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Career history, part 2 of 3
Part 2 of 3
Texas, was a tremendous culture-shock to a kid who grew up in liberal-middle-class southern California. It was really bizarre to be surrounded buy people who proudly called themselves red-necks. In the community I grew up in, "red-necks," so-called for long hours of hard work in the sun (hence sunburn and the red neck) were generally considered to be ignorant, bigoted, rude, alcoholic, noisy, and violent." All of which, frankly, is true, pretty much/in general. In Texas, red-necks are considered wild, fun-loving, individualistic, hard-working party animals" That, too, I would tend to agree with, although I would moderate that part about individualistic. When I think of individualistic, I think of a person who thinks independently and develops her own sense of right and wrong. That's the last thing I'd ever say about the red-necks I knew in Texas. They were a pretty homogenous group. The didn't have a whole lot of respect for values I had which differed from theirs. For them, individualism was more about red-necks as a group dinstinguishing themsellves from aspects of American culture that they didn't agree with. So they valued independence from mainstream society, but not from the values of their own subculture.
The economy in Houston wasn't terribly strong the year I was there, and of the ten months I was registered with the glazer's union, I worked about four. After which time, I decided perhaps I'd join the Air Force, and get I job I couldn't lose.
With my aptitudes in math and science, I had no trouble getting into a good career in maintenance of satellite communications systems. The first four years went well enough, at the end of which I found myself married and happy with the job security. So I reenlisted for another four. At the end of the second stint, I was divorcerd and fresh out of a very ugly misunderstanding with the Air Force that cost me my job, a lot of expense, nuisance, and heartache, and left a really bad taste in my mouth (that is, left me with very bad feelings) about t he Air Force. Also, I had decided that I wanted to work in the home computer industry, doing technical support, and the Air Force had been consistently unable to move me to that field. So I got out of the service and moved to Silicon Valley, California, where I got a job managing a technical support staff for a manufacturer of computer peripherals. I did that for about eight years as well, and saw two companies go bankrupt. By the end of all of that, I was feeling that the computer industry was pretty soulless for me, and that what I really wanted to do was to teach.
See part 3 of 3
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
May 30, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Career history, part 3 of 3
Part 3 of 3
My grandmother had passed away by that time, and I found myself sitting on some money—any number of times which quantitly I'd have gladly given to have my grandmother back, I don't mind saying. But I finally decided that the best way I could use that money was to get myself a college education and find a career that I could feel good about. So I dropped out of the business world and went back to college. I got an associate's degree in liberal arts, and then a bachelor's degree in English literature. over the last six years now, I have been tutoring, teaching, instructing, presenting workshops, grading papers, proctoring tests, basically looking for every possible way to get good at being a teacher. I'm hoping to teach literature and composition in community college. I'm getting pretty close now. I'll have my master's degree, if all goes as planned, by summer of 2006.
So that's my career history. A day late, a dollar short, but roughly as promised. I hope you enjoyed it.
So what kinds of career dreams to you have?
Talk to you soon,
Mark
Sacramento
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
May 30, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: May 31, 2005
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Career history, part 1 of 3
Hi Arnaud,
Some may wonder why I decided to post this in the culture/history/ethnology board, so I'll just explain that this message comes of a conversation we had earlier about the difference between life in the US and in Europe. You were fascinated that a forty year old guy is in college starting a new career, a phenomenon which is, I guess unusual in Europe. As it happens, my story represents a trend in the United States that is becoming more the rule than the exception. With the whole idea of a life-time career with one company having completely evaporated since the sixties, it is not unusual for Americans to have two, three, four, five, who knows how many different careers as times and the economy change. My grandfather was very unusual in his time, that he had many different careers—he worked as a salesman of men's grooming kits, later selling insurance. Then he bought a shrimp boat in South America, wrote, and was a lawyer for his final career. My father was an aeronautical instrument technician, a parole officer, and a lawyer. I had an uncle who was a highway patrolman, a radio disc jockey, a carpenter, a sportswear salesman, (actually, he sold a variety of different products over the years). At one point he earned his living transporting cadavers up and down the west coast, moving them from whereever they'd died to wherever they were going to be buried. His final career was chef. Many might say that he wasn't a successful man, but I think he finally found his place, because he always loved cooking and always did it brilliantly. I don't think I ever saw him happier than during that part of his life.
I'm taking a break from all of the work I'm finally getting done now that I'm out of school. I get to play for a while this morning, and thought I'd get back to you with a long overdue listing of my career history:
I graduated from High School as a devoted lover of math and science. I started College at Harvey Mudd College in Southern CA. It's not widely known on the streets, like a Yale or a Stanford, but among corporations who hire graduates, it's a very well-respected school. We used to wear t-shirts that said, "Cal-Tech: A Division of Harvey Mudd College"
I wasn't quite ready, at the time, for the discipline of college, and so I dropped out. My step-father at the time, suggested I come out to live with him and my mother and half-brother in Texas. He said he could help me find work in construction, installing windows. It sounded fair enough, and having no better ideas at the time, I took him up on it.
