me is the "teacher's" as plural. Especially when "self-bios" doesn't seem to give them any trouble. Proofread, mon oeuil. Yes, I am often a snob. But you have to admit that here they were really asking for it.
Anyway. I have fallen in love with my regular kids and look forward to seeing them every day and will probably be happy working here if I manage not to smack any of my colleagues and/or superiors over the head with a container of wet-wipes for their egregious abuse of the English language and/or child development theory. Speaking of that last... I will leave you with a conversation that I witnessed yesterday with the toddlers.
How NOT to teach a foreign language:
Teacher: So, did you like that book about the dinosaur at bedtime?
Kids: Yeah!
Teacher: Hey, does anyone know how to say "bed" in Spanish?
Kids: *blank stares*
Teacher: It's "cama"! Can you say "cama"?
Kids (dutifully): Cama.
Teacher: Good job! Now you know how to say bed in Spanish!
Child: What's Spanish?
Monday, September 7
Interview
My interview clothes and I have a history together. I wore them to two research conferences as an undergrad. And also on the day I defended my thesis. Perhaps this is why they remind me of research, even though I've worn them to other job interviews more recently - most notably the one that got me my last job (*cough* position of indentured servitude). Anyway, after a year of lying dormant in Italy, Evil Competitive Pre-med Self is the one who stalks up the steps to the latest interview (confidence courtesy of said interview clothes) - without even tripping! huzzah! - with half-formed thoughts of methodology and p-values swimming vaguely in her brain.
I greet the lady at the door with a confident smile and a firm handshake. I take the seat she offers me and sit with my back as straight as it goes; while she leaves the room to get something, I skim idly through my resume and try to remember my stock responses for interview questions. There's the two-sentence research summary... the chronological volunteer-work history... Oh, look, and that time I was a supervisor at that other thing... better mention that. Leadership or whatever.
"So, what's your previous experience with children?" she asks upon her return.
I start with the most recent (indentured servitude) and then start to summarize the research thing, "... focusing on early cognitive development..." I'm fairly sure I lost her somewhere around the word cognitive, though, so I trail off slightly and then wrap it all up with a bright, "and some babysitting in high school!" She perks up. There we go.
"That's great," she says kind of vaguely, apparently still re-grouping, "uh-huh, so... " you can see she's thinking. It looks kind of painful. This is why when I interview people, I always think up the questions in advance. Or used to, anyway. When I interviewed people. Back when I had a real job. She breaks through my little daydream with her next question: "... do you know how to change diapers?"
She opens her eyes wide and looks at me expectantly. I must confess, I am somewhat taken aback. Does she really get that many people applying to work in a daycare who don't know how to change diapers? For that matter, there is nothing particularly complex about changing a diaper. I am pretty sure that most reasonably intelligent people would be able to figure it out if suddenly placed in a situation that urgently required them to do so.
"Uh... yes. Of course," I can't help adding.
"Great!" she enthuses, before beginning to shuffle through some paperwork.
I like kids. Really, I do. But sometimes, I miss some things about before - when I was a student and I had other jobs. Mostly, I miss having a job where people were impressed when you did something like, say, figure out a new way to analyze the data on SPSS (not that that happened to me very frequently) or churned out 10 pages in half as many hours (that did). People when being impressed when you confirm your ability to properly operate the sticky tabs on a diaper is just not the same.
I greet the lady at the door with a confident smile and a firm handshake. I take the seat she offers me and sit with my back as straight as it goes; while she leaves the room to get something, I skim idly through my resume and try to remember my stock responses for interview questions. There's the two-sentence research summary... the chronological volunteer-work history... Oh, look, and that time I was a supervisor at that other thing... better mention that. Leadership or whatever.
"So, what's your previous experience with children?" she asks upon her return.
I start with the most recent (indentured servitude) and then start to summarize the research thing, "... focusing on early cognitive development..." I'm fairly sure I lost her somewhere around the word cognitive, though, so I trail off slightly and then wrap it all up with a bright, "and some babysitting in high school!" She perks up. There we go.
"That's great," she says kind of vaguely, apparently still re-grouping, "uh-huh, so... " you can see she's thinking. It looks kind of painful. This is why when I interview people, I always think up the questions in advance. Or used to, anyway. When I interviewed people. Back when I had a real job. She breaks through my little daydream with her next question: "... do you know how to change diapers?"
She opens her eyes wide and looks at me expectantly. I must confess, I am somewhat taken aback. Does she really get that many people applying to work in a daycare who don't know how to change diapers? For that matter, there is nothing particularly complex about changing a diaper. I am pretty sure that most reasonably intelligent people would be able to figure it out if suddenly placed in a situation that urgently required them to do so.
