This is just a quick note to let you know or remind you that the next meeting of Greater Boston #PhDeviate will be on 1/14/14 (almost a palindrome if you do it European style: 14/1/14) at 6PM in Harvard’s Barker Center. The room is TBA– Check your emails on Monday […]
Blog
Or: PhDeviation as a way of life Almost a month ago, I posted here that I was going to try to start “VersatilePhD” meetup. I had no idea how positive the response would be! Almost as soon as I started organizing it, I realized that I wanted it to be bigger […]
Off and Running–Greater Boston #altac #postac #nonac
I just posted to the VersatilePhD Forum, but I’d love to have your help getting the word out as well. I’m interested in starting a VersatilePhD meetup in the Greater Boston area, to get together and brainstorm Ac, Alt-Ac, Post-Ac, Non-Ac and any “ACK!” we find to discuss! I know […]
Versatile PhD — Greater Boston
I often wonder what strange brainstorm overtook me in the summer of 2010, just after I graduated, that made me register the username “PhDeviate.” It was one of those odd moments where something just came to me, and I couldn’t trace the origin, but it just felt right. And the […]
Taking deviation seriously
The end of the China Adventure Before I can get to updating you on where I am now, I must close out the China chapter. I loved teaching at SISU or 上海外国语大学。I wanted to stay, they wanted me to stay and it was all very tempting. But there was just […]
Another school year begins, and another new adventure
Even way back before classes started, I had ideas about how teaching in China was going to be different than teaching in America. I planned to do a lot of cultural translation, and indeed, I have had to do quite a bit. What I didn’t expect, however, not even when […]
Evolving thoughts on teaching
русский язык для всех Many years ago, at Phillips Academy, I decided to study Russian. It was my 3rd year in High School and the academic year 1992-1993. The Soviet Union had fallen. Gorbachev was gone. I had seen the Hunt for Red October, but I was not studying Russian […]
The Slowly Liberalizing Arts
3 I have great respect for teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). I’m not one of them, in the sense that I don’t have that training. I do have some training, as an undergraduate, in second language instruction (in fact, among the proudest moments of my life was […]
Teaching and not teaching ESOL
2 On Engaging with a New City Before I came to Shanghai, I didn’t know I was going to come to Shanghai. I didn’t dream about Shanghai as a child. I didn’t plan to move to China. But somewhere a few minutes into my graduate program in English Literature I learned […]
Shanghai-Semi-Specific
Or, Why I’m going to be 300% nicer to international students and faculty for the Rest of my Life So, yesterday was the first day of teaching at Shanghai International Studies University. I teach only on Wednesdays, which is something of a blessing, in that the campus where I teach […]