Fulbright Evaluations

For a number of years now, the Hungarian Fulbright Commission has asked me to be an evaluator for applications for those Hungarian hopefuls who wish to go to the US to study, lecture or research.


Each application is reviewed and scrutinized by one American and one Hungarian reviewer whenever possible. Generally, in the past, the request comes in at the very end of the spring semester, one of the worst possible times to fit in yet another activity, but I have never said no. Not only do I enjoy it, they pay me besides.


This year, it seemed that they had forgotten me, at least until a couple of days ago when I received the call to action. They had 8 proposals that needed to be examined. All were in the field of literature, not my area, per se, but I am able to muddle through with some Internet research where needed to fill in my information deficits. 


Basically, I examined two categories: Lecturer/Research all those from here with a doctorate already and those who are applying for student status. Ninety percent of the time, I can say that the Lecturer/Research proposals leave me feeling like a total underachiever, waste of professional life slug. The list of publications, conference lectures and other professional activities makes my head spin. My only consolation is that they have access to the foundation research, which is in Hungarian. I don't have access to databases in English.


Then again, I do justify my sloth with the fact that I try to put the majority of my energy into the classroom and working one on one with students. This leaves less time and much less energy to pursue tracking down professional resources as the foundation for further research followed by writing and publishing. That is my justification and I am sticking to it. 


For those outside or within the US, I highly recommend you check out the Fulbright Commission Scholarship program, but clicking here. To learn more of its history, you can check out this article.

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Szeged - Paprika Capital of Hungary

Mea culpa times three. There I said it and I am truly sorry. For years now, I have been saying that once you have seen one Hungarian city outside of Budapest, you have seen them all - the Deja vu experience I called it. One more time for good measure, mea culpa. Ron and I took the 2 1/2 hour train ride to Szeged today so I could do some research for my upcoming book. The section on Szeged is small as is Eger, but still there was a burning need to refresh my memory of these smaller cities. According to http://www.citypopulation.de/Hungary-Cities.html#Stadt_gross, Szeged ranks number four in size, but Eger is not even on the top eleven list. On an IC train, we were surprised at how crowded it was. Why weren't all of these people going to Balaton instead? With Mr. M on his own adventure, I could not keep him from popping up in my mind. He had to catch a train at 6:30 this morning. We reached ours at 9:30 am. He had a seven hour train ride ahead of him to reach his destination, we had two and a half hours. He had two to three hours at his destination before returning again, we had all day. He had another seven hour ride to get home, we had two hours and fifteen minutes. Oh, life is good. It also occurred to me that with a perpetual mantra of "What should I do? What do you think I should do?", he reminds me of a remote control toy with the toggle controls in someone else's hands. He just goes where directed, without much self-control. When he crashes into a wall, he can certainly blame others. He did not direct himself there; someone else set him on that course of action. Back to Szeged. This is another city we have not trained to before. The last time we visited, we came by bus with Fulbrighters. The train station is beautiful, but like Eger away from the city center. A full day transport ticket was 750 Forints and the tram directly outside took us to one of the main squares from where we walked most of the day. A healthy person could easily become a sugar comotose mess here; there are more pastry shops than there are restaurants. Each of them have similar versions of all of the basics, so it is vexing why one would choose one over the other. Checking hotels and restaurants for the book, we allowed ourselves to take in some sites too. We found architecture, which I had web researched for the last edition, but had not seen in person. Stunning!! Szeged is lovely in parts, but it is spread wider than Eger, so to get from interesting point A to interesting point B is not as compact. Being a Saturday, everything was closed by 1:00 pm, even the little convenience stores that we rely on in Budapest for when the grocery stores close for the day. Interesting! Also, we were hard pressed to find a hotel in the heart of downtown, with one exception, but its looks were so unappealing from the lobby view, I could not bear to walk in to offer a reader recommendation. They will have to deal with the two that I have. The weather was congenial. Not a drop of rain fell from the sky, though I did pack an umbrella, which I would have shared with Ron had the need arose. All in all, we had a delightful and productive day, home again lickety split by 10:00 pm.

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Questia - A Wonderful Resource

Questia Library

Books and articles for online research.

Search:

Browse:

• Education
• Psychology
• History
• Literature
• Religion
• Philosophy

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Guinea Pigs

I received an e-mail informing me that a Hungarian doctoral student who had gone to MIT was looking for native English speakers for his doctoral research. I immediately sent him a note and Ron and I volunteered for whatever he needed us to do. Having gone through the process of needing and cajoling people into being part of you doctoral research, I could certainly sympathize. We arranged to meet this morning at his university here in Budapest, the Technical University. It was only minutes later that we realized where the Ministry of Education is allocating their funds for higher education. The buildings and the equipment were pristine. Tamas, the researcher, is a young, attractive, soft-spoken gentleman. He had two computers set up so both of us could go through the experiment simultaneously, not waiting around for the other. We had to listen to different patterns of speech and determine different qualities about the voices we heard. It only lasted for 45 minutes, though he warned us it could take up to an hour. After we were done, he gave each of us a box of chocolates as a thank you for participating. After us, he only 3 participants and his goal is 10. I continued to spread the word with Fulbrighters and others that I knew, but could not convince anyone else to give so little of their time for a good cause. What a shame!

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