"Uh... yes. Of course," I can't help adding.
"Great!" she enthuses, before beginning to shuffle through some paperwork.
I like kids. Really, I do. But sometimes, I miss some things about before - when I was a student and I had other jobs. Mostly, I miss having a job where people were impressed when you did something like, say, figure out a new way to analyze the data on SPSS (not that that happened to me very frequently) or churned out 10 pages in half as many hours (that did). People when being impressed when you confirm your ability to properly operate the sticky tabs on a diaper is just not the same.
Tuesday, September 1
You know what I really miss about Italy?
And it's not the food. Don't get me wrong - the lack of pizza/rucola/parmiggiano/crudo/etc. here is all kinds of tragic. But what I really miss right now is being a madrelingua inglese. It gives you access to your own little job market, one that you share only with the other expats (and even then - only expats that have the proper certification). Here negli Stati Uniti most of us speak English, and so that does not compel people to hire me, and this leads to an unfortunate state of affairs known as unemployment.
When you're in college, people tell you 'take classes that appeal to you! follow your interests!' and it's all very rosy. And depending on which college you go to, you can take some pretty cool stuff. For example, at my particular Prestigious Institution of Higher Learning you could take a language called Khmer (where do they even speak that?), a class called "Mystical Mushrooms and Magical Molds" (or something along those lines), spider biology, game theory, intro to wines (also intro to beers, but only if you passed intro to wines), and a whole slew of phys ed classes ranging from 'intro to swedish massage' to fencing and whatever you call it when people shoot guns. The thing is, though, that it doesn't always turn out to be very useful (for example, unless you go into entomology as a field, how many times in your life is knowing the circadian rhythm of a spider actually going to be of use?).
Which is fine. It's fine to have a lot of random useless knowledge. The problem is that it is also kind of good to have some practical, actually-applicable-to-something kind of knowledge, too. My father, in particular, feels very strongly about this.
"Well, it's because you have a useless degree," he informs me. We are conversing about my current (lack of) job options. "If you had learned something useful like, say, how to build a bridge, you wouldn't be in this situation."
I consider this. I am not really a bridge-building type of person.
"Or welding," he adds.
Welding? What, like with metal and fire and stuff?
"Yes, welding," he insists, even though I haven't spoken, "That's the problem these days: they don't teach you useful stuff like welding anymore."
Indeed. Well, I think it is safe to say that unless another world war breaks out and I am forced to take over from the menfolk because they have all joined the Navy, and work in a factory like Rosie the Riveter or whatever, I would probably never have considered a line of work that involved welding, anyway. And even in the World War III scenario, I probably would have volunteered for other, less fire-related jobs. Like growing turnips, or knitting socks. Darning socks. Whatever it is that one does with socks.
I must have raised my eyebrows or something because: "well, what have you learned how to do?" he challenges me. I think for a moment. Good question.
"Well, I can converse passably well in three foreign languages..." (okay, admittedly, I already knew one, so that's not very impressive and he knows it), "... and I know how to create transgenic mice... and how to calculate how much oxygen it would take to burn a certain amount of carbon... and I know Freud's opinion on a whole variety of topics... and the elements of a successful vaccine campaign..." in my head I am running through all of the myriad classes I crammed into my schedule as an undergrad, looking for something that he would think was useful (ability to comment on the significance of the Dance of the Seven Veils in "Salome"? no. extensive knowledge of the issue of maternal mortality in developing countries? meh. probably not. ability to tell you all about cognitive development and spatial relations? definitely no). I am getting a bit desperate, so I go for the next thing that comes to mind, "... also I can read medieval Catalan pretty well... even though I don't actually speak Catalan." Pfft. Nice work there, Self.
It's his turn to raise his eyebrows. He thinks for a moment.
"Maybe you should work for the CIA. You know, with the languages and stuff."
I reflect upon this. Yes. It would be kind of like in a Dan Brown book. Or like Indiana Jones, except not with the snakes and stuff. Or... something. Yeah, come to think of it... probably it would not be much like that at all.
And that's the trouble with my degree. I think it is because we are just a little too theoretical, over at [Prestigious Institute of Higher Learning]. It's not that our degrees are in completely useless subjects (I, for one, did not take a single one of the classes I mentioned in that second paragraph there). It's just that we learn the theoretical stuff that, in theory, does relate to something useful... but we don't learn the connection to said useful stuff.
