Job Update - Summer 2008

I spent Monday through Wednesday in Taipei going to interviews, checking out the campus, collecting apt. leads, and visiting friends. Overall the trip was very successful, but it was exhausting too. Going to a new place and awkwardly groping around from one area to the next takes a tremendous amount of energy. When it's humid and 90+ degrees out, the weather just saps you by the end of the day. My efforts were rewarded though. I had four interviews and four offers.

An interview generally started with 15-20 minutes of questions about education and experience. Some of the schools had me fill out a special info sheet just for their files. All of the questions were clearly covered by my resume and cover letter. I found the sheets entirely obnoxious and I rewarded them by diligently and spitefully filling in every detail to the utmost of my ability. I probably averaged a half an hour for each sheet. One school had some moderately novel questions that still made me roll my eyes. They asked what I would do for a three hour class and gave me two dainty lines to explain. In list form I came up with at least 10 things and wrote five lines. 10 different things is about the minimum number of activities you could have for kindergarten kids over three hours. They lose interest if anything runs too long.

After that questions session I would do a demo. They'd give me a bit of material and told me about the class. I'd have 5-15 minutes to prepare and then I'd go teach. These are what served me so well. I rocked the demos like Jimmy Page back in the day. The secret is to pour yourself into the classroom. Give it all of your energy and engagement and you'll grab the kids attention every time. Once you've got them interested, teaching them is easy. There's far more to be said about this, but I'll leave it for another time. The demos all went well.

After the demo, the boss and I would go back to the office and discuss terms. Hours, starting date, pay and other expectations. Because I had a number of meetings, I could only take notes and ask questions. I had to defer commitment until after the last of my interviews.

Visiting the different schools, I started to feel like the could be grouped into two models. One set shoots for quantity and packs more students into the classrooms, charges less per student and pays less to the foreign teachers. Other schools go for quality and they control class sizes, charge more per student and pay more to get better teachers. The quality schools are a better environment for the students and the teachers, but they cost more to the parents. Because my interview and demo went well I am glad to say I found a job with one of these quality-oriented schools.

I'm still working on finding an apt. I'll try and pin one down this coming Monday or Tuesday. I'm looking for an apt. near my campus rather than my work. My campus is on the outskirts of town at the base of a forested mountain. It seems much more liveable than downtown Taipei. But everything is made fairly accessible by public transport. Traveling around on this trip, I listened to several hours of lecture on Heidegger by the most famous American Prof. in continental philosophy, Hubert Dreyfus. I found myself following them really well and they have me jazzed for my classes to begin.

That'll have to be enough for now, but I'll come back to excavate the ideas around 'energy in the classroom' a bit later.

Trip Photos

• 

Ok, this is 'Tine. I stayed at her place in St. Louis. Some crazy things happened there, but this is a family site so we'll leave that stuff for another time.

This is my Grandma Jean. She was at the wedding in Boston and I spent the night at her place in Lakeland while I was in Florida with my parents. There are some real characters at her residence there. One was really impressed with how black my hair is. She wasn't the first person to comment on my hair color, but I really don't find it so impressive. What do you think?

This is a really nice photo of Meredith in her wedding dress. She looked great. This was before the ceremony or reception so there was still some anxiety. Everything went off without any major trouble. Now if anyone tells you a story saying that I sat down on the women's side for the ceremony is almost entirely false.

This is some of the dancing and fun that went on at the reception. Had to focus on keeping Reuven happy. It was a great atmosphere.

That's Stu the photographer. Hopefully his photos will turn out well.

This is some more fun from the reception. The Rabbi on the left had us into his home for a meal when we arrived into Boston. He was particularly friendly.

Back Online

I'm set up to start posting again. My computer went down back in April and I haven't had robust equipment since then. I'm on a new computer now, though I may be out of access soon. I'll be moving to Taipei somewhat sooner than I expected.

Coming back I thought I would be staying here in Ming Jian for the rest of the summer. I've had to come to terms with expecting the unexpected. Moving to Taipei will present some good opportunities though. I can get myself situated before starting at university at the end of August. That includes finding a new job, finding an apartment, and finding new activities too. As long as I can get my work lined up, the other issues should get resolved fairly quickly.