See part 2 of 3
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
May 30, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Looking for friends
I am a 42 year-old former teacher of foreign languages. I am looking for pen friends from all over the world in English, German, and Spanish. I have travelled widely and worked as a diversity instructor. I enjoy cooking, reading, travel, and knitting and look forward to hearing from you!
Sophie Scholl
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Language pair: German; English
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Pamela S.
May 22, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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American Educational System Part IV of IV
American Educational System Part IV of IV
Well, I hope that answers some of your questions about US Schools – or at least what I, in my limited experience, happen to know about them. Obviously Toni and I have very different stories, as would my brother and I. His school experience was very different from mine. He went to school with a much rougher bunch of kids. I remember my shock and amazement when my brother came home at sixteen having gotten his ears and eyebrows pierced, and a friend of his had tattooed my brother's name on his shoulder in block letters. To me, it was just unimaginable to do something so permanent so young. I have nothing against tattoos, but I'm 41, and I still haven't seen anything I like so much I'll still enjoy looking at it when I'm 80.
Today, my brother is a very daunting fellow. Tall and skinny with his head shaved. He has large discs in his earlobes, about an inch in diameter, I think. He has collected a number of tattoos I can no longer count. He keeps his head shaved and wears baggy pants and t-shirts. When people see him, the just assume he's a gang-banger or a skin-head and steer clear. It's really funny, though because he is the sweetest, most gentle guy you could ever hope to meet. He's married now and has a little girl and he is an amazing, attentive, gentle, loving dad. He's an incredible guy.
Anyway, let me know if there's anything you'd like me to clarify for your studies of American schools. Hopefully, more other people will respond to this too, and you'll be able to get some more diverse feedback on the topic.
I'll talk to you soon!
Mark
Sacramento, CA USA
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
April 11, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: April 11, 2005
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American Educational System Part III of IV
The school funding is a little more complex than you have it, but your facts are dead on. School budgets receive some matching dollars from the Federal and State governments, but they depend mostly on dollars collected in property taxes within the school's service area. That is, all houses within the zone whose students are served by a school will pay property taxes to support that school (regardless of whether any children live in the house.) As you observe, this means that a school district like Palo Alto, serving families who earn hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each year, have schools which provide the most outstanding teachers, programs, resources, equipment, curricula, where every student on campus need only show up and do the work in order to be assured of getting into college.
But if you walk to the east end of town and walk across the pedestrian overpass across the freeway into East Palo Alto, you find a very different neighborhood—a very poor neighborhood with lots of drug traffic, gun violence, and gang activity. A high percentage of the residents are drawing welfare and not working, and property taxes don't even cover the basic necessities of educating the students. Facilities are in desperate need of repair, students are using old, beaten, out of date textbooks – if they even have textbooks, etc. It's unbelievable. Of course, it's obviously fair to use some of the great excess of funds available down in Palo Alto to bring the EPA schools up to standards. But if you bring this up, the PA folk start screaming about communism and free market economy, and profit motive. You'll never get the rich folks to sit still for it, and they're the ones sitting on the planning boards and city councils anyway. So what are you going to do?
Continued: See Part IV of IV
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Language pair: English; English
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Mark S.
April 11, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: April 11, 2005
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American Educational System Part II of IV
I'm afraid. We had a very diverse class of students. I went to school in North Hollywood, which, as you might suspect from its name, actually had actors' kids attending. There were a couple of interesting students in my classes now and then. Nobody you'd be likely to know of, but your parents may have seen a couple of their parents in a movie or TV show now and again. And we did have some kids on campus who were kind of dangerous. We had some gang-bangers, some druggies, and some people who just didn't know how to be civilized. We had fights from time to time, but I only ever saw fist fights. I guess they were very careful to do all of the really heavy stuff off campus. I mean, if you're wondering how many Columbines we've got in our country, the answer is probably no more than you've heard about. Naturally, when it happens, it gets a lot of publicity. Of course, once is way too many, and I can think of three off of the top of my head. But it's not something that's happening every day, or happening in every school. Airplane crashes happen far more frequently. Lightening strikes a whole lot more often.
As far as the gang-banger stuff, I heard a few stories, but I never knew if they were true or not. We did have drugs on campus. I saw marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, sometimes psychedelic mushrooms. That last, I saw off campus, not on campus. My Jr. and Sr. years, I got in with a crowd that wasn't really the best for me. Not gang-bangers or anything, just a lot more interested in sex and drugs than in studying for exams.
I actually know very little about sports, not having participated much. But I do know that sports programs are a very important investment for schools. A solid sports program means students can get athletic scholarships and get into college, and a huge part of a school's reputation is based on the percentage of its graduates who go to college afterwards, as well as on which schools their graduates are getting into. As a result, sports programs will often get money that really needs to go to computer equipment, to sports programs for women (they never get nearly as much support as the men's sports programs do, and of course, programs like U.S. football and basketball always have far better funding than programs like fencing or volleyball, which are less popular among the public. So there is a lot of political baloney around HS sports programs.