For example, I can tell you all about what a PCR analysis tells you and what the different components are and everything, but can I actually physically run one? No. I know all about how the brain encodes language and how language can affect your cognitive development in other areas, but had I ever once designed a language curriculum prior to teaching this year? Nope. I can even tell you exactly what your kidneys are doing on a cellular - even molecular - level, but would I know what to do if they weren't doing it properly? Still no. So that's what's missing.
In the meantime, if no one hires me this week, perhaps I will go learn how to weld things. I'm sure it is a useful life skill. Failing that, I will use my medieval Catalan philology skills and my rudimentary knowledge of Reggiana dialect (yay Arzan!) to become a spy.
When you're in college, people tell you 'take classes that appeal to you! follow your interests!' and it's all very rosy. And depending on which college you go to, you can take some pretty cool stuff. For example, at my particular Prestigious Institution of Higher Learning you could take a language called Khmer (where do they even speak that?), a class called "Mystical Mushrooms and Magical Molds" (or something along those lines), spider biology, game theory, intro to wines (also intro to beers, but only if you passed intro to wines), and a whole slew of phys ed classes ranging from 'intro to swedish massage' to fencing and whatever you call it when people shoot guns. The thing is, though, that it doesn't always turn out to be very useful (for example, unless you go into entomology as a field, how many times in your life is knowing the circadian rhythm of a spider actually going to be of use?).
Which is fine. It's fine to have a lot of random useless knowledge. The problem is that it is also kind of good to have some practical, actually-applicable-to-something kind of knowledge, too. My father, in particular, feels very strongly about this.
"Well, it's because you have a useless degree," he informs me. We are conversing about my current (lack of) job options. "If you had learned something useful like, say, how to build a bridge, you wouldn't be in this situation."
I consider this. I am not really a bridge-building type of person.
"Or welding," he adds.
Welding? What, like with metal and fire and stuff?
"Yes, welding," he insists, even though I haven't spoken, "That's the problem these days: they don't teach you useful stuff like welding anymore."
Indeed. Well, I think it is safe to say that unless another world war breaks out and I am forced to take over from the menfolk because they have all joined the Navy, and work in a factory like Rosie the Riveter or whatever, I would probably never have considered a line of work that involved welding, anyway. And even in the World War III scenario, I probably would have volunteered for other, less fire-related jobs. Like growing turnips, or knitting socks. Darning socks. Whatever it is that one does with socks.
I must have raised my eyebrows or something because: "well, what have you learned how to do?" he challenges me. I think for a moment. Good question.
"Well, I can converse passably well in three foreign languages..." (okay, admittedly, I already knew one, so that's not very impressive and he knows it), "... and I know how to create transgenic mice... and how to calculate how much oxygen it would take to burn a certain amount of carbon... and I know Freud's opinion on a whole variety of topics... and the elements of a successful vaccine campaign..." in my head I am running through all of the myriad classes I crammed into my schedule as an undergrad, looking for something that he would think was useful (ability to comment on the significance of the Dance of the Seven Veils in "Salome"? no. extensive knowledge of the issue of maternal mortality in developing countries? meh. probably not. ability to tell you all about cognitive development and spatial relations? definitely no). I am getting a bit desperate, so I go for the next thing that comes to mind, "... also I can read medieval Catalan pretty well... even though I don't actually speak Catalan." Pfft. Nice work there, Self.
It's his turn to raise his eyebrows. He thinks for a moment.
"Maybe you should work for the CIA. You know, with the languages and stuff."
I reflect upon this. Yes. It would be kind of like in a Dan Brown book. Or like Indiana Jones, except not with the snakes and stuff. Or... something. Yeah, come to think of it... probably it would not be much like that at all.
And that's the trouble with my degree. I think it is because we are just a little too theoretical, over at [Prestigious Institute of Higher Learning]. It's not that our degrees are in completely useless subjects (I, for one, did not take a single one of the classes I mentioned in that second paragraph there). It's just that we learn the theoretical stuff that, in theory, does relate to something useful... but we don't learn the connection to said useful stuff.
For example, I can tell you all about what a PCR analysis tells you and what the different components are and everything, but can I actually physically run one? No. I know all about how the brain encodes language and how language can affect your cognitive development in other areas, but had I ever once designed a language curriculum prior to teaching this year? Nope. I can even tell you exactly what your kidneys are doing on a cellular - even molecular - level, but would I know what to do if they weren't doing it properly? Still no. So that's what's missing.
In the meantime, if no one hires me this week, perhaps I will go learn how to weld things. I'm sure it is a useful life skill. Failing that, I will use my medieval Catalan philology skills and my rudimentary knowledge of Reggiana dialect (yay Arzan!) to become a spy.
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