Spring Break
Things I've Learned, with the Blue Jay Battalion's Major Levy
Issue date: 11/20/08
I was looking for something different. One of the things I like about the military is they let you do something different.
When I was offered this opportunity or offered the chance to interview for this opportunity I thought, "I've never lived out here on the east coast and Hopkins has a great reputation."
I figured that coming out here especially to Johns Hopkins was a great chance. And I wanted to go for it and get the chance to work in the academic community.
N-L: How long have you taught here?
HL: I got here in January of 2007.
N-L: Where have you been stationed during your career?
HL: I have been many places. My first duty assignment [was] at CA Berkeley. I wound up serving as a second lieutenant recruiter.
I stayed on at my school for about six months, explaining the program to students and helping [to] bring people into the program there. We've got folks doing that here [at Hopkins].
Beyond that, I was in Alaska for three years. I went to Korea.
I've been to Bosnia, Missouri, I mentioned Kentucky, and I've been to Iraq. There are probably a few other short-term places I've been.
N-L: So how did some of these different cultures compare?
HL: The different locations? Well, I'd say probably of all the places I've been, Baltimore is the closest to where I grew up, where you have the coast and that kind of academic, maybe a little more intellectually curious type of environment than what I've seen in Missouri or Tennessee. [That's] where I've tended to meet folks who, in some cases, had never been out of the county they were living in who were very excited to meet someone who had been as far afield as Alaska or Korea.
Alaska's just a different world. They have definitely still a lot of that frontier mentality there and I thought that Korea was really exciting.
There was a big, not ex-patriot, but American community teaching English. A lot of folks are there [due to the growing] economy, or at least that as the case in the late '90s when I was in Seoul. So that was exciting. I've seen a lot of great things in a lot of different places.
When I was offered this opportunity or offered the chance to interview for this opportunity I thought, "I've never lived out here on the east coast and Hopkins has a great reputation."
I figured that coming out here especially to Johns Hopkins was a great chance. And I wanted to go for it and get the chance to work in the academic community.
N-L: How long have you taught here?
HL: I got here in January of 2007.
N-L: Where have you been stationed during your career?
HL: I have been many places. My first duty assignment [was] at CA Berkeley. I wound up serving as a second lieutenant recruiter.
I stayed on at my school for about six months, explaining the program to students and helping [to] bring people into the program there. We've got folks doing that here [at Hopkins].
Beyond that, I was in Alaska for three years. I went to Korea.
I've been to Bosnia, Missouri, I mentioned Kentucky, and I've been to Iraq. There are probably a few other short-term places I've been.
N-L: So how did some of these different cultures compare?
HL: The different locations? Well, I'd say probably of all the places I've been, Baltimore is the closest to where I grew up, where you have the coast and that kind of academic, maybe a little more intellectually curious type of environment than what I've seen in Missouri or Tennessee. [That's] where I've tended to meet folks who, in some cases, had never been out of the county they were living in who were very excited to meet someone who had been as far afield as Alaska or Korea.
Alaska's just a different world. They have definitely still a lot of that frontier mentality there and I thought that Korea was really exciting.
There was a big, not ex-patriot, but American community teaching English. A lot of folks are there [due to the growing] economy, or at least that as the case in the late '90s when I was in Seoul. So that was exciting. I've seen a lot of great things in a lot of different places.
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