The Work Seminar
The Work Seminar
Ep. 17: Mathew Brundage - PhD in History Turned Academic Test Developer
Job “ins” come in mysterious ways. For Mathew, it was teaching English in Shenzhen between his master’s and doctorate in history.
Seven years later, that teaching abroad stint qualified him for a contract role writing ESL tests. And then, as Mathew puts it, the stars aligned.
A full-time test developer in the history department left the company. Within three weeks of that colleague’s departure, Mathew landed a full-time test development role in his academic discipline.
Of course, the ESL experience is a fraction of the story.
If it weren’t for networking and stating his intentions to work outside of academia, Mathew never would have received the tip about the ESL test development gig. And it’s anyone’s guess how things would have panned out had he not been willing to relocate when his partner, now husband, landed a new job.
A circuitous route can, indeed, be the path to enjoyable work.
Books & other resources mentioned
Alison Green’s Ask a Manager blog
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Hey everyone. Thanks for joining me for another episode. I'm your host, Jesse Butts. Today, I'm chatting with Mathew Brundage, a PhD in history from Kent State turned higher ed test developer. Mathew and I were undergrads together at Capital University and, fun fact, he's my second guest in the Capital to Kent State pipeline. Mathew, welcome to the show. Delighted to have you on.
Mathew Brundage:Thanks. It's great to be here.
Jesse Butts:Yeah, the second guest in that illustrious Capital to Kent State pipeline.
Mathew Brundage:Yeah, right up I-71. Just moving them up.
Jesse Butts:All right. So now that we have our geographic bearings established so before we dive into that history PhD to your work outside of academia, you tell us a little bit about test development? Like what does this line of work involve?
Mathew Brundage:Yeah, it's a really interesting field depending on how you come to it. There are folks like myself who come in from the content side, content specialists, whether history, art history, physics, English as a second language, like you name it. If there's an assessment, there's some sort of content expert who's, who's doing that. But there are also people who do a statistical analysis who makes sure that everything when assessments are given to students and we get the data back that there are weird and consistencies. We can drill down based on gender of student, ethnicity, if we even have some of that information, things like geographic location, to make sure that there aren't some sort of statistical aberrations in terms of the data we get back so that we know that we can make sure that things are fair. There are also people called psychometricians, which is not a word anyone would ever have to know in their day-to-day life. But these are people who think about how people think. They're people who come up with more innovative test assessments especially, if there are parents listening and their students have taken some sort of a computer based assessment where it's not just the old school paper, pencil, multiple choice ABCD fill in the bubble. But they're computerized and they're like, Read this excerpt, highlight the main argument of the excerpt. So there are people who have PhDs and all sorts of other degrees in terms of trying to figure out how the human mind works so that we can better understand and better assure that when students are in a test taking environment that we're measuring their ability to complete what we're trying to test, not anything else. Like for example, I have a history PhD, and I'm an assessment specialist in history. We have to make sure that the content we're putting out there, we're not testing a student's ability to parse out the deeper meanings of, of a passage. You can do that on an English language or an English literature test, but we're testing, you know, do you remember this information? What caused this? What was the effect? A lot of what things like the statisticians and psychometricians help us do is to make sure that a history test is testing knowledge of history and history related skills. You know, can they make an argument? Can they support that argument with valid historical evidence? And things like that.
Jesse Butts:So as far as people who might be intrigued by this line of work, what, what's the split in your day-to-day between, or maybe week might be a better timeframe, of writing tests versus reviewing data versus whatever else this type of position involves.
Mathew Brundage:Right at my organization. It really varies depending on the time of year. We call it like sometimes there's test development time of the year in which we're authoring items and revising what our colleagues have written. And then we have times of the year where we're taking that stuff that we've been revising and honing and having it reviewed by expert panels. It depends on the program, but, and then we also have times of the year where we're taking all of that material, combining it based on certain frameworks, whether the contract is with the federal government or another nonprofit organization or a state or what have you. So depending on the time of the year it could be the majority of a week spent thinking about history and writing questions or working with colleagues to edit and some weeks, or sometimes stretches, particularly during those scoring periods, there, there might be not, it, it might be more, my job might be much more administrative, much more technical. I'm certain much more technical than most historians would be generally trained for.
