feuervogel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feuervogel) wrote2011-01-28 05:27 pm
feuervogel) wrote2011-01-28 05:27 pm
I keep coming up with Ideas.
I read a really interesting article on the history of football in the DDR/GDR. I mean, how is that not relevant to my interests? Football, the Cold War, divided Germany... yeah. Ping.
So the excitable part of my brain went down this path of "Oh, hey, there are universities in Berlin, and you could go study history there, and maybe be able to focus on that, but you couldn't apply straight to a master's, because your BS is in chemistry & German, so you'd have 6 semesters of full time classes, and that's a lot of work, and damn, but international applications are complicated, and history is a limited enrollment subject" then said "meh. You can find books to read on your particular subject."
Then I wondered if the Volkshochschulen (sort of equivalent to community colleges) offer history programs, and I ended up on the Berliner VHS page, and, while I couldn't find any history courses, at least not from the broad categories listed, they have a health & fitness section, so I poked in there a bit, and they have things like qi gong and yoga. Since one of my plans for the next 10 years is to become a teacher in my tai chi school, I wondered how one applies to teach a course at a VHS. That question itself wasn't answered, but it looks like you have to do some sort of continuing-education program to ensure quality, if I'm understanding this Bürokrat-Buzzword German properly.
Oh, hey, I could click on the FAQ (HGF? Not pronounceable at all...) and find this. Silly me, I was looking in the "about us" section :P It seems I just need proof of qualification and experience at teaching the course I'd like to teach (to *each* VHS, if I wanted to teach at more than one). And, hopefully, after 10 years, I'll be able to do that.
(You can also take German as a foreign language courses there, for FAR cheaper than at Goethe, though without the fun cultural programs and the like. And get certifications for various jobs, like IT and whatnot.)
More later on pros, cons, terrors, stresses, and that sort of thing in regard to the idea of moving holy shit to Berlin. Because moving 6 time zones and an 8.5-hour flight to a different country isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Especially when the city you want to move to only has 60 hours of sunlight a month between October and March (but 220 hours of sunlight in July! Yeah, Berlin's at 52.30N. I live at 36.09N now.)
So the excitable part of my brain went down this path of "Oh, hey, there are universities in Berlin, and you could go study history there, and maybe be able to focus on that, but you couldn't apply straight to a master's, because your BS is in chemistry & German, so you'd have 6 semesters of full time classes, and that's a lot of work, and damn, but international applications are complicated, and history is a limited enrollment subject" then said "meh. You can find books to read on your particular subject."
Then I wondered if the Volkshochschulen (sort of equivalent to community colleges) offer history programs, and I ended up on the Berliner VHS page, and, while I couldn't find any history courses, at least not from the broad categories listed, they have a health & fitness section, so I poked in there a bit, and they have things like qi gong and yoga. Since one of my plans for the next 10 years is to become a teacher in my tai chi school, I wondered how one applies to teach a course at a VHS. That question itself wasn't answered, but it looks like you have to do some sort of continuing-education program to ensure quality, if I'm understanding this Bürokrat-Buzzword German properly.
Oh, hey, I could click on the FAQ (HGF? Not pronounceable at all...) and find this. Silly me, I was looking in the "about us" section :P It seems I just need proof of qualification and experience at teaching the course I'd like to teach (to *each* VHS, if I wanted to teach at more than one). And, hopefully, after 10 years, I'll be able to do that.
(You can also take German as a foreign language courses there, for FAR cheaper than at Goethe, though without the fun cultural programs and the like. And get certifications for various jobs, like IT and whatnot.)
More later on pros, cons, terrors, stresses, and that sort of thing in regard to the idea of moving holy shit to Berlin. Because moving 6 time zones and an 8.5-hour flight to a different country isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Especially when the city you want to move to only has 60 hours of sunlight a month between October and March (but 220 hours of sunlight in July! Yeah, Berlin's at 52.30N. I live at 36.09N now.)
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I figure, if I still want to do this a few years from now, I'll swing by the German Embassy next time I'm in DC and barrage them with questions. (For something as Major Life Changing as moving to freaking continental Europe, I need to not do it seemingly on a whim, and it's something I need to plan for and re-evaluate every now and then. Even if living in Germany again is something I've wanted to do, sometimes as a back-of-the-mind thing, since 1997.)
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Actually, 60 hours is an overestimate.