I was feeling pretty good about my progress as an MA student and my prospects for college employment next year, until I started looking at requirements for these jobs. Five publications, minimum — at least three research-based and in major journals. Me? I have a column coming out sometime next year, and a non-research paper in at an online journal. Which, for all you laymen out there, is just about the same as having a high school diploma in this world. Sucks the big one. My mentor-tutor told me that, basically, I have to get my ass moving even faster than I am going now if I want to work next year. Now I have a pile of papers on my desk that I am editing and trying to salvage.
I caught a kid drawing this picture of me in class:
I was initially really impressed until I noticed the characters 外人 up above my left ear. That would be "foreigner" in Japanese and roughly equivalent to the kind words Don Imus shared about black women last week. Great.
