German Class, Die Deutsche Grammatik, and Obamacare

Before I begin, I should probably put out there that a few of the ideas in this post come dangerously close to being political opinions. If you’re allergic to them, then I advise you to evacuate this blog as soon as you can. Alternatively, you can express any dissatisfaction you experience to ohgodforgivemeryan@gmail.com. My people are working on a vaccine against opinions and might be able to help.

Remember when I said that level A German doesn’t prepare a person to speak about politics? Well, week 1 of level B does. Chapter 28 of our book is entitled “die Geschichte,” which literally means “History” and roughly means “holy shit it’s about to get all UN up in here.” So this is probably the best chapter in all of Deutsch lernen.

First, I need to describe my new German teacher.

He’s old in the absolute best way possible. He arrives in his chair at exactly 9am, immediately closing the door behind him to maximize the awkwardness of late arrivals. When you do arrive late, he ignores your tardiness for about 3-4 minutes while he continues with the early exercises he planned for us. At the 3-4 minute mark, he suddenly stops the lesson and peers at you over his glasses, across the table, through your eyes and into the brain of your soul. Then, he says something like “one should always be punctual. When one arrives late, it disrupts the flow of the lesson, and your classmates cannot learn. I cannot say more–you are in  Germany, the land of punctuality.” That’s what he actually said the first time someone was late. Well, he said it in German, so it’s very nearly what he actually said.

He is literally tied with one other person for “the greatest teacher I have ever had.” I enrolled in all three of the other guy’s classes in college.

Additionally, I wouldn’t call what he does “teaching.” Rather, he forces knowledge directly into your brain. Looking over the top of his glasses, he starts with a seemingly innocent question. Seemingly. In reality, he carefully crafted it using as many as possible of the parts of grammar we’ve learned so far.

“Ryan, ask Carolina what she discusses with her friends when she meets with them.”

Then I have to make a question out of that. “Carolina, what do you discuss with your friends when you meet with them?” That particular question is actually insane when all you know is A-level German.

And then “Fernando, what did Ryan just ask Carolina?”

Fernando then has to say “Ryan asked Carolina, ‘What do you discuss with your friends when you meet with them?'” And that sentence just destroyed Fernando’s brain, because it  requires a very non-intuitive change to the “What do you discuss…” part.

And then “Stephano, say what Fernando just said in the past tense.”

And it proceeds until we’ve exhausted every tense and every construction of that original sentence we know.

His name’s Valentin, and he’s come to teach you some goddam Deutsch.

So here’s the part about Obamacare.

We’ve hit some heavy subjects in the “Geschichte” chapter. We’ve celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany about a billion times (Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit was yesterday, as a matter of fact). We’ve admired George senior for flying a plane against the Nazis in WWII, and we’ve even discussed the motivation behind Hitler’s “final solution” (“nobody really knows” is among the million or so theories we discussed for that last one).

Today’s discussion falls in the middle of the intellectual-weight continuum described above, closer to “Berlin Wall” than to “Final Solution.”

During a listening exercise, we were supposed to select from a long list of key phrases the ones discussed during a set of interviews. One phrase was “eigene Kultur” (“unique culture”). The interview that brought it up did so in order to say that Europe’s culture is amazing; it’s just kind of a shame that so much has been Americanized over the recent years.

Afterward, Valentin took a break to open up a discussion. He said that the statement in the interview, while just for educational purposes, did have some interesting relevance to it. He said that American movies and music, especially, seem to be preferred in public settings over their European counterparts. Since entertainment is a vehicle for culture, it makes sense that a trend like that would inject American culture into Europe. He said that some countries are even taking steps to ward it off. France, for example, requires that 50% of music played on the radio is of European (possibly even just French?) origin. I don’t know if that’s law or just social, or if it’s even all of France–he didn’t go into too much detail about it.

Next, he expressed a little disappointment that entertainment might inspire Europeans to emulate Americans, when that would be a fallacy in judgment. Europe is not America, after all. He then put an idea in our heads for us to consider–perhaps Europe shouldn’t look to America as a role model in light of the congressional impasse that disabled government spending on Tuesday. “Does anyone know about that?” he asked. “Ryan?”

“Yeah, the government isn’t working since Tuesday.” (Ja. Die Regierung funktioniert seit Dienstag nicht.).

