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Samstag, September 08, 2007

Taking up Anne's career on a University level...

She slept poorly and was so pale and tragic at breakfast next morning that Marilla was alarmed and insisted on making her take a cup of scorching ginger tea. Anne sipped it patiently, although she could not imagine what good ginger tea would do. Had it been some magic brew, potent to confer age and experience, Anne would have swallowed a quart of it without flinching.
"Marilla, what if I fail!"
"You'll hardly fail completely in one day and there's plenty more days coming," said Marilla. "The trouble with you, Anne, is that you'll expect to teach those children everything and reform all their faults right off, and if you can't you'll think you've failed."


I’ve had this Anne moment recently: I am now an assistant lecturer with department for English, translation and interpreting at School of Translation and Interpreting in my former Uni and I have already had 4 classes with students this week!

I felt about the way Anne did though not the day before my first class this week, but a week earlier, the day before my return to alma mater as a teacher after I had not been there a whole year! I even could not sleep at night all that week feeling how my life was changing finally, after I had been waiting for an open teaching vacancy a whole summer as if my whole life depended on it! And indeed I consider my new job as an important turning point in my career, even it is only a part-time job of teaching 2 classes a week! I just could not only sit in the boring office any longer wasting my talent on crazy letters!

I think all the situation should be described in order:



I graduated as a translator/interpreter from the Uni in June last year and started my first job as a full time translator with occasional interpreting soon afterwards. However, the job in the office was not at all fulfilling and I felt I was losing most of my skills. Besides, I felt I missed the Uni and the atmosphere of translator/interpreter comradeship terribly. Therefore in spring I called my former adviser who is also the head of the department for theory and practice of English, translation and interpreter asking if they had a vacancy open in the next academic year. I had to wait several months before it was known and a week ago I was accepted as a translation teacher for the 5th (final!) year. No need to say I was (and still am) elated. Going back to my former school feels like coming home indeed. My former teachers (now co-workers, who would think of that only two years ago?!) are wonderfully supportive and I am very much impressed that they trusted me with the final year at once. And newspaper articles on economy topics seem the most challenging aspect in the 5th year! I feel it is a great responsibility and it is going to be rather challenging, but I'll enjoy it for sure (I already am!).

It is only a part-time job, two classes a week, so I am still translating for the office where I do not like the working atmosphere at all, but whenever else I must work I now belong to my school of translation and interpreting. I believe working at one of the country's leading translation & interpreting schools will certainly throw more opportunities in my way so I'll opt out the office job I do not like much with time!
Maybe it is a little naïve to expect everything changing dramatically at once, but I feel it has been the first and therefore most important move after a year’s standstill – I feel as if I went out of a jail (a strong, but truthful comparison!) and the horizons and prospects are widening again!
I have already had 4 classes (2 on my main schedule and 2 to substitute for another teacher). Though they are the 5th year and should be serious they are not and the beginning was not very promising: the two groups I permanently teach were not prepared, and the other two where I substituted somehow cut the classes that were to be on Thursday, so I had to report to the dean's office about that and give them a text to translate at home to make up for the class they missed. Therefore I’ll have to see to it that they do homework as requested, do not miss classes, etc! But I think I’ll get used to it and they must get used to what I require!
I am enjoying preparing for classes immensely, so nice to have challenging texts after the boring “we’d like to order this…” of “please send us that…” Even if I have to sit up to midnight staring at the screen when I come home after a full-time working day of office screen-staring
The challenge also is that I'm barely 2 years older than the students, but well, I'm a teacher and a practicing translator/interpreter, and they are still students! Indeed, it feels rather curious to be "on the other side of the teacher's table" when you have known only the students’ side before!

4 Kommentare:

Mintieness hat gesagt…

Congratulations on the position :3
I'm going to go through something similar as well but I'm going to keep the details for the letter.

Anonym hat gesagt…

Very well, I'll be looking forward to it!

Dornroeschen

Paula hat gesagt…

BIG congratulations, Irina!!! I'm so happy for you to have found what you most wanted to do. And that's kind of weird you are just 2 years older than your students but I think is very important that being so young as you are people at the Uni trusted you to be the head of such an advanced group! As for your office job I hope some day you can get away from there and just do what you most liked to and made a living from it. That's what everybody whish for, I think.
I guess having two jobs at the same time must be very tiring but for what you said sounds like you are ejoying so much that it doesn't matter...
Congrats again!!
*Hugs*

Anonym hat gesagt…

Thanks, Paula! I am really impressed that I am so much trusted. I am trying to do my best. I never actually had any experience as a teacher (never gave oprivate lessons as many other students at the Uni do). Helping the younger sister with her English homework and trying to make her think, plus organizing a crafts school for neighbours' kids around my sister's age one summer when I was 13 are about my only experience teaching. But I am getting used to it especially that I've had 4 classes to substitute for another teacher! I wish teachers were paid decently. With my two classes I won't be earning more than the cost of a good dictionary or something like that! The amount I'm spending monthly on public transport is more than that!
But it's not for money so i am content :-)

Dornroeschen