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Hi Beth!!!
Hi Beth
Sorry, It's very late I read your message.
But I would be very interested to correspond with you!
Could you tell me more about girl scout and Daughters of the 4 Winds?
Maybe website tipps...
Are you a Gold Member?
I'm not, and I can't contact you directly over this site.
But maybe I find an other way.
lot of greetings,
Madleina
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Language pair: German; English
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Regen b.
July 5, 2005
# Msgs: 5
Latest: July 5, 2005
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Re:Re:rainbow
Hi Beth
Sorry, It's very late I read your message.
But I would be very interested to correspond with you!
Could you tell me more about girl scout and Daughters of the 4 Winds?
Maybe website tipps...
Are you a Gold Member?
I'm not, and I can't contact you directly over this site.
But maybe I find an other way.
lot of greetings,
Madleina
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Language pair: English; English
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Regen b.
July 4, 2005
# Msgs: 5
Latest: July 5, 2005
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Career history
Hello, Mark! Thank you for your acoount.
It was interesting to read, and surely
encouraging to many people trying to find
their way in their life.
> So what kinds of career dreams to you
> have?
I graduated from a university of
technology, worked 6 years in a company
producing dental X-ray scanners, and
finally moved to a research institute
to do research in audiovisual technologies.
I have some negative experiences of
private enterprises and companies during
my phase of temporary jobs, and therefore
I am attracted to national or municipal
institutes with minimal interest in
conquering the market. I also believe
that nobody would pay me salary for doing
the things I like best, so I do my job
as a necessary requisite for the "real"
thing: to support my family and to
finance my leisure time projects, mainly
music research, science fiction writing,
and foreign languages and cultures.
(That does not mean I wouldn't enjoy
my job. I like working with computers
and my research job can be quite fun
and exciting at times.)
This could quite well be my final job.
I avoid promotions, as I doubt my
suitability for management jobs, and
like the basic research job best.
I seldom use the word "career" for my
professional development, but if I did,
I would like to define its meaning more
by my leisure time activities than my
salary job. I aim at producing something
useful and enjoyable (whether software,
compositions, or research results) that
can be easily distributed to all of the
people who may like it.
Puti
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Language pair: English; All
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Juha-Petri T.
May 31, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: May 31, 2005
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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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Re:Re:rainbow
It's your own risk!
But I would reply if you do it.
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Language pair: German; All
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Regen b.
April 11, 2005
# Msgs: 5
Latest: July 5, 2005
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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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