...which means: "Oh yeah, that's right! I passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Level 2)!" That was my big news a couple of weeks ago. I was fairly confident, but I had some trouble with the reading/grammar section, so it was a relief to get my certification.
Just wanted to brag a little...
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
久しぶりですね！ 好久不見！
Or “long time, no see”. I know I’ve been really bad about posting since I’ve gotten back to the States, but things are pretty hectic for me right now. This semester is going well, but I’m having a hard time remembering ever being busier. My classes aren’t too hard this semester, but I’m also teaching, working, and looking for and applying for jobs. Spring Break is coming up next week, but it’s going to be a working vacation for me. I’m going to Washington, D.C. to try to look for jobs, hang out with old friends, and get some schoolwork done in the midst of it all.
Looking for a job is the most tedious task I have to right now. I’m planning on moving out to D.C. after I graduate whether I’ve found a job by the end of the semester or not, but obviously it would be better to get hired before making the move. Unfortunately, most of the interesting jobs require more experience than I have and the jobs that I know I can get don’t interest me much. The competition for the interesting international affairs research positions that I’m going for is intense, but I have a feeling something will come along eventually…
I’m trying to do all the job searching I can in the next couple of weeks, because I doubt I’ll have much time for anything after Spring Break. Since we’ll be in the last half of the semester, I will be working full-steam on my research papers, work for professors, and getting the 101 class I’m teaching ready for their comprehensive final. April will be an unusually busy month for us in the political science department; we will have at least three separate conferences on campus. On April 1 and 2, we are hosting a conference about Taiwan’s relations with the outside world (see: “Taiwan and the World” for more information). I will be driving some of our guest speakers around that weekend, which should be fun, especially if I get some Taiwan independence advocates in the same car with the pro-PRC scholars.
On April 11, I’ll be helping Dr. Olimat with a conference he has organized about America’s relations with the Middle East (“America, Islam, and the Middle East”). And from April 19 to 21, Missouri State is hosting a Public Affairs Conference that is drawing in a lot of well-known speakers for panel discussions and plenary sessions on various topics (see “Public Affairs Conference” for more information). This is the second year of the conference and I missed it last year, so I’m hoping to see as many of the sessions this year as I can.
I apologize if my writing lacks lucidity today. My brother left for an English conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL this morning and I had to wake up at 4:30 to drive him to the airport. He was accepted to give a presentation on research he’s done on a genre of horror writing (the name of the genre escapes me at the moment) and he’s staying for the whole week. Although he’s going to arrive a little sleep-deprived, I think he’ll perk up when he gets there and can attend the panel session on zombies! (Sometimes I think I’ve chosen the wrong field…)
See ya!
Looking for a job is the most tedious task I have to right now. I’m planning on moving out to D.C. after I graduate whether I’ve found a job by the end of the semester or not, but obviously it would be better to get hired before making the move. Unfortunately, most of the interesting jobs require more experience than I have and the jobs that I know I can get don’t interest me much. The competition for the interesting international affairs research positions that I’m going for is intense, but I have a feeling something will come along eventually…
I’m trying to do all the job searching I can in the next couple of weeks, because I doubt I’ll have much time for anything after Spring Break. Since we’ll be in the last half of the semester, I will be working full-steam on my research papers, work for professors, and getting the 101 class I’m teaching ready for their comprehensive final. April will be an unusually busy month for us in the political science department; we will have at least three separate conferences on campus. On April 1 and 2, we are hosting a conference about Taiwan’s relations with the outside world (see: “Taiwan and the World” for more information). I will be driving some of our guest speakers around that weekend, which should be fun, especially if I get some Taiwan independence advocates in the same car with the pro-PRC scholars.
On April 11, I’ll be helping Dr. Olimat with a conference he has organized about America’s relations with the Middle East (“America, Islam, and the Middle East”). And from April 19 to 21, Missouri State is hosting a Public Affairs Conference that is drawing in a lot of well-known speakers for panel discussions and plenary sessions on various topics (see “Public Affairs Conference” for more information). This is the second year of the conference and I missed it last year, so I’m hoping to see as many of the sessions this year as I can.
I apologize if my writing lacks lucidity today. My brother left for an English conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL this morning and I had to wake up at 4:30 to drive him to the airport. He was accepted to give a presentation on research he’s done on a genre of horror writing (the name of the genre escapes me at the moment) and he’s staying for the whole week. Although he’s going to arrive a little sleep-deprived, I think he’ll perk up when he gets there and can attend the panel session on zombies! (Sometimes I think I’ve chosen the wrong field…)
See ya!
Thursday, January 19, 2006
I'm baaaaaack!!!!!
And it feels good to be back! Sorry for the long absence, but I’ve been taking some much-needed time off to relax and get reacquainted with American life. This has included lazy days of TV, video games, Papa John’s, shopping at Wal-Mart, and hanging out with friends and family. That was my pattern for about a week and a half after Christmas, but I did do some work during winter vacation. I finished my paper for my Cross-strait Relations in Asia-Pacific Security class on Taiwan-Japan relations and a job application for a fellowship position at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). I also had to make a syllabus for Political Science 101 (American Democracy and Citizenship), which I’m teaching one section of this semester.
