The Further Adventures of Miss Kitten

I’m finally in.

After nearly four years of living in Sweden, I’ve got that Golden Ticket: a permanent (fast lön) full-time job.  I’ve heard countless times that the key to getting a permanent job in Sweden is networking and Swedish. This I can definitely confirm. Don’t even bother applying for full-time work if you can’t speak a word of Swedish and know no one. I’ve had plenty of part-time jobs since I’ve been living in Sweden, but it took me this long to learn enough Swedish and build up my network of contacts in order to be considered for permanent full-time work.

The school that hired me was one at which I’d previously applied and interviewed. This was back in ‘07, and they were a bit wary about my foreign qualifications. They weren’t sure whether I could teach anything else besides English, so that meant a full-time position was out of the question. In the end they did offer me couple of English classes – basically a 30% teaching position – so I ended up turning it down and taking a position with E4K. This time however, I was much more attractive to them as a potential employee. In the two years since I’d previously applied, I’d had my American university education evaluated by Sweden’s Higher Education Authority (Högskoleverket). This took about five months to be processed, but it was well worth it because it definitively proved that I was fully-qualified to teach not only English, but a number of other subjects as well.

Monday was my first day at the International IT College of Sweden, (called INIT College for short). I can tell right away that this is going to be challenging and interesting. It’s called a “college” but it’s not a college in the American sense of the word. It’s an upper-secondary school, which is sort of a high school and junior college combined. The Swedish word for this level of study is “gymnasium,” but it has nothing to do with working out. To add to the confusion there is something in Sweden called “högskola” (high school) but that is the Swedish word for university.

So (to recap) in Sweden:

Gymnasium = high school
High School = college/university

INIT college is a small private international school that emphasizes IT and English, but they offer the standard gymnasium curriculum. There are about 200 students and about a dozen teachers.  They have most of the course syllabi already written, so that should save me a lot of work, but next week’s going to be really busy. On Monday and Tuesday is the first planning conference of the year.  We have to be there bright-eyed and ready to go at 8:00 in the morning. I have no idea how I’m going to stay awake. Conferences aren’t the most stimulating events and Miss Kitten is not a morning person.

And the adventure continues…

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