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First goodbyes

Today was my last day at work. After heading back from Chicago, I lingered in Philly for two days, in order to work with Simone on her research. We’re all caught up now, and have an agenda for the next month or so, so I won’t be coming in tomorrow. She asked me to install Skype on her computer, so we could easily stay in touch and not rack up huge phone bills.

She even hugged me, which is kind of funny, given that we’d just gotten through talking about personal space strictures in Western cultures. (Individuals from the U.S. and Germany require the most space, and are the most reticent to express themselves physically in a work environment. Oh, the things we’ve learned!)

I’m actually really looking forward to continuing work with Simone while I’m abroad, as the research has gotten quite interesting, and the experience of doing this work is extremely beneficial to me. Today, however, things got even cooler: Simone offered that we consider publishing a paper together. She says she thinks we “work well together” and added, “after all, grad school is only two years away.” It’s definitely something to think about. Well, not really, because the answer is yes.

I haven’t begun work on my minors thesis yet, and she suggested that depending on what I choose, perhaps she could bring something to the table and we’d wind up with something that could be submitted to a journal. So far it looks like I’ll consider something like variation in teaching styles between the U.S. and Germany. I’d look at things like participatory class organization (encouragement of dialogue), utilization of space for hierarchy (implying importance, like a judge in a courtroom), time spent interacting with professors versus aides and peers, stuff like that. I think I might do this as a paper regardless of whether it applies to my minor thesis, as I have a bunch of other awesome ideas for research in Germany, especially ones involving metal music.

Silly that I titled the post as if I were somehow saying goodbye to Simone.