Last of the Spring

After today, we are due for gray skies and rain for at least a week, so it felt good to be out and about.  I had an interesting Library session today, although it was more a conversation than tutoring.  I worked with a 38 year old college graduate from Taiwan who is here on a five year visa for her husband's job.  They don't intend to stay beyond that, so she is trying to get the most out of her stay here.  She applied for a Master's Degree in Business, but couldn't get a  high enough score on the GRE.  So she enrolled in a Certificate Program at UW, but she finds it very basic and not really interesting.  Now she's at a point where she has to make serious decisions about what's next, and that's what we talked about.  Differences in teaching in Taiwan and the United States, what the value of a certificate might be, whether going for a Master's online would be as good as actually attending classes at a University. It appears that, In Taiwan, paper credentials are highly important.  Her worry about an online degree is that her diploma will say it was an online degree, and that would not help her chances at getting the right kind of job when she goes.  I hope I convinced her that colleges don't have different diplomas for online learning.   We talked for two hours - her English is excellent - and I think she decided that rather than continue with the Certificate program, she will take time to gather information about all her options at this point.  I don't know if I'll see her again, but I hope she decides to go the online route.  I really believe it would best satisfy her needs.

After tutoring, I headed down to QFC to do some shopping and look for a Silly Saturday blip.  This bag of organic chickpea snacks being lassoed by a garbanzo bean in  cowboy gear seemed to fit the bill.  I was surprised to find that there were so many odd snacks - there were lots of seaweed snacks too - in a regular supermarket.