OK, folks. I’ve had a lot of confusion come up about the “Benjamin Franklin” post. Here’s what it’s all about.
I’ve already explained that it was an assignment for an Albanian class, which is why it was written in Albanian. I live and work in an Albanian-speaking part of the country, which is why I’m studying the language. It’s a hard language to learn.
Months ago, I met a teenage girl who was applying for an opportunity to study in the USA under a program named after Benjamin Franklin. I was asked to help her practice for the interview. I had no idea what questions the real interviewer would ask her, but I did the best I could with some educated guesses, based mostly on job interviews I’ve been in (both as a job applicant and a hiring manager).
One of the questions I asked her was to tell me what she knows about Franklin, but she didn’t know who he was. I told her about the kite experiment and suggested looking up the Wikipedia article about him and learning a few facts about Franklin.
I met her again at a youth journalism conference in August. She told me that the interviewer asked her about Franklin, and thanks to me, she was able to answer well. She aced the interview and will be able to study in the USA!
The Albanian post, unfortunately, has a big mistake. The English word “kite” has multiple meanings, and the Albanian word I ended up using was for the “any of various usually small hawks” meaning, rather than the kind of kite Franklin used in his experiment. Oops!
Like I said, it’s a hard language to learn.