New job

I sort of fell into a new job a couple of weeks ago. I had heard from someone that a local magazine was looking for an English-speaking editor. I wrote them an email to ask if they were still looking and they were. They asked me to come to an interview the next day. So I rode my bike there this morning, and after a quick chat, the president of the company gave me the job.

I have no editing experience. The only thing I’ve done that sort of relates is the technical writing program at Umass. So how is this possible? It’s not that I’m extremely charming, it’s just that there’s just no competition for the job. There are a lot of foreigners in Tianjin, but most of them are businessmen (already busy), students (probably even less qualified than me and likely to leave after one or two semesters), or missionaries (don’t want to work on something unrelated to Jesus). It turns out that the person who told me about the job heard about the vacancy in April. So really, it seems not many people here were willing to take on the job, and certainly not for a local salary.

Seems like it could be turn into good job experience, right? And maybe I won’t need to teach anymore while I’m here. Right now, I’ll just be trying out the job for 3 months. It’s fewer hours and lower pay during that time. After that, if they like me I can become full time if I want to.