Here's What I am busy with
I have been up to my neck with all sorts of things lately. First, after futile online job-hunting in the past few days, lots of company surprisingly started to
contact me. It was amazing to see how important language proficiency is these days. I have been offered very handsome salary, some even two or three times higher than that of my classmates. Unbelievable. But it seems that how it works in Shanghai for the moment.
Yesterday was a busy day as usual. In the morning I planed a lesson for Jim, this time human mind based. It was a fascinating subject. Far back to the beginning
of this year I had started to absorb all sorts of things about human mind. I believe, if I choose to work in education field, by knowing how our brain works exactly I can synchronize my teaching process with students’ knowledge-imbibing process, which is to their benefit eventually.
Anyway, after finishing planning the lesson for him, I went onto the next task on my To Do List: Update our adverts on English and Chinese websites. Because currently we don’t have a fat budget to do the marketing, Internet and word of mouth are our main marketing strategies. To that end, updating our advert at a regular basis is mandatory; going to English Corners nearby is of utmost importance.
Up so far all went on all right, word of mouth especially. Whenever we went to English Corner, either organized by us or others, we always got lots of positive
feedbacks. Lots of people showed their interest, and agreed to tell their friends and their friends’ friends about us if they want some English lessons. It was
pretty amazing to see how high this demand still is in the market right now.
About Internet, forwarding ads is one way; the other construction and maintain of our website. Given that computer science was my friend’s major when he was in
school, and he had done similar projects as to construct websites, both of us decided to design our website ourselves. Because it was impossible to put all the
information, say, our class schedule, onto ads websites, put our web link in our ads, so that people can get details readily by logging onto our website, would
be an excellent alternative.
My friend and I just decided to pay a professional hosting company to host our website. People that came to our classroom complained that sometimes the web was
too slow and short of content and diversity. Forum, BBS, or word of the day would have enhanced our image a great deal. To that we acceded. So instead of using
free hosting originally, my friend decided to pay for the hosting. It will be well worth it. With the new hosting we chose, having forum, BBS, or uploading pictures will become so easy and achievable. Also bilingual websites should be done
right away, so that people can choose either English or Chinese, just to their liking. My friend has done the English version, so today finishing the Chinese version will be my main task.
Now back to what I did yesterday. After I finished updating ads online, it was almost noon. A company called me for an interview at 1 p.m. So I went there at the given time. It turned out they knew me by word of mouth as well. It was surprising to see, like the first interview, the interviewers liked me very much. Because they only offered a full-time job, I told them I would talk to my friend back home and gave them a call today. But I guess I will have to say no, despite that I like them and their payment was very attractive. I just got another new student now. With three students at hand, any full-time job will be near to impossible.
Also, yesterday I asked my friend to go and get Cambridge International Course series whilst I was away for interview. He thought it was not that urgent but actually it was. In the evening just about I finished my lesson with Jim, another student came to enquire about our lessons. I showed him our textbooks and introduced him our methodology. He liked it. So now we got another definite student. Like others did, he also gave us a lot of useful suggestions. I have put them on
our white board. My friend and I decided to discuss them later in the day.
Well, that’s basically what I have been up to lately. I enjoyed Mary’s “Here’
s What I am Busy with now”, but I don’t know if anybody will enjoy mine. Just
hope it is not too boring to read. Now it’s about time to finish Holland based
lesson planning for Jim. Also, I may have to search for more information about
Holland. Jim said he would love to know more about it. My friend had been to Holland, so I guess he will be able to give me some useful information later as well.
Sonnet
