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I've been helping my friend Eric with his master's thesis the last couple weeks. He's from Japan and is working on his M.A. in International Affairs. Anyway, he learned English really well just a couple years ago, but learned to speak it more than to write it. He speaks it very well but his writing was a little shaky so two weeks ago he called in a bit of a panic because a draft was due to his professor but he knew the English was poor. I took a couple days to read it (it's about 40 pages long) then spent two evenings going through it word for word with him. After the second night we went to dinner with a friend of his and he called me "Sensei," which I thought was incredibly cool. Then again, I tend to be impressed by the smaller things in life more than the bigger things.

He went on and made all the changes and we got together last night for one more read-through, just to make all the final fixes before he turns in the completed version this week. he has thanked me profusely, and even brought back a couple cute little gifts from his job interview trip to San Francisco last week, but hey, if he keeps calling me Sensei he doesn't have to thank me at all, 'cuz for whatever reason I really liked that.

Speaking of students, a couple weeks ago I forgot to mention that I met up with a very nice University of Texas professor and his charming partner and about a dozen of his students he'd brought to DC for a trip. He likes for them to meet political science degree holders who do something besides teach or go to law school so they can see they have other options. It was a very fun evening, in part because I really like students, and in part because some of them knew Karl-Thomas, who was a political science major there until he graduated in December. Small world.

Labels: Friends, Life, Teaching