Jesse Butts:Now, speaking of training for historians, this sounds like a great place to segue back into your, your grad school journey. So, so, obviously in the intro, I mentioned that you have a PhD in history, but I also know that you have a master's. So I'm kind of curious before that PhD, what prompted you to pursue a master's? What made you want to go beyond undergrad?
Mathew Brundage:Well, I'm certain I might be, one of the few or only guests who ever mentioned that I grew up on a farm. So not falling back to having to work on a farm was one of my key goals in undergraduate. And all joking aside, I really, really love the study of history. And as an undergraduate, it just only deepened that to a level where I was like, You know what, I think I can do this. Not only professionally, but just in terms of like, I, it felt like a space that was comfortable to me in terms of challenging myself, working with others, having discussions and, and also in the grand scheme of things I do, despite the fact that I'm not in academia anymore, and I'm not a, a teacher, but I do really enjoy teaching. So I always knew that history, even with the, even with a history focus as a master's degree and not necessarily a teaching or in education, I knew that it was at least an avenue toward teaching if I so desired.
Jesse Butts:You went to Kent State for your master's as well?
Mathew Brundage:Yes, I did. It helps when your advisor's like, They have a good program. I know people there. You'll fit in well. And then it also helps when you apply and they give you an assistantship, which, not expansive by any means, but you know, if you do get a little bit of money every month and you don't have to pay for tuition, it does help, help lighten the burden of graduate school. I know a couple episodes back, you had someone on about, on, helping essentially what do you do with graduate school debt. I managed to be minimally scathed from, from graduate school.
Jesse Butts:And if anyone's curious about that, that was in our last season an episode with somebody named David Fortosis who talked, who was a financial planner, who talked about grad school debt and just finances after grad school. If you are curious to learn a little bit more about that. But Mathew, getting back to your story... So after you were wrapping up your master's, did you pursue a PhD immediately? Did you try something else before jumping into academia again?
Mathew Brundage:My hand was somewhat forced in terms of the master's program at Kent was what they call a terminal one in terms of they do have master's and PhD programs, but they're not a unified program. I know a lot of universities, if you get into the graduate program, you essentially go from master's to PhD. You essentially ascend through the program. Or you can kind of pull the rip cord and stop with a master's. But Kent's are explicitly different. So when I was nearing the completion of my master's degree, I was applying to graduate programs. And I had gotten into the PhD program at Kent fully expecting to continue on there for my PhD. When I got the news that my master's advisor, who would have been my PhD advisor, got a new job at a different university that didn't have a graduate program. I know I've heard of instances in which advisors moved to new schools and the graduate students kind of, they get moved over as part and parcel, but because her new university didn't have a program, I was kind of left with no direction. So I think in, in the span of a few weeks I realized that if I wanted to continue forward for my PhD, one thing that would help me it would be for my particular area of research would be Chinese language expertise, or at least some training. Because my area of research then was British and Chinese relations in the 19th century, kind of esoteric. And so, I thought, well, you know, I'm, I think I was 21 at the time, unattached, had nothing really better to do sinceI I didn't know what I was going to do. So I somehow find myself with a English as a second language training program in which, I think 130 or so people from English speaking countries were organized, trained as ESL teachers, and then scattered across the Southern, Chinese city of Shenzhen to teach conversational English at elementary schools, middle schools and high schools across the city. So that was a bit of a shift in terms of you know, in, in a matter of a couple of months, I finished my master's thesis. I graduated. And then I think a month after I graduated, I was on a plane to Southern China to teach English to middle school students.
Jesse Butts:How long did you stay?
Mathew Brundage:I was there for a year. For 2007 to 2008.
Jesse Butts:When you went, did you think you might want to, to teach in a different country for an extended period? Or, like you said, did you really think it was more about learning those Chinese language skills to make you more marketable to apply to another PhD program?
Mathew Brundage:I honestly, wasn't certain going in. For a, for a time I had considered doing a second year and, or additional years. A lot of my friends in the program, they did continue on for multiple years. But I just, I found myself by the end of the year, to be pretty burnt out in terms of being distant from home. That language barrier in terms of like any time I, outside of the school, not being understood is a challenge not being understood for a calendar year. It was much better by the end, in which I often joke that I was at the point where I could bicker with cabbies when they wouldn't put the fair meter down right away. I just found it by the end of that year to be just a little too taxing. You know, I was teaching 15 classes a week of students anywhere from 40 to 60 students per classroom. Just the constant movement, the constant engagement of trying to keep 60 pre-teens occupied and focused at the same time, it just got to be a bit much. It also helped me clarify that, you know, if I am going to go back for the PhD that, you know, perhaps, uh, middle school is not where I belong. I, I loved the students, they were great. But you know, it's it's really... The people who can work with 12 year olds and 13 year olds day in and day out as a career. Those people are, are fairly saintly in my perspective.
