第12号　「先生の研究室」ベイリー先生とマイク先生インタビュー

&YOU１２号では、連載「先生の研究室」でSALLのベイリー先生とマイク先生にインタビューを行いました。 冊子には日本語訳を載せていますが、インタビューの内容をもとの英語でweb上に掲載します。

-Why are you working city, not your hometown and not your home country ? I think there are a great part and bad part. What did you think of that?

Mike: I’ll do the negative things first. It’s very easy to tell you about the negative things. Positive things, sometimes hard to see. Negative things, when you are a in foreign country, usually you are not a citizen of that country. So you have limited rights. For examples, visa, you need to have a work visa which places a lot of pressure on if you wanna stay. You cannot vote in that society and especially the future, pension, nenkin right? Those things are kind of stressful in working abroad, specifically for me working in Japan, is nomikai culture. Luckily, in university job, I don’t have to really participate in that. I am the kind of the person who doesn’t like to take part in those group activities and I’m very independent. And I feel that in working here especially, you have to work along with the group, but luckily in university I don’t have to do that. So, to me, challenging in working in Japan is the organization of the culture is difficult for me. Even my mother is Japanese and I have Japanese, I don’t feel comfortable in organization of the culture. kind of the outcast.

- What was your study or research in this uni?

Baily: I think both of us are kind of interested in motivation. We hopefully have got some stuff coming up. We’ve worked on collaborative learning also. If you are in a class, you often see the group we make in the class and you work in a group and teachers just stop by, not just teachers in front and saying like ‘listen to me’. So we are interested in that collaborative learning. Also recently, we are trying to find motivation. We teach lots of classes in International Relations. And for pharmacy students, they know they’ll become pharmacists and they have a clear goal. Business, they also have a clear goal. And they get a TOEIC, it’s a bit better. But for the International relations, many of our students become the 3rd year and what do you guys want to do? Some of you guys wanna get international jobs like translator or UN, some of you work at a bank and work at a company. Finding that out for International Relations, especially for you guys, is kind of a big job. You have to finding out what you want to do in your life? So the kind of working out your motivation, what you want to do, is our current research.

- The system of the united state of the college and university is different?

Baily: specially, job hunting situation. For my university, most of the graduates, they didn’t have jobs, maybe 50%, some of took year off your vacation traveled Europe and they got jobs in the next few years but there is no like 3rd year job hunting situation.
Mike: there is no job hunting system. You find a job by yourself. You do everything by yourself and when you feel motivated too, some people wait until the last minute, some people start early, some people want to study in graduate school. But there’s no set schedule. So, Japan the calendar year goes from April to March, so when you graduate in March and you start your job in April. So you have to start a year and a half before for the April of your graduate, but in Unite State when you graduate from university usually in the end of May or early Jun. there’s no set time to enter the company. You can enter the company one week after graduate or you can enter the company six months later. It just depends on you and the company, the agreements you and company make. So there’s no set time for all one thousand people to enter the company, just different for everyone.
Baily: yeah, my 3rd year and 4th year students they are focused on getting jobs here, but, in the United State, you want to graduate. So you can get a job. So the focus is very different. For American universities, when I was there my students they were very focused 3rd and 4th year, but for here, they are in 3rd and 4th year, got to find a job, got to get a job, university is not important in the last two years. M: It’s very difficult to do both at the same time. And allowed times are American society we really value or we empathies the agree point average and if you don’t make any effort during their junior, senior years, and 3rd and 4th years it might look bad in your job interviews and potentially you might lose the chance to get a good job or graduate schools so like Ben said, the focus is to first finish what you started, finish school first, and then get a job definitely.
Mike: There’s no culture of “Zemi” in United State. we don’t have this group for every meets. So you can meet your professor by yourself. And there was no period, no “gen” right? In university here, there was no period in my university. For example, you look at the student handbook. “Oh, I wanna take economics. Economics is from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30, Monday and Wednesday. But…”I wanna take Japanese!” Japanese is from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., Monday and Wednesday. So there is no period, no “gen”. So I can choose only one. “Which one will I choose?” So, for example, maybe I have a class from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. while my friend does not have a class then. He or she can eat lunch. My lunch is at 2:00 p.m. His lunch is at 11:00 a.m. There is no lunch period. So basically you design your schedule and you follow your own schedule. It’s up to you to do. It’s not decided for you.

-Why are you working here?

Baily: For me I enjoy teaching. I’ve tried other jobs but it’s not fulfilling. Like I was working at a store in the U.S. In Seattle I worked at a retail store target and in university I worked at a library. And I worked as an usher at a concert hall. And I worked as a casher at a store and doing some logistics for a store, like getting products in and out. But it doesn’t make me sleep well at end of day and I need to have people that I feel like helping them. And it helps me feel good myself. And it is so fulfilling. If I am trying to be “buy this, buy this, buy this”, it’s only about money. It doesn’t make me feel passion. The job is like this, I like talking to people and feel like helping them.

-What do you think about marriage?

We have to think of the relationship. We are a team then we have to think about the best future for the team. I think that you have to support each other. If she has a dream, a goal and her job now, maybe I’ll support that now, but later in the future , if I have a goal or I wanna study again, then maybe I hope she can follow me, right, so I think we have to think like a team . We cannot think about myself or herself only. What if when we have a child, then we have to think about three people. So I think the best thing to do is to save money and always have a back-up plan, right, have a second plan just in case. I think you need to have the conversation with your boyfriend or girlfriend and plan together about the future and we wait until the time and make a best choice at the time.

-At last, give messages to the Kendai-sei.

Baily: Ah, this year like … my theme is um …. find what you want, learn how to get it, work for it. Mike: Ben says what I wanna say much quicker and clearer, so I think Ben is better in … as a speaker. I agree, I say many people in …. especially in society will tell you or will have expectations for you. “You should do this,” or “We hope you do this,” right? So sometimes you will feel pressure from other people or from your family or whoever, so maybe you can’t make a choice or maybe you cannot meet their expectations ,right? But, what do you expect from yourself ? That’s my question to you, my question to all Kendai students. What do you expect from yourself ? And like Ben said, what do you need to do it? What do you need to meet your expectations, mean your goals, and I think the most important thing is to be honest with yourself, and then give 100% to achieve that goal. So Ben said the same thing in 10 seconds.

ベイリー先生、マイク先生、貴重なお話を聞かせていただき、ありがとうございました。 また、記事づくりにご協力いただいた藤森先生、本当にありがとうございました。