“Yes! That’s it. And the center of it all is Obamacare, yes? Democrats want to fund it and Republicans do not.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” (Genau).

His eyes began ascending the lenses of his glasses. Soon, they were out in the open and pointed directly at the innards of my soul. “And what do you think about Obamacare? Is it necessary? Good or bad?” He was smiling. I should really mention that, because he’s incredibly good-natured for all his sternness.

All 22 other faces in the class pointed themselves at mine.

!Political opinion requested! Here, discussions of politics and religion are mostly no big deal at all–every teacher I’ve had has brought them up, and they come up at dinner quite often as well. The American in me had a pulse of about a million beats per minute, though. Ok, Ryan, here goes. Just say something. Opinions don’t always start screaming matches and fist fights, here.

“Well, that’s a really difficult question,” I said. I wasn’t even being a non-committal wimp about that–I was dead serious. “For me, what’s important isn’t whether or not the government should provide healthcare to its citizens. What’s important to me is what the opportunity cost of Obamacare is. If the government funds healthcare (and maybe the medical industry infrastructure to support more patients?), then what can’t it do as a result? Knowing that is how I would decide whether or not it’s ‘good.'”

“Ah, yes, I understand what you mean” replied Valentin. “But the government should be able to provide for its citizens, no?” “What do the other students think?” (Worth noting is that Valentin is native to a country that found a way to enact a 40%+ income tax without a single government building burning down).

The next 2 or so minutes were a calamity of agreeable mumbling, head shaking, and short bursts of contrary opinion. Most of our Japanese-Italian-Bulgarian-Spanish-Argentinian-American-Ukrainian class straight-up said “healthcare should absolutely be public,” while a few were in the pragmatic camp.

If you have a bunch of American Facebook friends and you read your feed the week of September 30, 2013, then you know exactly what the room sounded like.

Deutsch Lernen: What You Can Do After 4 Months

Ja, ich Kann!
Graduating level A gives you an unparalleled sense of pride.

About a week ago, my class and I graduated from A-level German. We’ve just started B1, then. The way I see it, this is a good time to reflect on what A-level German lets a person do in Germany. Or, more practically speaking,  this is about what a person can do with German after 4 months of studying it in its native environment. Awwwww yeah.

First, let’s refresh over the European language system–all of that A/B/C stuff. The system is divided into three levels–A, B and C–which are themselves each divided into two sub-levels. You start in A, and you progress through C. You need to finish B before you look for a job that requires skill in German to perform–most jobs that don’t belong to Texas Instruments, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft and the like. C, I’ve been told, is meant to give students an academic grasp of German. My teachers have told me that C1 could be beneficial to those who want to be sophisticated, but C2 is almost completely pointless.

So, now I’m at the beginning of B1–the beginning of the level that transforms people from residents into professionals.

Come to think of it, “resident” is a really good word for describing what level A (4 months of training) has done for me. After 4 months, I can speak German at people, rather than with them. I can listen to simple requests and advice and respond in either really simple or really broken manners. For example, I can do these things:

  • Order at a restaurant
  • Pay for things
  • Ask for directions to places
  • Introduce myself
  • Tell people why I’m here (see my first post)
  • Look for a job (but not interview for one)
  • Discuss politics just a little bit (who’s running, party platforms, tell someone I can’t vote because I’m not a citizen)
  • Navigate public transportation (which train? when does it get here? oh God, it’s late? do I need to transfer? are there taxis?)
  • Tell people what I do for a living
  • Tell people about my plans to go back to school
  • Ask what a word means
  • Request that the speaker slow down or simplify their words

I can maybe do some other things as well, but those are the things that I have to do a lot.

Also, it’s good to keep in mind I can’t exactly call the contexts in which I employ those abilities “conversations.” Rather, it’s an exchange of simple sentences that both of us understand. I don’t call them “conversations,” because at least one of us is always thinking “that’s probably not exactly what they mean, but it’s close enough to inform my next action.”

A is designed to bring a person to functioning order within German society, then. It serves to ward off foreigner-terror (that’s terror of being a foreigner, not a terror of foreigners) and help one convey that they’re trying to learn the language.

I expect B to make me a conversationalist. I’ve looked ahead in the lessons, and I’m seeing crucial pieces to the conversation puzzle that were missing in A. Namely, I’m seeing complex sentences–main clause plus subordinate clause. Command of subordinate clauses is a huge difference between a speaker who appears “conversational,” and one who does not. With that ability, I can vary up my sentence structures, which will make me look confident.

