From jfsiege@ilstu.edu Sat Feb 23 19:59:29 2002 Received: from mailscan4.cac.washington.edu (mailscan4.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g1O3xSnJ091196 for ; Sat, 23 Feb 2002 19:59:28 -0800 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan4.cac.washington.edu ; Sat Feb 23 19:59:27 2002 -0800 Received: from merlin.ilstu.edu (merlin.ilstu.edu [138.87.4.8]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g1O3xQek008602 for ; Sat, 23 Feb 2002 19:59:26 -0800 Received: from stv203f ([10.20.2.14]) by merlin.ilstu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA00143 for ; Sat, 23 Feb 2002 21:57:49 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <00fb01c1bcde$cf9e3c60$0e02140a@stv203f> From: "Janice Siegel" To: References: <001f01c1bce3$89181720$6601a8c0@Ginnyhome> Subject: classics majors and skills: a tale (was: persistence data) Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 21:56:09 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Ginny's message about sending off classics students in the right directions to use their great skills is serious and deserves serious consideration, but I comment now on this part of her message: > ...I found that when I wasn't teaching, that I had a difficult time getting a > job and was told repeatedly that my Latin degree didn't qualify me to do > anything! I was naive, granted, and perhaps didn't know how to go about > finding a job or persuading people that I had lots of great skills. I can't help telling the following story, one of my all-time favorites and absolutely true, mostly to blow off intellectual steam (too much reading really deep stuff tonight). This really happened to me, circa 1989 (in my twenties, which I consider way young): I had just finished one set of comps for my PhD and was pretty wiped out. I thought I would take some time to clear my head a bit before starting my dissertation, maybe have a little fun, so I called Manpower, the temp agency, and told them I wanted to register with their service. The woman on the phone asked me about my background. I went through my whole education, BA in Comp Lit in French and Latin from Wash U, MA in Comp Lit in Latin and Greek also from Wash U, how far I had gotten toward my PhD at Rutgers....how many languages I knew (I told her about the graduate work in Provencal too, what the hell). I finished and there was silence. No reaction at all. Then I heard her take a deep breath, and she said, "I'm very sorry, we only hire people with skills." !!!!!!! I sputtered my way into the rest of the conversation only to be asked if i could type. Oh, I thought. Skills! I had just assumed that *everyone* could type, duh. It didn't occur to me to tell her that i could *read* too. I even went into their office and took the data entry test and "scored the highest they had ever seen." The very next weekend I got a call from a school system whose Latin teacher had had a heart attack (he did eventually recover) and I landed myself my first Latin teaching job. Dodged that bullet! Cheers, Janice Janice Siegel Assistant Professor of Classics Illinois State University Department of Foreign Languages Box 4300 Normal, Illinois 61790-4300 office phone: 309-438-3583 cell phone: 309-287-3189 fax: 309-438-8038 jfsiege@ilstu.edu http://lilt.ilstu.edu/drjclassics http://lilt.ilstu.edu/drjclassics2 .