Jesse Butts:So obviously you went back to Kent for your PhD. As you started, were you pretty set, determined to go further in academia? Or were you ,kind of like you said earlier, knowing that this was a good field for you and just kind of keeping an open mind as to what might be next after graduation?
Mathew Brundage:Well, going back to Kent was an interesting convergence as well, because ,as I mentioned, my master's advisor had left and I had been doing British Chinese cultural relations. But since she was no longer there, in order to continue at Kent, I had to change my focus, which I actually discovered while I was living China, Shenzen, another geography lesson, is right across the border from Hong Kong. So I actually some time in the old colonial archives in Hong Kong while I was there. You know, might as well make a research trip out of living abroad. So I realized that if I were to continue on, on the British focus, that being able to have access to colonial archives, whether it's in London or Hong Kong or any other British colonial enclave, would have been a real particular challenge. So as I was applying to graduate schools for this next round, I refocused and decided that the, the American Chinese relationship at the same time was also equally under researched. And, you know, whether it's going to Washington DC for government archives or to a merchant sailor archives in Massachusetts, it might be a long car drive from Northern Ohio, but at least it's a car drive and not a trans continental or transoceanic flight in order to get to the archives. That said I also, at that time applied to several other schools, but as I indicated, this was 2008, and the economic situation resulted in, I was wait-listed at a number of schools and I think there's nothing worse than finding out that in a normal year, if you would have gotten into the program, but because the global economic situation collapsed and that programs restricted their funding, so greatl was that, you know, in a normal year you would have gotten in, but this year you were just past the cutoff point. But luckily I did get back in at Kent State and so it did work out in the end. But I think if there are any graduate admissions folks, that are listening, uh, don't mention that people would have gotten in in a normal year if it's an abnormal year. Soit would have been best to know that, you know, the opportunity had passed me by.
Jesse Butts:Good advice for any of people who might be listening. So as you were working on your PhD, as you were getting near the end, maybe when you were ABD, what were you ... what was life like then? Were you thinking of pursuing a tenure track position? Were you just trying to figure it out? Like, what was, what was going on in your mind then?
Mathew Brundage:So after having finished comps, I was teaching. Part of my assistantship at the PhD level was covering two years of my own classes, which were exceedingly helpful. But also, did some adjuncting at some regional schools in Northern Ohio just to broaden my opportunities because at Kent, most of the time, the graduate students are just teaching the basic core world history or US history courses that the freshmen take. But by adjuncting elsewhere, I was able to teach, oddly enough, I, I taught a 20th century European history course, based on my master's training, even though it was 19th century British empire, they were like, Oh, he knows something about Europe. Um, so that was, that was a really fun, I won't say challenge, opportunity to really stretch my wings a bit. I think even going into the PhD program, a global economic crisis or not, I was fairly realistic in terms of knowing that, you know, for the last 30 years now, the number of people getting tenure track jobs, not just in history, but across the board, has been in decline, but history in particular has been hit really hard. If I recall correctly, in the 80s, Kent State had a history faculty of over 30 people. Now it's probably 12, 15. It's at least 50% of what it used to be. Even though the student body is three or four times as large. And it's just kind of across the board issue with, in academia at this time. No, one's surprised by that. So I did know going into the program that while the end goal is the vaunted tenure track job, it is not the, it is not the only option nor should it be the only goal. I mean to, to roll it back to when I was an undergrad, I actually interned at the Ohio Department of Transportation in their history section. I think people would find it surprising that departments of transportation have historians on staff so that, you know, if there's some sort of freeway project that the state doesn't go knocking down important buildings as they used to do in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s. So I, I knew and have known that, that there are a wider range of opportunities for historians to have professions in the historical field that don't involve teaching undergraduates.
Jesse Butts:What did you end up doing once you graduated and had defended your dissertation?