Oh boy, is that going to be fun.

Spainsterdam!

About two months ago, Roxana and I went to Amsterdam to meet some of her friends for an insane Electronic Music show called Sensation Wild. Then, we went with some other friends to their hometowns in Spain: Alicante and Murcia.

Amsterdam was probably exactly what you think it was, because I’m the last person in the world to visit that city. Four things sum it up, though–canals, red lights, Heineken and “Coffee Shops.” And really old buildings. So five things.

As awesome as Amsterdam was, Spain was more interesting. We stayed with our friends at their parents’ houses, so that’s probably why. We drank a lot of Sangria, went out for Tapas, spent about 99% of each day on the beach, spoke Spanish, and took naps at 1pm with the rest of Spain. Delightful.

Before I squander this opportunity to keep the writing to a minimum: pictures and videos!

AMSTERDAM

SPAIN

SENSATION WILD

Thanks to my obsession with recording things, I grabbed a few clips from this ridiculous show while we were there. It’s in the Amsterdam Arena. If you only watch one video, make it the first one in this playlist. I burst into flames every time I watch it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQtzeUN52uswsZ8gzUAPb6RSlOkHjdgnd]

The Drawing Board, Explained

Last week, I wrote about the plans I’ve made since receiving the notice that I didn’t get into the Logic and Philosophy of Science Master’s program. They revolve around three important decisions. Remember them?

  1. Learning to speak German is the most important thing I’m doing right now related to my career
  2. Getting my Master’s degree in 2014-15 is more important than resuming my career with a conventional full-time job
  3. I want to start making money again, soon

If you don’t remember them because you didn’t read that post, then you can send your apologies to ohgodforgivemeryan@gmail.com. Go on. Send them.

What I didn’t do in that post is explain why I made those particular decisions. So, that’s what I’m doing right now. “Why” is approximately infinity times more important than “what,” in any case. Maybe that’s your point of view, too. And here we go.

Learning German is the Most Important Thing I’m Doing

While everyone in Bayern under the age of (I think) 50 had to learn English in school, English is not the way most people operate day-to-day in Munich. For them, it seems a bit like it is for me and about 7 billion other Texans. That is, many of us learned Spanish, but we would always prefer English and, in fact, would rarely have the opportunity to use our second language. The result is much the same, as well. Some in Munich speak phenomenal English (as some Texans speak phenomenal Spanish), but many need to focus their minds while speaking and listening, requiring that conversation remain somewhat slow and basic. It’s that symptom that everyone who learns a second language understands: until you live among native speakers for at least a few months, speaking a second language is a bit of a mental chore. I happen to be in that “native speaker” situation, while the German friends I meet here are not. So, I should learn German so that I can meet, practice and speak with the Germans.

More specifically, though, learning German will 1) let me function in German culture, 2) open up maybe 100 extra Master’s degree options which are only taught in German and 3) make me a viable candidate for employment at a “smaller” company, at which German speech appears to be the norm, intra-office.

*****Tangent: Why do I want the option to work at a “smaller” company? I’m young and want to build a unique structure of marketing knowledge before I seek a team management position. In general, smaller companies have weaker bureaucracies than larger ones, and they’re less convinced that they have all the answers already. At the smaller companies I’m talking about, the goal is to figure out how to win. Their antithesis is the large company at which the goal is to keep doing what wins. I believe you learn more (about marketing to consumers) in a shorter period of time at the smaller company, so that’s where I’m thinking I’ll head, next. All that said, “small company” is just the name I’m giving that archetypal corporate culture–the literal size of the company isn’t important otherwise.

Earning a Master’s Degree: More Important than Full-Time Work

Every single day, I feel anxious about my absence from the Marketing arena. Is Aurasma any more useful now than it was 4 months ago? Could I use SnackTools to develop an effective microsite-ad-widget campaign really quickly for a product I manage? Can I create a video for a B2B company that lasts longer than 2 minutes and retains 80+ percent of its viewers? Can I find or create a human personality to represent a company or product that people in my target audience actually admire and follow (really follow ideologically, not one-night-stand-style Twitter follow, or politically motivated LinkedIn follow)? And then there’s the mountains of consumer data companies can access with their Web Analytics suites. I miss SiteCatalyst.

