I spent the day sitting in meetings at my new “home campus” in Lueneburg, Germany, listening to lectures about their new innovative General Education program. And Distance Education. I avoid meetings about such subjects when I am home campus at Chico State. How did such subjects follow me here?
I have lots of opinions about both General Education and Distance Education, but remain really quiet. Listening to German like all day is like sticking cotton in my ears, a task my brain copes with poorly. Trying to say anything in German is like trying to speak with a mouthful of–cotton swabs. The brain is willing, but the ears are too slow, and the mouth too dry. Tomorrow is another day of this.
Tony Waters is czar and editor of Ethnography.com. He came to us from the Sociology department at California State University at Chico where he has been a professor since 1996. In 2016 though he suddenly found himself with a new gig at Payap University in northern Thailand where he is on the faculty of the Peace Studies Department. He has also been a guest professor in Germany, and Tanzania. In the past, his main interests have been international development and refugees in Thailand, Tanzania, and California. This reflects a former career in the Peace Corps (Thailand), and refugee camps (Thailand and Tanzania). His books include: Crime and Immigrant Youth (1999), Bureaucratizing the Good Samaritan (2001), The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life Beneath of the Marketplace (2007), When Killing is a Crime (2007), and Schooling, Bureaucracy, and Childhood: Bureaucratizing the Child (2012). His hobby is trying to learn strange languages–and the mistakes that that implies. Tony is a prolific academic, you can read more of his work at academia.edu.or purchase one (or more!) of his books from Amazon.com.