Mathew Brundage:So that was an interesting pivot in terms of during the period in which my assistantship covered for teaching, I had relocated to sunny, scenic central New Jersey. My then partner now husband, got a job out here, and it was one of those situations in which I was no longer paid to teach in person. I had, uh, somehow snagged a early online teaching opportunity through Kent State, so I was no longer geographically tethered to the Northeast or to Northeast Ohio, I And instead I was pulled to the Northeast. And so as I was finishing up my dissertation, I was teaching remotely. It was a situation in which one person in a relationship gets a full-time job with benefits that extend to partners. So it was like, Hooray, health care. And so for, for all practical sense, there was no reason to stay. I could finish my dissertation anywhere and that's what ended up happening is that I would just send copies of chapters to my advisor. She would tear them apart and help me put them back together. And the rest of my committee would then see it. They would tear it apart. I would put it back together. And so the bulk of the writing of my dissertation happened after I had moved. And then as I was finishing up my dissertation, one of my husband's, coworkers said, Hey, there's this place right nearby who needs content specialists in terms of test assembly. Do you think Mathew would be interested in that? And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. So, as I was finishing up my dissertation, I got my foot in the door as a temporary worker on an English language test. So interestingly I got my foot in the door, not even with my history degree, but with my experience teaching English in China to middle-schoolers got me in the door in terms of helping build assessments initially for English as a second language speakers.
Jesse Butts:How long were you working on those ESL tests before... I don't know which came first... before you became a full-time employee or before you started working in the history aspect.
Mathew Brundage:I was working initially on the English language assessments. What happened was that one of the full-time people working on U.S. History left the organization. They actually got a tenure track job from what I hear. So they went from alt academia back into academia. And what happened was my manager at the time on this other project actually was a historian himself. And said, Oh, there's this opportunity upstairs, upstairs just being where the historians sat. You know, would you be interested in it? It's it's U.S. History, it would be writing assessments and they're also building up a computerized scoring thing. I think it would be great for it. And so he messaged the manager upstairs who said, essentially like, Send him upstairs. And so within, within three weeks of finding out about it, it was just... I think I still hold the record in the department for being the fastest hire in terms of there was an opening, they did a couple of searches, but where are you going to find a U.S. Historian who has computer-based training, who happens to be sitting downstairs? They didn't even have to print out a new ID for the building. You know, the stars just aligned in, in happenstance in terms of there being a, position open, which I was almost perfectly suited to do.
Jesse Butts:I think it's interesting, there's two things that stick out to me here that I think people don't think about enough. One is obviously, you had put out that you were finishing your PhD and looking for something and, you know, someone was talking to your husband then presented that to you. In my experience, I think people, especially, you know, coming out of grad school, they, they don't realize that networking isn't that hard. And just making sure that anyone can be that link and, you know, just telling people that, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm Mathew, I just finished this PhD and I'm looking for something else, can be really vital to finding that. The other thing too, was that you took a temporary position. And I've had some success in my, in my work history too where I wasn't really sure what's next. So I did something contract based or temporary and it, it opened a lot of doors. So I'm guessing from your experience too that you would people not to be, I mean everybody has different economic situations, but not to think poorly of taking a temp position.
Mathew Brundage:Yeah, definitely. And part of it was just the, as I've mentioned in the past, I, I'm trying to be practical about certain things in terms of like relocating or, you know, the focus of my dissertation research. But also, I did realize by that point that, it might not be my specific field of research. Or I should say, my specific area of training or expertise, but I did know that the company did do history tests. So I figured, you know, better to get my foot in the door and get a weekly paycheck and work the nine to five than to sit around hoping that maybe the conference paper that I write might turn into a article or a book chapter that might get the interest of a book publisher and then the publisher, the publication, would that help me with my job hunt? It's the, you know, one in the hand versus two in the bush, I think is the phrase. So like, you know, go with the job you have and, you know, if you want to continue on searching for a tenure track job. You have all the time in the evening after five o'clock to, to do such a thing. As a temporary hire there's, again, nothing holding me there, just the same as there's nothing holding them to me. So, it is, somewhat unsettling to have a temporary position in terms of not feeling fully settled in a job. But also I try to view it as, it's an opportunity in which if something happened and I got a job elsewhere, everyone's... no one's going to bat an eye or blink or say you're, or get ruffled by the fact that, Oh, a temporary labor got a full-time job elsewhere. No one would be surprised if that happened.
Jesse Butts:So have you been in the field four or five years now? Roughly?
Mathew Brundage:A little over five years full-time doing history work, yeah.
Jesse Butts:So, over that span of time, what do you like most about the field? What do you like most about test development?
