Summary+and+Response+paper

Career Interviews: Summary and Response When choosing people to interview for the career project, I thought it would be good to get a couple of different viewpoints on the path that I am interested in pursuing. That path being: a major in languages that will allow me to travel the world, and perhaps get a job doing something (I’m not sure what) internationally. Appropriately, I chose a college student named Roxy Steinberg who is majoring in Spanish; and my step mom Laurie Phenix, who was a French major and used her major to travel Europe. Roxy first knew she wanted to major in Spanish during her junior year of high school when looking for colleges got her thinking about it. Now that she is majoring in it, she enjoys it for the most part. She explained how she realized the importance of a good professor. “I liked Spanish before but my professor made me fall in love with it” claims Roxy. Roxy has found that the hardest part of her major so far is trying not to get intimidated by the fluent speakers and older kids that are in her classes. These students sometimes make it harder to speak up in class. The other interview was with Laurie Phenix, who majored in a language in college and traveled extensively afterward. Laurie tells of how it was a bit of a struggle for her to find the financial means to travel after college, but once she did, it was one of the best things that she ever did. Her favorite part of working in another country was the fact that she was able to get to know other people better, and understand their points of view better as well. That being said, Laurie admits that she wishes she had known to do more research before traveling: “…you can really make a bad impression unless you are informed.” Although Phenix didn’t necessarily use her background in French when she got her first “real” job, traveling did help her to figure out what it was that she really wanted to do. While Roxy didn’t have quite as much to say in her interview, it was interesting for me to talk to her about her Spanish classes, and how she became interested in the major. I really agreed with some of the early statements she said about Spanish being useful. That is exactly how I feel now; like Spanish is something that is practical, and I will be able to use it in my life. Roxy also confirmed something that I thought to be true: the fact that many people who do not plan to be a teacher of Spanish have to double their major because it is a little difficult to find jobs that are centered on just that. That is definitely something for me to think about, because I’m not sure at this point what else I would really want to be or do. Finally, I thought it was very interesting how in Roxy’s opinion, having older people and fluent speakers in her classes was the worst part of the major. I can understand though how it could be nerve-wracking to speak up and answer questions when it seems like more “proficient” speakers will be judging you. Finding out from Laurie about the pros and cons of traveling and speaking another language was really fascinating to me. While she didn’t give me a ton of specific ideas as far as job opportunities go, she did help to settle some of the questions I have been asking myself about living in other countries. Laurie told me about how while she was working in Germany, she was able to work with some really nice people whom she had believed to be unfriendly before she met them. During this work experience, she found out some of the points of view that these people had, and was able to look at them from their standpoint and change her mind about some things. I think that that’s really cool, and that’s actually part of the reason that I want to travel-to learn about other cultures and try and understand where they are coming from on issues that we may not see eye to eye on. Also, I was glad to get the advice to do my research before traveling. If you don’t research the customs of the country to which you are traveling, it is easy to make a mistake and do something that is unacceptable or offensive in that country. It makes sense to me that in order to find out about other people, it’s usually a good idea to try and avoid doing something to offend them. I’ll definitely remember to read up before I travel abroad! Lastly, I was glad to find out that it wouldn’t be impossible, or even necessarily a painful experience to make a foreign country my permanent residence. It seems to me that it would be quite hard to find a career and make a living in another country because of the differences in customs and living. Laurie reminded me however that “people are people” and that the world is smaller today than it once was. If there’s a will, there’s a way. Clearly, conducting interviews with two interesting people was very enlightening and helpful to me as far as answering questions that I had. I’m glad I had the opportunity to do this, and now I definitely have some good food for thought.