With a company’s resources (and audiences), I could be answering those questions, swimming in consumer data, and honing my marketer’s edge. If you’re in my position right now, then you know that option sounds astoundingly tasty. But it’s not the best option, yet.

The best option is going back to school, and two reasons make that the case. The first is that I’ll be competing with Master’s graduates in the future. The second is that academia has a way of giving a marketer ideas that the corporate world struggles to offer. The first reason is obvious, so I’ll just take a bit of space to explain the second one.

Academia is brimming with enthusiasm and idealism. Enthusiasm and idealism foster creativity and experimentation. Creativity and experimentation sometimes lead to success and sometimes to failure, but always to a sharper mind.

Think about it: in a normal business class, you’re given a project like “develop a marketing plan to reintroduce this fledgling local TV station to its market.” Then you go figure out how to do it with your team. Only your team. You guys get to go through all four stages of team development without “preemptive mediation” from outside your team (that means managers try to help you avoid the storming phase). You get to challenge each other’s ideas using marketing logic instead of the logic of internal politics. You get to create an entire pitch on your own, so the client has to wait until the idea is ready before they can get scared and reign you in prematurely. Then, you actually get to pitch your plan.

Oh, and then you get blunt, unadulterated feedback that doesn’t have to care about morale.

And if you don’t do as well as you wanted to do, then you can learn why and apply it to your next project.

The professional world struggles to offer that kind of no-holds-barred development to its inhabitants. That is, companies sometimes need to bar a lot of holds. If my marketing experiment (read: project) fails, and the culture around my boss would look down on him for it, then he is going to feel one hell of an urge to peer over my shoulder and nix those of my ideas that he didn’t expect. So, the easiest way to learn at a company is to learn from the company–do what its employees have been doing for years and learn how well those methods work. After you do that, learning whether or not there’s something better you could be doing for the company is a major challenge. It’s a fun one, but nevertheless major.

******Tangent: Come to think of it, that “learning from the company” bit makes hopping from company to company a pretty rational lifestyle. Once you learn how your company wins, and you stop learning more, then you move to the next company and learn how it wins until you stop learning more. You can get a lifetime’s worth of good business ideas that way.

So I’ll go back to school. A year of classes followed by a year of work/thesis will be a fantastic mental exercise. Then, I’ll go back to the business world, where plan-execute-analyze-improve applies to pitching program ideas to coworkers more often than pitching products or services to customers. And by that time, the ideas I’ll be pitching will be better than they are now.

I Want to Start Making Money Again, Soon

The rationale behind this decision won’t surprise a single one of you. I came over here with an appropriate amount of savings, but over time I’m feeling anxious as my savings only decline without offset. Roxana is employed, so the worst case scenario isn’t catastrophic, but it would still take a significant emotional toll on me.

That means I would feel uncomfortable in a scenario that has Roxana bearing the entire financial burden of the relationship. She, angelically as usual, assures me that I’m worried about something stupid, but I nonetheless can’t shake the awkwardness.

So, I’m looking for a part-time job doing something in Marketing (read: something with a company’s customers). Since I don’t know German at a professional level, yet, one of my first stops is the Munich Arbeitsamt–the employment office. I want to ask them what kinds of jobs and employers in the city prioritize English and don’t mind if the employee is in the middle of learning German.

So those are they–the reasons behind my decisions. I’ll keep you in the loop on how everything goes.

The Drawing Board

As I wrote a few months ago, I’ve been trying to get into a Master’s program at LMU Munich called “Logic and the Philosophy of Science.” Two amazing people provided recommendation letters, I submitted a “published article” of mine, I tweaked my resume for an academic submission, and I ran down my inspiration in a cover letter. And then I waited a couple of weeks.

Well, I didn’t get into the program. It’s a real shame, because what I would have gained from it would have been really useful in carving a unique path through the rest of my life. Not many people apply a Master’s in Logic and the Philosophy of Science to the business world. At least, they don’t according to LinkedIn.

What I received from the program coordinator was an e-mail that said he regrets to inform me that I wasn’t admitted, and that he’s sure I understand that he can’t discuss application specifics with individual candidates (maybe if I can transcend my individuality, then he’ll tell me?). That sounded like a lot of generic blah blah, so I e-mailed him about the rejection, anyway.

“I appreciate that you cannot comment on my application specifically. Might you be able to offer me a few descriptors of the ideal candidate? I will be able to use the information to strengthen myself for my future.”

