Off Hiatus

The only thing more boring that my daily routine might very well be my exam period and school break. The normal schedule includes such exciting elements as going to class, doing my homework, eating, sleeping, and joining in the odd activity outside my hermitage of an apartment. I often go to bed by 10:30. Clearly I live an interesting life.

Exam period looked much the same, except everything except eating and sleeping was replaced with research and writing, and more research and more writing. And break? Just eating and sleeping, more or less. I hope your holiday period looked much the same. Rest is such an important part of our rhythm - the prescription (common to many religions) of a holy day to spend not doing normal things is really a wonderful invention.

As of the first week of January I'm back in classes, and my days are taking on the patterns of grad school again. One difference: I adopted a dog! Her name is Peaches, and she's a nine-year-old terrier mix. Her ears stand up and she's endlessly curious about everything. My mom calls her Nosy Rosy. Somewhere in her previous life she learned to stand on her hind legs for long periods of time, the better to peer over barriers or look to see if I'm on the bed, one presumes. She's curled up next to me as a write, snoring a little bit. I'm grateful to have her around - she gets me out of the apartment and reminds me to maintain a normal meal schedule, for her sake if not for my own. I've really missed having a fuzzy companion the past five years. All colleges should allow fuzzy pets, not just fish. It's very difficult to snuggle with a fish. (They usually die if you attempt it).

My department's requirements for graduation include proving competence in a second language, even if that language has little to do with your area of research or interest. In my case, I go the boring route of 17th-19th-century Britain, where English serves me pretty well. I still need to have a second language, in my case for the purposes of expanding my worldview and looking outside the Anglo-American box. This is a good thing, if ending up somewhat frightening. My graduate-level German class is a steep learning curve, but the 400-level undergrad courses wouldn't fit with my schedule. Our first class was cancelled due to the polar vortex (!!) that swept through a vast portion of the States a couple weeks ago, but last week's discussion of citizenship and national identity in pre-EU Germany and Europe really stretched my ability to participate in a conversation. About the time that I would figure out the gist of the current conversation and formulate a vaguely related comment, the class would have already moved far beyond that point. The professor assures us that our first reading was the hardest one, and this week's reading seems to confirm that point. Rede des toten Kolumbus am Tag des Jüngsten Gerichts (The speech of the deceased Columbus on doomsday) is not an easy read, to be sure, but I can follow the narrative, such as there is. The novel might be called experimental for its lack of a clear storyline and time jumps. It might also just be called confusing. And as is typical of German art of a certain generation, it is highly political.

Thankfully the class, while interested in German as a language and German scholarship and writing, is a bit more flexible. Our discussions flipped between German and English, as do our readings. Other than the occasional inability to think of a certain word in whatever language we're currently using, this seems a good way to go. My colleagues back in Germany would be horrified at our use of a non-monolingual language classroom.My students would likely cheer.

This particular class requires that we cultivate an online presence as people and scholars, though I confess mixing the two leaves me feeling a little nervous. I've been assured that personal blogs are acceptable for this kind of presence-creation; I may be spending a bit more time on theory, philosophy, and reflection this semester instead of just stories about wiggly elementary schoolchildren on a field trip. Do bear with me. I'll try to be entertaining.

Shock and awe tactics

My students got their report cards on Friday, so this week marks the beginning of a new marking period. For reasons unknown to me, certain classes and teachers get entirely new schedules each marking period and others do not. Naturally the roster of stable and changing classes does not remain the same from marking period to marking period. Remarkably, today saw only the second time that I've walked in on the completely wrong class after one of these changes, but it happened.

On the bright side, I may be getting to know a new sixth grade class who I visited today. As is typical my first time in a class, the students had a chance to ask me questions about myself, the States, English, etc. This led to several cute moments. Upon learning that I come from the States, the entire class let out a collective gasp of amazement. One little girl asked me how it was to live in the best country in the world. ("Um...it's not the best?" "For us, it is!") A little boy asked me "Was you ever visited the London Dungeon?" and seemed very sad when I told him that dungeons are typically too scary for me. He brightened considerably when I said I liked the London Eye and Buckingham Palace and he informed me that he planned to visit London one day.

Later in the day I accompanied several hundred students to a screening of The Hobbit in English, which I think was more a treat for me than for them. As you remember from before, I saw the movie in German and enjoyed it, but I really enjoyed it when I could understand all the dialogue.

One of my seventh grade students asked me on the way out if I'd understood everything said in the movie. I deadpanned "not everything" and he got a faintly horrified look on his face. "Really? It must be very hard English," he said. I couldn't help but laugh. Since we weren't in class I spoke German with the students, much to their delight, and they all informed me "Jessica, your German is so good! You should speak it all the time with us." Nice try kids.

Hello!

Hi, I’m Jessica. I’ll be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Germany next year, which is quite possibly the most exciting and most frightening thing I’ve ever done. Somehow my native language has become my ticket to spend ten months living in another country. I’m still in the preparation stages of finding housing and returning paperwork, but my plane flight has been booked and there’s no going back.

I studied English literature in college, with a German minor. Notably missing from both those fields is any formal training in education. Unlike several of my former apartment-mates, I’ve never been a student teacher or worked in a high-school classroom. I’ve done English tutoring and I’ve helped in adult ESL classes, but I feel woefully unprepared for my new job. Thankfully the Fulbright Commission knows they’re not getting education majors and offers a three-day orientation and practice time, where I’m told we split up into groups of four or so and give a mini lesson. I’ve warned the butterflies in my stomach to watch out for that and maybe pack up before they’re kicked out, but they’ve been blithely ignoring me.

My current project is sending a bunch of emails out to prospective landlords and apartment-mates, in the hopes that one of them will want me to live in their apartment. As is true everywhere, the city I’ll be living in has some good places and some bad places. Prior to a warning from a (very helpful) former Fulbright ETA, I was looking for housing in the bad part of town. Now I’m not anymore, which is unfortunate because most of the cheap housing is there. I imagine not getting mugged is worth fifty euro or so, but no one from the nice neighborhoods is returning my emails.

Maybe I seem shady.