Mathew Brundage:Interestingly, I like knowing that the work has an influence on a lot of people. It's a converse of like, I loved and I loved it when students, you could just see it click in their brains and then they would ask a question and it would be like, Yep, you got it. This is what happened. Or they ask a question that absolutely stumps me. And you're like, that's a great question; I have no idea. So disconnected from that feeling, but I also do know that the material that I work on, the effort that I put in... There are a lot of sets of eyes that get to see the work that I do. So that hopefully if I, do an assessment and I really find some sort of novel excerpt or image and a student sees that, or even a teacher hears about it... and you know, maybe a teacher will be like, Oh, they're, they're asking about, X topic. You know, maybe I should look into that and see if it's something I could teach my students about, or if the students... it's interesting in which we do get student responses in terms... or students sending messages saying like, Oh yeah, that image was great. Or like, it really made me think. You would find it odd that blasé 14, 15, 16, 17 year olds or college students... you would think them so detached that they wouldn't bother with it. But we do receive messages from test takers who are like, Yeah, I thought, I thought it was interesting, even though it's a test. It seems somewhat disingenuous for me to say, but we do receive messages like that.
Jesse Butts:Compared to a lot of guests, there's much more overlap in what you studied and what you do. But still, you know, it's not teaching, it's not the academic research that might've been, with a professorship. So what did you have to learn about yourself to figure out what type of work would be enjoyable and fulfilling for you?
Mathew Brundage:I think I had to... for all of the talk of practicality, I think I had to kind of live with the practicality, in terms of both for good and for bad, I don't have to deal with the tenure track. I do have horror stories of colleagues who have managed to get onto the track and then the challenges of it. Or, you know, just being derailed entirely because of happenstance and circumstance. I think being able to take my very specific training and just understanding that I have to apply at a much higher level, has been helpful in terms of refocusing, how I think of myself as a historian.
Jesse Butts:Maybe this is a silly parallel, but I think of applied science versus pure science. Or, you know, those probably aren't the terms used as much anymore, but it feels like you discovered applied history, in a sense.
Mathew Brundage:I think that's actually really apt. I'm no longer in the ivory tower of academia thinking of, you know, Oh, what does the cultural turn of history and linguistic analysis say about this document? I don't do any of that anymore. I'm in, I don't want to say in the trenches, it's like I'm on the ground. I'm working with other historians who have their own training, and working with external folks who are themselves teachers. And trying to... to present a broad, introductory level of history. The work I do is much more tethered to the expectations of what test takers and students are expected to know. Not what would get me a coveted slot in a panel at a conference.
Jesse Butts:Beyond your content specialty knowledge, were there any things that you had to... any skills that you had to learn for your job, outside your working hours? Or is this a field where a lot of the training will be on the job?
Mathew Brundage:The majority of my training has been on the job, particularly as it applies to the nitty gritty of the day-to-day. Things like editing, I mentioned statisticians and psychometricians, but we also have a phalanx of editors and copywriters in terms of like, You do know that you need a comma there. Or, This is a semi-colon not a colon...who, who help in terms of just the nuts and bolts of how to write a standardized question. Um, but then it's the people around you on your team who help train you in terms of what is generally expected depending on the assessment. They have experience in pitching and calibrating items to a specific difficulty level. The vast majority of the training has been on the job.
Jesse Butts:If I remember correctly, your husband also has a liberal arts advanced degree, correct?
Mathew Brundage:Arts. Oboe performance, which he does not use his master's degree either.
Jesse Butts:I'm curious, when, a couple, like you two, you both have these degrees where a career path isn't quite as clear, or, whether it's a oboe performer or a tenure track historian, there just, isn't a surfeit of jobs out there. How do you balance, who, who moves for this job opportunity? Or who takes this on? How have you approached that?