I thought I was sly. Of course, if he tells me about the ideal candidate, then I can cross check that profile with mine and figure out why they didn’t let me in. It didn’t work, though. I sent that e-mail 24 days ago and haven’t received a response.

That’s just an inescapable bummer of competition for which people determine the results subjectively–most of the time, you have no idea why you win or lose. Maybe my article wasn’t published enough, maybe my background isn’t non-business enough, maybe my goals aren’t academic enough, maybe 500 better versions of me also applied for the program, or maybe the guy in charge got ripped off by a car salesman named Ryan one time. I’ll never know. The program is like, two years old, so I can’t find alumni, yet.  Maybe I could get to know a good sample of current students, but there would have to be 0 other useful degree programs out there for me to devote that kind of time.

Anyway, this post isn’t about solving the rejection problem. It’s about what I’m doing now that I’m back at the drawing board.

Here are the decisions I’ve made:

  1. Learning to speak German is the most important thing I’m doing right now related to my career
  2. Getting my Master’s degree is more important than resuming my career with a conventional full-time job, right now
  3. I want to start making money again, soon

And here is how those decisions affect the way life plays out for me over the next few years:

Learning German is the Most Important

This one’s easy. I keep taking German classes, keep speaking German when I’m with Germans, keep watching TV, and keep refraining from skipping the German-language ads on YouTube. I’ll be done with class in January or February (depending on how long Winter Break is, and what our January trip to Mexico will do to my class timing). That puts me right in the beginnings of university application season and internship application season. Mmmhmm.

Getting a Master’s Degree: More Important than Full-Time Work

Right now, this means I’m looking for scholarships. In practice, these are living stipends, since university education in Bayern is free. But, they’ll make wages and hours less important when I seek an internship, so I can focus on skill building.

In a month or two, I’ll be working earnestly on my applications for admission.

In January, I’ll apply for more Master’s programs. The local universities are Technical University of Munich and, of course, LMU. I’ve identified three programs worth pursuing so far:

  1. Consumer Affairs: Described in a way that sounds like “psychology of consumption.” In any case, it’s a program that teaches marketers how to get to know consumers more effectively. Delicious.
  2. Economics: If your background is in business, and your future is in business, you can’t go wrong with Economics. An understanding of the ways in which the world around a company can effect that company’s business can only help an aspiring business leader.
  3. MBA: Yep, I’m considering it. My heart is changing, because I’ve started to see this degree in a light similar to the one in which I saw Logic and the Philosophy of Science. That is, one of the best ways to practice philosophy is to discuss philosophy with others who are interested in discussing it. I’m believing that might be a similar trait of business management.

I’ll have finished learning German formally by this time, so I’ll also be investigating German-language Master’s programs. Ja wohl!

I Want to Start Making Money Again, Soon

I’ve been here 4 and a half months, and I’m becoming tired of spending my savings without ever replenishing them. So, while I’m looking at scholarships, I’ll also be looking for part-time work. Corporate internships and temp jobs are pretty much out of the question, because obtaining those would require a level of dedication (sending out a million CVs and networking so that 10 people give me interviews) that would preclude learning German and applying for college. I’m not really competent in German, yet, so that leaves the jobs that only need people who speak English. Namely, I’ve considered these so far:

  1. English Teacher: Following in the footsteps of every English speakers who’s lived in another country, ever, I could teach my mothertongue to eager youngsters and jaded oldsters alike. There seems to be a respectable demand for people like this ,here, but I may need to get certified (spend 250 EURO on a CV line), and I’ve heard that working hours are unpredictable and occasionally really disappointing.
  2. Tour Guide: I can be a supremely enthusiastic showman in front of groups of tourists! And I know some Chinese, so at least 95% of my clientele would be in for a pleasant surprise. Bonus points for this one, because it would let me exercise my marketer chops.
  3. Transit Authority Information Rep: You know–one of those people at the big train stations who tells terrified out-of-towners where to go?
  4. Guy Who Throws Luggage Onto Airplanes: The bottom of every totem pole is always interesting, and as part of a repetitive process, I could figure out a thing or two about process management. Who loves Gantt charts and bottleneck analyses? This guy.
  5. Garbage Man: I’ll do it. You watch me do it.

So, that’s the state of things in a nutshell. Whew–glad I wrote this stuff down.