Saturday, May 13, 2006

New Job

I'm not sure why I am posting this. Honestly I don't think that any of the faithful readers of this by-weekly, or weekly (depending on the mood of the publishers) publication deserve a post. You see, your lack of comments act as a disincentive to any further posting. This leads me to posit the first rule of the blogosphere: The more comments an author receives, the higher his or her rate of publication.

Anyways, enough of that. As some of you might know, I spent a week in Cow-town taking a statistics course. I got to spend my entire time with a bunch of nerds who spent every single minute of the day either discussing the methodology itself, their research projects, and how said methodology will apply, or the merits of different statistical software packages. Luckily the entire thing, including flight and accommodation was paid for with your tax dollars through SSHRC.

Since then, I have been re-integrating myself into the life of a public servant. On Monday I started a new job as a researcher in the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Although the first week was dreadfully boring (my supervisor as well as the person who will be training me where away) it has the potential of being very interesting as well as challenging. Plus, I have a sweet view of the Burrard Inlet and the North Shore mountains to boot.

Here is a bit of what I will be doing. The IRB has documentation centers across the country that lawyers, members (the term given to the quasi-judges at the IRB that decide whether an individual is actually a refugee), as well as refugee claimants use to research the living conditions (as pertaining to human rights, gender and religious and political freedoms to name a few ) in the different countries of the world. These individuals then use this information to assist in deciding whether a refugee claimant qualifies as a convention refugee as defined by Canadian and international law. My role as the researcher will be to keep the Vancouver documentation center up to snuff and open to the public. More interestingly though, I will also be called upon to produce research when the information that is already on file is not sufficient enough to decide a particularly complex or rare refugee claim.

I will be at the IRB for the next year or so as I am replacing two individuals who went on maternity leave. After that, I'm not quite sure what will happen, but hopefully it will involve more work in the refugee determination process at the IRB.

That is all.

9 Comments:

Blogger Julien said...

You know, I could make my job sound all smart and interesting if I used big words like "documentation" and "referencing" and "organizational referencing itemization". But for the pleasure of the masses, I dumb it down. You should try it sometime.

3:43 PM  
Blogger Sima said...

While I'm usually not one to cut in between what could otherwise become an entertaining sibling rivalry, the prestige of my blog is at stake. I must say Julien, the difference between your "masses" and our "masses", are... well ... the difference between Dose (or the Metro, your pick) and the New York Times (or Globe and Mail, again your pick). You see, in the world of business elite and public policy gurus (to which we both enjoy inner-circle membership) we ARE dumbing it down.

Time to go take my chihuahua to the pet spa...

4:20 PM  
Blogger Julien said...

And I was only kidding. I enjoy big words. I don't dumb myself down for anyone. I'm guessing the previous post was spurred by a rabid bout of jealousy because my brother is just that much cooler than me. I mean, I work at freakin' Canadian TIRE, right?

I would never dream of doing anything that would jeopardize the prestige, standing, stature, reputation, repute, regard, fame, note, reknown, honour, esteem, prominence or eminence of your blog.

My sincerest apologies.

10:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You guys know it's only a matter of time before the engineering-political science feud starts in earnest. The big words versus the big equations.

12:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Honestly, Jon - try editing your posts. My job for the summer has, thus far, consisted of editing a number of documents for submission to CIDA, and I am quickly growing tired (and quite intolerant) of poor grammar and sentence structure. You have a fucking degree for heaven's sake. It wasn't too bad, but that degree says it should have been better. That is all.

7:06 PM  
Blogger Jonathan said...

Emma...Emma...Emma...don't even try to hide behind the "anonymous" sign in. I can spot a third year bpamer as easily as cookie monster can eat a package of mint oreos in under 30 seconds. Les Pal may not have taught me to write at the same level as CIDA officials, but at least I know a bpamer when I read one.
Finally in the spirit of summer slackness, government officials usually cannot write to save their lives, and as such do not expect much in that area. So don't work too hard on those submission documents.

10:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hah! I didn't even realize that I hadn't left my name...and hey, I'm calling myself a fourth year now. Your job sounds interesting, and I hope the two of you are having a good summer. I hear it rains out there. A lot.

Emma

2:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ahem, you can't stop posting, I enjoy the witty commentary. Carry-on you two.

7:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Heh.

No wonder Jon never posts.. He finally makes his post and all the claws come out.

Oh and Jon... get with the times :P

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4432415.stm

Cookies are now a sometimes food. They would probably be accompanied with some carrots, bread and milk and probably with a healthy dose of excercise.

(I felt I needed to join in the Jon bashing session somehow)

11:39 AM  

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