Monday, September 27, 2010

VICTORY!

I've never been happier about accepting a job with so-so pay and no benefits. Yes, boys and girls, I've passed the ETS certification exam, and am now a certified TOEFL iBT rater. I'll be in contact with a representative about my weekly schedule and my start date (ASAP, I hope), and then we'll get this show on the road.

Yes! Income! Finally!


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6 comments:

Charles said...

That was probably the worst test passing in the history of ETS, but some of us here, particularly me, would like to buy you a drink and shake your hand.

(Couldn't help it... had to go look up the script for that one just to make sure I got it right. Congrats, f'reals.)

(And as if in celebration of your victory, the word verification text for this post is "ultrave." It's an ultra rave!)

Kevin Kim said...

Thanks, man. Too happy to sleep right now, but gonna try.

Did you know that "Airplane!" was based on a play called "Flight Into Danger"? I performed part of that play in a reader's theater unit for drama class back in junior high, before I ever saw "Airplane!" The line in the play about the airplane handling "like a wet sponge" can be heard in "Airplane!", and the movie's use of food poisoning to incapacitate the captain and copilot comes right out of the play, too.

It's possible that our drama teacher had us read "Flight Into Danger" because it was around 1981 or '82, and "Airplane!" had come out in 1980. I didn't see the comedy until it was on TV, which may be why I never made the connection for myself until years later.

Elisson said...

Congratulations! The Educational Testing Cervix will never be the same...

hahnak said...

congrats! im very happy for you!

Charles said...

I had always thought that Airplane was a spoof of Zero Hour... turns out that Zero Hour is the film adaptation of Flight into Danger.

The Wikipedia entry charts an interesting path for this work: it started out as a television drama/play in 1956, was made into a film (Zero Hour) in 1957 (which was spoofed in Airplane in 1980), and then made into a novel in 1958--and the novel was later made back into a movie in 1971.

Funny thing is that, despite how popular the motif is, no passenger has ever landed a commercial flight. (Although the Mythbusters used a simulator to see if a flight controller could actually talk a passenger into a landing and found that it was actually plausible.)

Kevin Kim said...

I saw that episode of "Mythbusters," and it's one of my favorites. I, too, was surprised to learn that no passenger had ever landed a plane. Such is the power of Hollywood's myth-generating factory.