Continued: See Part III of IV
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Language pair: English; English
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Mark S.
April 11, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: April 11, 2005
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American Educational System Part I of IV
Schools. Wow, there's a big subject I could talk about for days. My state of California is an interesting case, because when I was growing up, we had among the finest public schools in the country. In the 70's, when I was in Junior High school, (The Los Angeles School system has a special school for grades 7-9 which we call Jr. High. Other districts have "middle Schools," which work a little differently – I'm not sure which grades – Perhaps our friend Toni from Rhode Island was in a Middle School and can tell us.) there was a taxpayer's rebellion, and the "Jarvis-Gann" amendment was added to our state constitution. This measure drastically cut property taxes and limited the legislature's ability to raise property taxes without the voter's approval by referendum. This was the beginning of my career as a political activist. At fifteen years old, I was going door-to-door begging people to save my education and vote down Proposition thirteen. But the initiative passed, and the state budget for public services was cut by more than half. And guess what? The California schools have gone from number one in the country to number 46. This makes me crazy. It makes me wonder if Democracy is such a good idea. If there were anything on the planet that worked better….
So my brother, thirteen years younger than I, really got ripped off. Charley is this amazing, bright, personable kid. He had his earlier education in Houston TX, which was pretty terrible, I understand. Then, when he was in Middle School, he and our Mom moved back here to California, and he finished his education in the San Francisco Bay area.
In TX, Charley had gotten some attention from his teachers about being very good at math. This so shamed him before his classmates and embarrassed him that he resolved never again to let a teacher know that he was smart.
When he got to California, he was sorted into a curriculum designed for students who will grow up to be laborers. When he graduated from high school, he had only the most rudimentary skills in math and language. I was just appalled.
As to most of your questions, my information is dated. But as a general rule it is safe to assume that my experience was generally a lot better than what students see in the same schools today.
I was an honor student, so I was sorted into the College track, and I took a lot of very interesting classes, such as Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Drama, Computer science, and so on. I was fortunate, in Jr. High, to be able to take Spanish for two years, and that was an invaluable experience I'm convinced every student should be offered. I took seven courses per day, each "hour"' lasting about 50 minutes. We had a fifteen minute recess and a half hour for lunch, so the school day worked out to be about eight hours.
Continued: See Part II of IV
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Language pair: English; English
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Mark S.
April 11, 2005
# Msgs: 4
Latest: April 11, 2005
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Re:The election of a new Pope.
I read of the process in a novel by Dan Brown, Angels and Demons. It was the same guy who wrote the DaVinci code, and this is his earlier book.
The college of Cardinals get together and they discuss the matter. Nobody is allowed to enter or leave the chamber until the process is complete. The Cardinal who presides over this election is the Dean of the College of Cardinals.
When they are ready to vote, each Cardinal writes his vote down on a special piece of paper.
The Dean carefully counts up all of the votes. If the votes are so split that there is no 2/3 majority, the papers are all burned in the fireplace, and black smoke coming out of the chimnney tells everyone watching from outside that a vote has been taken, but no candidate has been selected. When one candidate has a 2/3 of the votes, I forget what it is that changes, but the dean burns the papers and the smoke comes out white and everyone knows that a pope has been chosen.
Of course, this is all from a work of fiction. Dan Brown has a reputation for doing outstanding research, so I expect he's fairly close to the mark. But it wasn't recently that I read this. I look forward to hearing what somebody Catholic who knows what their talking about would have to say.
Mark
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Language pair: French; English
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Mark S.
April 10, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:Someone to teach me Italian
Have you spoken to your Navy recuiter? There is no way to beat the language training you'll get once you get in. Six months, total immersion; you'll be speaking German or Italian 24/7. I had a number of friends when I was in the Air Force who had been through the Defense Language Institute, and these people were fluent. When I was taking Chinese, I went up against DLI students in the annual speech competition, and there just wasn't any touching them.
Of course, the down side is, The Navy will tell you what language they want you to learn. Even if you go in speaking solid German, they may decide that what they want you to know is, who knows, Korean or Arabic. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if it isn't what you want to learn to speak, it isn't what you want to learn to speak.
Good luck!
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA USA
Reply to message # 49253
Someone to teach me Italian Toni
Hey! I want to join the Navy as a German and Italian translator, so obviously I need to learn German and Italian :P I know some, so if anyone wants to write to me in both Italian and English so I can learn, and also teach me new words, etc, please e-mail me! I am NOT a Gold Member!!
*I am interested in ALL cultures...so if you want to share your culture and language, that's fine!*
~*Toni*~
Language pair: English; Italian
Category: Culture/History/Ethnology
Post date: April 7, 2005
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Language pair: English; Italian
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Mark S.
April 8, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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