My trip back to the States went very well for the most part. Visiting friends in DC was a blast. We had a cookout with burgers and salads - a good time was had by all. We traded war stories and future plans. I can't understate what an interesting group of friends I have. After that I went to my sister's wedding in Boston. It was a great success. Having never been to an Jewish Orthodox function before I was unsure of what to expect. Everyone was very welcoming which made me feel much more comfortable. The reception after the ceremony was about a joyful an event as I've ever attended. I had a lot of fun with the different ways we went about entertaining Reuven, my new brother-in-law.

After Boston, my parents and I went down to Naples, FL to relax for a week. That week went by quickly, but it was filled with sunny afternoons, good food, and good family. Together we returned to North Carolina, but after one day back I left for St. Louis on a long road trip. At this point I was couch surfing. Some friends from college happened to be staying in the very same apartment that I had lived in a few years ago. We caught up and had some wonderful St. Louis food. I revisited my favorite local study spot, Kaldi's Coffee. We went swimming and built a wooden rocking horse from a kit I bought here in Taiwan. My friend will give it to her niece and nephew. After St. Louis I was supposed to drive up to Cedar Rapids, but I had to cancel that leg of the trip due to the flood.

It's hard to overstate just how ridiculous the circumstances were that kept me from visiting my Grandma in Cedar Rapids. The day I'm supposed to drive up there, they had a 500-year flood with a crest 12 feet higher than anything in their recorded history (which goes back more than 150 years). That's right, 500 years! That about how long our continent has been known to western civilization. In theory, the two days I wanted to visit saw the worst flooding central east Iowa since before Cervantes and Shakespeare.

My outrage having been registered, I must note my skepticism over using these numbers. the statistical system used to categorize flood levels is based on the mistaken assumption that the risk of a flood of level X does not change from year to year. As the land changes, so does the risk of flood. Specifically, the intensity of the farming in the watershed can increase the run-off rate of the land and lead to accelerated accumulation in streams and rivers. The water that would have been slowed down by forest or grassland or wetland instead rushed off into the cedar river and it's tributaries. If all that water had been retarded it may have led to a longer duration of flood levels, but a lower crest. Calling this a 500-year flood may be accurate looking towards the past flood record, but it won't be accurate looking towards the future.

Instead of going to Iowa, I called another college friend in Ft. Wayne, IN. She was living with her parents there for a short while and they were kind enough to welcome me in. In fact they were extremely kind considering the circumstances of their weekend. The same day I arrived, their daughter came home from 6+ week stay in Italy. Additionally, the very next day they were throwing a big high school graduation party for their son. With all that going on, they didn't hesitate to welcome me into their home. I caught up with my friend and we swapped stories. I really enjoyed visiting with her parents too. I'd met them both during my time at Wash U. and they're very interesting people. After that, I spent a night in Kentucky with some friends I'd met in Taiwan. We talked and had dinner, but we didn't have time for much else. The next morning I left to drive home to North Carolina. 24 hours later I was flying back to Taiwan.

I should also note two great meetings I had with friends of my mother. I sat down with head of the philosophy department and we talked about the prospects for a career in academia. To be fair, they aren't all that bright. The profession isn't full of opportunities. There are relatively few journal spots for publication. Additionally, the publications system is organized in manner that often selects in favor of work that falls into step with a few popular schools of thought. There is a tendency to reject novel, challenging ideas. He didn't make the scene sound too inviting. But his honest assessment and his information will be a great help moving forward.

I also met with a local lawyer there who is a big supporter of the university and of the local democratic party. He had no shortage of interesting things to say. I expressed my concern that too many law school students were graduating just to find work in paper factories endlessly churning out legal documents. That doesn't interest me at all. But he had something really interesting to say about that. He admitted that he saw what I was talking about. But he broke the law school class down in to different parts. A few do terribly and shouldn't be in law school. A few are superstars and can pick out any future path they want. But the great majority of students are somewhere in the middle. Among them, many students go to law school without a strong idea of what they want to do with their degree once they graduate. Those people are the ones ended up a paper pushers he said. The ones who knew just what they wanted to do, and found the right programs and classes, didn't have that problem. The ones who wander through law school aimlessly often find themselves in those uninspiring positions.

Ok, that's enough for now. I'll put up some photos from the wedding soon.