School started on Tuesday because Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. My first class of the week was my PLS 101 class. I have to admit, I didn’t sleep too well the night before because I had a little anxiety about teaching a college class for the first time, but I think it went quite well. I decided to let them off easy on the first day – just a course introduction and overview of the syllabus. I thought about giving a lecture on the first day, just so they wouldn’t think I’m going to be a total pushover, but I decided against it because I always hated it when professors lecture on the first day.
I’m taking political science (PLS) classes this semester – “Quantitative Methods in Political Science” (statistics) and “International Organizations”. Both look like they will be a lot of work, but not extremely difficult work. I think the International Organizations class in particular will be very interesting.
I’m also taking Chinese this semester. I felt like I learned a lot in my three months of studying Chinese in Taiwan, but an American guy in our class spoke excellent Chinese (at least compared to mine) after only spending three months in mainland China. Our professor is Chinese, but she lived in Kyoto for 10 years, so she also speaks excellent Japanese and teaches both languages. Although I’m not taking this class for a grade, I still want to do well because I’m really interested in learning the language. Unfortunately, it seems like the students here have learned a completely different set of vocabulary and grammar than we learned in Taiwan. Our teacher had us ask each other questions at the beginning of class as a kind of review, but I didn’t know some of the vocabulary that they were using and they didn’t know a lot of the words I used. I am also unfamiliar with the simplified Chinese characters we’re using in class. It may sound strange, but the more difficult traditional characters are easier for me because they are more similar to the ones used in Japan.
The biggest problem I foresee with this class is the lack of intensity I’m used to from Taiwan. Although our teacher spoke English well in Taiwan, she refused to use it in class unless it was ABSOLUTELY necessary, which was very rare. She only spoke in Chinese, so we really had to listen to her pronunciation and try to figure out what she was saying from context. Our teacher here translates everything, so you don’t really hear the Chinese. You instinctively wait for the English translation, limiting the attention you pay to the real Chinese. Oh well, it’s better than nothing and I’ll stick with it anyway…
I’d like to get back to posting on a regular basis this week, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to be really busy with classes and work this semester, but writing posts is a nice way to take a break from more stressful activities. I still have a lot to post on from my overseas travels, so I will get around to that throughout the semester. As a teacher in a class about American government this semester, I want to try to get my students to pay attention to America’s role in the world. I think my experiences as an American abroad give me some credibility on this subject, but we’ll see…
Anyway, enough rambling for now. I think I’m out of practice at this blogging thing, but I’ll get the hang of it again soon…
See you soon!
School started on Tuesday because Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. My first class of the week was my PLS 101 class. I have to admit, I didn’t sleep too well the night before because I had a little anxiety about teaching a college class for the first time, but I think it went quite well. I decided to let them off easy on the first day – just a course introduction and overview of the syllabus. I thought about giving a lecture on the first day, just so they wouldn’t think I’m going to be a total pushover, but I decided against it because I always hated it when professors lecture on the first day.
I’m taking political science (PLS) classes this semester – “Quantitative Methods in Political Science” (statistics) and “International Organizations”. Both look like they will be a lot of work, but not extremely difficult work. I think the International Organizations class in particular will be very interesting.
I’m also taking Chinese this semester. I felt like I learned a lot in my three months of studying Chinese in Taiwan, but an American guy in our class spoke excellent Chinese (at least compared to mine) after only spending three months in mainland China. Our professor is Chinese, but she lived in Kyoto for 10 years, so she also speaks excellent Japanese and teaches both languages. Although I’m not taking this class for a grade, I still want to do well because I’m really interested in learning the language. Unfortunately, it seems like the students here have learned a completely different set of vocabulary and grammar than we learned in Taiwan. Our teacher had us ask each other questions at the beginning of class as a kind of review, but I didn’t know some of the vocabulary that they were using and they didn’t know a lot of the words I used. I am also unfamiliar with the simplified Chinese characters we’re using in class. It may sound strange, but the more difficult traditional characters are easier for me because they are more similar to the ones used in Japan.
The biggest problem I foresee with this class is the lack of intensity I’m used to from Taiwan. Although our teacher spoke English well in Taiwan, she refused to use it in class unless it was ABSOLUTELY necessary, which was very rare. She only spoke in Chinese, so we really had to listen to her pronunciation and try to figure out what she was saying from context. Our teacher here translates everything, so you don’t really hear the Chinese. You instinctively wait for the English translation, limiting the attention you pay to the real Chinese. Oh well, it’s better than nothing and I’ll stick with it anyway…
I’d like to get back to posting on a regular basis this week, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m going to be really busy with classes and work this semester, but writing posts is a nice way to take a break from more stressful activities. I still have a lot to post on from my overseas travels, so I will get around to that throughout the semester. As a teacher in a class about American government this semester, I want to try to get my students to pay attention to America’s role in the world. I think my experiences as an American abroad give me some credibility on this subject, but we’ll see…
Anyway, enough rambling for now. I think I’m out of practice at this blogging thing, but I’ll get the hang of it again soon…
See you soon!
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