…of Jessica Mautone!
Maybe it’s the barking sea otters, or maybe it’s my guilty conscience, but I naturally wake up early most days in Monterey. After a lazy shower, I check the weather, don’t trust it, and pack myself in about 80 million layers that I may or may not shed as the day goes on. On my walk towards Downtown, I video-chat with my husband, Steve, as he walks our two dogs who live three hours away in the Bay Area. Steve and I originally moved from the East Coast to live in Monterey together, but like most web developers in this region, he was soon called to his natural habitat by a job in San Francisco
I have my traditional breakfast, a bacon egg and cheese and huge coffee, at Plumes while I check my email and do some homework. Then, depending on the day, I’ll head to campus for either TESOL or IEM classes. While my concentration is IEM, I’m specializing in TESOL in order to boost my resume for my dream career: running my own language school. Lucky for me, I’ll be spending my final semester in 2014 doing something quite close to this – working as the Director of Youth Programing for an English school in Costa Rica.
In my TESOL classes, Language Analysis and Structure of English, Dr. Thor Sawin talks so enthusiastically about vowel variations and constituency problems, you’d think he had just won the lottery and was describing how he’d spend the winnings. My brain hurts by the end of the class; but on the days that I teach at a language school in Berkeley I’m delighted how much I’ve learned that I can apply in the classroom.
In Budgeting for Educational Organizations class, former MPC President Douglas Garrison has given us the liberty of managing a multi-million dollar budget for the mythical Alpha University. Far from tedious accounting, this class sparks heated debates on spending priorities, essential cutbacks, and even employee terminations. Sometimes we forget it’s make-believe, and while Professor Garrison sits smirking on the sidelines, my classmates fight viciously over our rationales until the class ends.
In addition to classes, I hold a part-time job at the Digital Learning Commons, where I work on the Web Team. I love this job, not only because it’s such a cozy, nerdy environment, but also because part of the job is teaching myself cool editing techniques on programs like Illustrator and iMovie.
When I’m done with class and work for the day, I head to the library until they kick me out to work on endless papers and projects. If it’s a Tuesday, I finish early and head to London Bridge Pub for trivia night and spiked hot chocolate. This is where my lack of studying time betrays me – all I know is some pop culture references. I leave it to my hard-working T&I teammates to answer all the difficult questions.
Before zonking out for the night, I usually try to do a little non-school-related reading. Right now I’m reading East of Eden – since starting at MIIS and learning that John Steinbeck lived here, I’ve had the goal of reading all of his books. Some people call me crazy for even attempting pleasure reading during grad school, but the truth is, it’s the one thing that keeps me sane. Without a little time each week to escape into someone else’s fictional life, my mind is slowly taken over by linguistic terminology, non-sensical acronyms and brain-bending articles on the theories of international education (Do you know how to measure your BII? I do, and no, it’s not an awkward medical problem). And now, on that note, my day is done.