Chapter 208: Chapter 208: Uncle Hal Wants to Improve (Edited)
Upon hearing his daughter's question, Mr. Granger smacked his lips, "Hal has had a good opportunity recently...".
After listening to Mr. Granger, Hermione realized that her own Uncle Hal had hit a bump in his life that, if crossed, would be extremely rewarding.
Hal Hunter had taken a degree in archaeology from Oxford University, but instead of accepting a teaching position at Oxford and leaving for Cambridge University, with which Oxford had always competed for world ranking in archaeology, he had returned to Sheffield, Yorkshire, and accepted a position as Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield.
The archaeology department at Sheffield University is not ranked in the same league as Oxbridge, but it is often in the top ten, which is pretty "good".
The best students do not always go to the best universities. For example, a genius with an IQ of 187, a Ph.D. at 15, an M.A., Ph.D. in Philosophy, and a Ph.D. in Science chose to stay at Caltech rather than go to MIT or Harvard.
The same was true for Hal Hunter, but his reasons were more realistic: Oxford and Cambridge, for example, were not willing to offer tenure-track contracts, whereas Sheffield was.
This brings us to the structure of the British university teaching system, which has two features: diversity and tenure. Both words are very easy to understand. In fact, diversity means "chaos." Some British universities use the American system of Assistant Professor-Associate Professor-Professor, while others use the traditional Lecturer system: Lecturer-Senior Lecturer-Reader-Professor.
There are two types of professors, A and B, with B being superior to A. Hal Hunt started as a B professor.
Of course, the teaching system is quite complex in all countries of the world. In China, for example, there are managerial, technical and logistical positions. The managerial position is the rank of a civil servant, with ten levels: unit (clerk, section member), section, division, department, department and ministry, with two levels each in the section, division and department: tenured and deputy. The highest level is academic; the logistical positions are junior, intermediate, senior, technician and senior technician.
The term "tenure" means tenure, and only the best academics can obtain a tenure contract. Tenure in British universities began with professors, and Hal Hunt had a tenure contract.
He received his PhD at Oxford and went on to become a full professor at the University of Sheffield, where he ran a research group to supervise graduate students and gave occasional lectures. Within a few years he was promoted to Full Professor for his excellent teaching and research ability, and is now an Associate Professor, with a reputation for academic excellence both at home and abroad.
At his age, he would have been on track to become a Professor, but a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield has recently retired and a professorship is about to come up, which is very attractive to Hal Hunter.
Coincidentally, he found some words in a pile of ancient Egyptian documents. Hal Hunt studied these clues and discovered that they led to an ancient city buried in the Sahara Desert, possibly from Egypt's First Dynasty. To him, this coincidence seemed like divine providence and bolstered his confidence in the professorship.
Mr. Granger had a look of envy, for if he could do it, he would be a full professor at less than forty-five years old!
"Anyway, I'll see what Hal says and see if he'll accept them both," said Mr. Granger, good-naturedly, with a little smile on his lips. He decided that if the two little ones were taken to Egypt, he would go on vacation to Paris with his wife, a sweet getaway for the two of them.
As for his daughter's safety, Mr. Granger was not worried at all. First of all, he believed that his old friend was the best adventurer in the world, and secondly, that his daughter and her friend Tom, were wizards! What was there to worry about?
Back at the Grangers' house, with Mrs. Grangers still working at the clinic, Mr. Grangers sent his daughter upstairs to pack while he went to call his friends.
Tom loaded her suitcase and followed Hermione upstairs. Hermione ran happily up to her bedroom, where she yanked open the door and gestured for Tom to come in.
Tom hesitated, but Hermione was impatient.
"Come on, isn't he heavy with the suitcase?" She raised her eyebrows, "Isn't it a little late for Mr. Yodel to start being pretentious?"
She led Tom into her bedroom. It was the first time Tom had been in Hermione's bedroom, the two had only ever studied together in the study and the living room.
He took a quick look at the layout of the bedroom: it was as clean as the rest of the house, without much decoration, and the overall color scheme was not the usual pastel shades, but Ravenclaw blue, which gave a sense of calm upon entering. Hermione opened the trunk, slowly releasing its contents.
"If you're not busy, could you come and help me pack?" Hermione snorted as she looked at Tom in a daze, "I can't take all these trench coats, boots and such on a trip to the desert, can I?" She pulled out of the suitcase the black knee-high boots she'd worn on her previous walk with Tom along the shores of the Black Lake, with the little leather strap around the ankle, which had slipped out of its little gold buckle, dangling down the side of the boot.
"So, where the hell are you going?" She tucked the little belt back into the buckle and buckled it on. "The Sahara Desert is huge, and do you know what you should take with you?"
Tom helped Hermione pull her quilt out of another box, Hermione's question made him feel like he was traveling with his friends, Hermione's tone made him feel like he was on this trip.
"What do you know about Egypt?"
The question stumped Hermione, who had read a lot, but knew very little about that ancient and mysterious country.
"Nasser and the Suez Canal?"
Tom: ???
Hermione's answer took Tom by surprise, he expected Hermione to say something about mummies, pyramids, curses of pharaohs, but not about Nasser and the canal. Hermione had really impressed Tom.
Nasser, the first president of the Egyptian Republic, was the man who forcibly took back the Suez Canal from the British and French, leading to the disintegration of the two oldest empires.
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