Mathew Brundage:So that was an interesting discussion that we had many years ago at this point. In terms of the move away from Ohio out here to the East Coast, that one was pretty straightforward. There was no practical, or actual reason, to not do the move. But we did do that move having had conversations and with the full understanding that essentially my job would be harder to get and more permanent in terms of if I did get a tenure track job and I did achieve that, that it kind of locked me in geographically, whereas he is now... he pivoted from music performance to arts management, which got him into nonprofit development work. So he actually is a researcher of a sense in terms of, he helps institutions research donors. I like to say so that they know how much to shake them for, to see how much money is jangling around in their pockets. And I think he would agree with that. His skills are much more transferable than mine, even, even as an assessment specialist now, so now I could be a historian and or assessment specialist, but he can essentially work for any non-profit. The discussion was that if I were to get a job, it would be easier for him to find a new one, but it would also depend on location, location, location. And we both agreed going into it that we weren't going to, if I were to get a tenure track job, it would not be at some small rural school because then we would be in a rural area with limited job opportunities for him. So we both agreed that we both like suburban and urban locations much better. Again, I had grown up on a farm, so I had my fill of rural life. We wanted to make sure that I could find a position, but also that we weren't going into a situation in which he would be... he would not have hardly any, or if any, job opportunities, just because you know, if you move to a small rural school, there aren't a ton of nonprofits looking for researchers.
Jesse Butts:Yeah. And I mean, this, this conversation was also pre COVID when remote work really boomed.
Mathew Brundage:Yes, definitely. So, I mean, one of the interesting things is so we moved out here for a job and then I got in at my company and then he got a different job up in Manhattan for a while. So he was taking the commute up, but he since, got a job much closer to home, but that was pre pandemic. So again, having access to job opportunities has been facilitated much more easily by living in a densely populated area than it did even back in Northern Ohio.
Jesse Butts:What questions should someone in or out of grad school be asking themselves about working outside their field of study?
Mathew Brundage:So I think it obviously depends person to person. First off, is what you're doing , the only thing that you want to do? Like if I had gone into my PhD program knowing that I only wanted to teach at the university level, then I probably would have had a much different outcome, most likely based on the job market, I would be adjuncting and I would probably have to be adjuncting at multiple places. But I knew myself going in that I wasn't wedded enough to the profession to do that, but there are people that are, and, and more power to the people who can cobble together a career through adjuncting. But it's, I can't think of the word right now. It is almost obnoxious to say, but there is something to be said for the argument that whether or not you use your, what you've been trained in, you do have specific sets of skills that some people can find valuable. So in addition to the day to day test work, I do a lot of what we call coordination in terms of making sure T's are crossed, I's are dotted. Making sure that the, for new programs that people get the right amount of training so that they know the correct sequence of buttons to push so that, you know, spellcheck is run correctly and things look fine in the system. And I've moved up in the company because of my ability to be a very regimented, organized, specific communicator. And, , I, I can only attribute that to not only my, studying history in terms of being able to organize disparate information, but also my teaching experience in terms of taking what information I know and being able to... now I'm the person. You know, I'm one of my colleagues to help new people. You know, this is how you write a multiple choice question. Maybe you want all of the options to be the same length so that students aren't thrown off when maybe A, B, and C are all sentences, and then D is just a single word., It throws students off. They might say, Well, is D the right answer because it's the shortest? Or is D a wrong answer because it's the shortest? Or maybe it's entirely inconsequential? So I've taken on more roles in terms of organizing projects and helping train new people in... to become a better test developers, because I have teaching experience and I'm a very organized person at work.
Jesse Butts:Is there anything that you read or listened to or watched that helped you during your transition from academia to test development that you would recommend others check out?
Mathew Brundage:Yeah, my husband was and continues to be a devotee of Alison Green, who has the Ask a Manager blog. And she comes from a non-profit HR perspective, but she answers all sorts of questions about job hunts , and like weird workplace things. You know, creating an academic CV and creating a two page resume that will interest corporate HR people are two different monsters. One is like, tell me the very specific skills that you have that make you, that would make you ,a very valuable hire. Whereas CVs are like, tell me everything you've ever done since the moment you stepped foot on campus. I found her materials helpful in terms of being able to market myself. Being able to, again, market my skills that I have, you know...Yes, I was, I was applying for a historian position, a content specialist position, but also how do other skills that I have translate to the other 80% of the work I do. Some days it's more than others, but you know, the vast majority of my time is not spent mulling over test questions and editing. It's assembling and having discussions with people and working on other projects for the organization. Me being a content expert was a given. And so everything beyond that, I essentially had to prove in the cover letter and in the resume.
Jesse Butts:All right. Yeah. I am not familiar with her, but I'll be sure to put a link to that in the show notes. All right. I think that's a great place to wrap this up. Thanks again, Matthew, for joining us. It's really been a pleasure.
Mathew Brundage:Yeah, I've had a great time. Thanks.