Musings
With the closing of the stadium imminent things have become so quiet in the office that I've started doing an online Basic French course on LiveMocha to keep my brain from atrophying. I plan to pick back up on Basic Russian at some point, but I'm so rusty on the Cyrillic alphabet that I would need a cheat sheet in front of me the whole time. I'm taking the French lessons really slow- I have to go over each lesson multiple times before I feel like it's sunk in enough that I won't forget the vocabulary within 24 hours.
Anyway, the site offers peer review of the writing and speaking exercises that you submit, so in between doing my own lessons, I'll go over some of the lessons written by people learning English. (It helps fill an intrisic need of mine to correct other peoples' grammar without being rude.) As a native speaker, I tend to forget how weird and confusing the rules of English are. That anyone learns it well enough to speak and write it fluently is really kind of amazing. Most of the submissions are pretty basic, but occasionally someone displays a sense of humor, and it's funny to see what crosses cultural differences. And there there are the submissions that are so un-English that I can't actually figure out what they're trying to say, which can also be entertaining.
Survived my interview this morning. Having almost a week's advance notice nearly killed me. Literally - I've been so stressed out that I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in days. I think it went well. It was rather on the informal side, since I already knew both of my interviewers (both of them used to work for SMG, the company I work for now). They didn't ask as many questions as I anticipated - I saw the list of usual interview-type questions in front of them, but they both more or less ignored those and mostly told me about exactly what the position(s) entailed. Maybe this was a good sign? Jim had a couple of questions about what my money-handling responsibilities were at my last job, but that was about it. They're supposed to let me know their hiring decision on Friday, so now I've just got about 48 hours to try to keep myself from obsessing over it.
Andrea (who was my former manager at the stadium, until she left in June) told me when I walked in that she had a dream last night that I walked into the interview in jeans, an old t-shirt, and flip flops (apparently they've had multiple people show up for interviews dressed like that ... what?). She was relieved to see me in a skirt and cardigan. As we were leaving the conference room, she told Jim (the other interviewer) about it, and was like, What do you think that means? He said, "I think it means you two are already a little too comfortable in your working relationship." Ha.
Anyway, the site offers peer review of the writing and speaking exercises that you submit, so in between doing my own lessons, I'll go over some of the lessons written by people learning English. (It helps fill an intrisic need of mine to correct other peoples' grammar without being rude.) As a native speaker, I tend to forget how weird and confusing the rules of English are. That anyone learns it well enough to speak and write it fluently is really kind of amazing. Most of the submissions are pretty basic, but occasionally someone displays a sense of humor, and it's funny to see what crosses cultural differences. And there there are the submissions that are so un-English that I can't actually figure out what they're trying to say, which can also be entertaining.
Survived my interview this morning. Having almost a week's advance notice nearly killed me. Literally - I've been so stressed out that I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in days. I think it went well. It was rather on the informal side, since I already knew both of my interviewers (both of them used to work for SMG, the company I work for now). They didn't ask as many questions as I anticipated - I saw the list of usual interview-type questions in front of them, but they both more or less ignored those and mostly told me about exactly what the position(s) entailed. Maybe this was a good sign? Jim had a couple of questions about what my money-handling responsibilities were at my last job, but that was about it. They're supposed to let me know their hiring decision on Friday, so now I've just got about 48 hours to try to keep myself from obsessing over it.
Andrea (who was my former manager at the stadium, until she left in June) told me when I walked in that she had a dream last night that I walked into the interview in jeans, an old t-shirt, and flip flops (apparently they've had multiple people show up for interviews dressed like that ... what?). She was relieved to see me in a skirt and cardigan. As we were leaving the conference room, she told Jim (the other interviewer) about it, and was like, What do you think that means? He said, "I think it means you two are already a little too comfortable in your working relationship." Ha.