29 Aug An Ode to Failure
Posted at 15:07h
in Athena Matilsky, Interpreters, Leadership, Mentoring, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Recent Posts, Self care
9 Comments
“Tell me about your mistakes,” Sara Blakely’s father used to ask every night while she and the rest of their family ate dinner. She and her siblings would go around the table, comparing notes, discussing when they had messed up. “Congratulations,” her father would tell...
02 May The Art of Being Good Enough
This past March, I had the privilege of hosting a community coffee hour for one of my biggest heroes. Our guest of honor was Holly Mikkelson, who, among other notable accomplishments, created the ACEBO self-study interpreting materials. She never ceased to amaze me during our...
10 Apr NAJIT 44th Annual Conference (2023)
Posted at 15:47h
in Community, Court Interpreting, Hilda Zavala-Shymanik, Interpreters, Language Associations, NAJIT Conference, Professional Development
2 Comments
Coming Full Circle This is one of the last blogs I will write while serving as NAJIT’s Vice-Chair, so I want to write about something that I am passionate about and that is extremely relevant at a time when we are working towards better compensation...
07 Mar The Lovely Land of Language Interference
Posted at 10:44h
in Athena Matilsky, Idioms, Interpreting, Language, Recent Posts, Translation
0 Comments
The following article by Athena was published a while back. The NAJIT Observer team would like to offer it for your reading pleasure once more. Enjoy! Have you ever taken a dash of one language with a sprinkle of another, mixed them together and simmered to...
03 Jan New Year’s Resolutions: The Why, the Way and the Joy
Posted at 08:10h
in Athena Matilsky, New Ideas, Personal Growth, Professional Development, The Profession, TRAINING
7 Comments
Dear Friends and Colleagues, By the time you read these words, it’ll be January. It’s actually still December for me while I write this, but not for much longer. There is less than a week to go, in fact. So, adios, 2022! Hello, 2023! Happy...
15 Nov Big Brain Club
Posted at 11:34h
in Athena Matilsky, Business Practices, Ethics, Interpreters, Language, Leadership, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Recent Posts, Technology, TRAINING
12 Comments
During the first pandemic winter, I took on one of the hardest teaching assignments I’ve ever experienced: I tutored the son of a dear friend of mine with his fifth-grade homework. He was struggling a lot, and there were concerns that he might not be...
12 Sep Dear Fellow NAJIT-ers
Posted at 11:19h
in Athena Matilsky, Interpreters, Odds & Ends, Personal Growth, Self care
19 Comments
Dear Fellow NAJIT-ers, Happy September! How the heck is it September again?! Time. It never stops. Jules, our fearless Editor-in-Chief, just sent me the nicest e-mail telling me he’d like to hear from me again. Eeek. I have been hiding all summer, you see. Thank...
16 May A Threat to Our Profession
A few decades ago, “language access” was not really a phrase. Litigants who did not speak English were frequently left in the dark as to their own judicial proceedings, and this carried severe consequences. The evolution of court interpreting as a profession has relied on...
21 Mar On the Topic of Monotasking
Posted at 01:00h
in Athena Matilsky, Interpreters, Odds & Ends, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Recent Posts, Tools of the trade
8 Comments
This post is on the topic of monotasking. That’s right, you read it correctly. Monotasking. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s the opposite of multitasking. In other words, instead of doing a ton of things at once, you do one. Thing. At. A. Time. I...