C Teachers

Day One: I had a fairly horrible day and probably the only person who can change that is you.
Day Two: I had a total rebound from yesterday...talking to you kicked off a great day.

This is the kind of thing you wish you would hear from someone without a penis. Ah well. A good deed is a good deed, I guess.

I've really blown off German class this year. As in, completely blown off. We get about an hour of homework every day and I think I've done two assignments all year. I did poorly on the first test, but the listening part pretty much kicked everyone's asses. The professer even said, "I'm not supposed to say this, but that really was far too difficult." So hopefully the remaining two will give me the chance to boost my grade. I'm not sure how much the homework is worth altogether. I know it's not all that much in comparison to projects and so forth, but I'd like to not let that 10% or whatever just be thrown away.

My major lack of motivation came from finding out that none of the classes I've had in Germanic studies would count toward a minor, and if I wanted to continue to minor in it I'd have to do about two additional years of study. Two words come to mind when I consider this:

"Fuck that."

Also, with my shitty computer being serviced, the only way I could do the listening part of my homework would be to sit in my car and use the CD player in there. I'm just not that dedicated, and I don't have the funds to finance a new non-shitty CD player and all the batteries it would eat. I'd discuss this with my teacher, but I'm sure it'd just sound like a cop-out, so instead I'm just going to turn a bunch of crap in late. There's really no late penalty, it just pisses them off.

I've been spoiled by my last two German teachers. The first one never even graded my work because he knew it was an A job whether I missed a couple or not. The second didn't even give a proper final to me after I slept through the class when we had it because she said she knew that I knew what I was doing and was obviously one of her best students (or did she say THE best? I'll run with that one for my ego). My present professor has complimented me multiple times and knows that the work she actually has seen me do is done well...but I haven't exactly done a lot of it, and the other day she "caught me" using a translator online.

Now, I personally don't see what the big deal is. If we ask her, she tells us what the words mean. If we look it up in a book or dictionary, that tells us what the word means. If we type it into a translator, it will tell us generally what the word means but probably get it wrong half the time anyway. So rather than waste five-plus minutes of classtime looking something up or waiting for her to finish with a student, I can just type in the word and get a rough idea of what it means. If she's going to tell me anyway or I can look it up in a physical resource, what's the difference, right?

But she sees me doing it online and yells, "NEIN! NEIN!"

Holy crap lady, get a grip. It pisses me off so much when people are so scared of harmless technology. Some resources and technologies deserve a hesitant hand, but give me a break. That's retarded.

I'm supposed to visit my grandmother this weekend...work Friday night, drive up Saturday morning, drive back for work Sunday night. It'll be exhausting.

Not only because I hate doing distance driving, but because she's going to be interrogating me. My sister's dad decided to go to court to try and get out of paying child support, so since she and my aunt are so buddy-buddy with him, I'm no doubt going to be grilled. I've determined that I'll spend the evening doing German homework. If nothing else, I can just do the written parts of the assignments, I guess. Some credit is better than none at all. At least that way she'll know I have the ability to do the work. If she's not going to accuse me of using a translator.

As if those pieces of shit ever actually translated anything properly. I can guess better than they translate the majority of the time.

I got my grandmother a nice wooden pen that has a little cross on the top and "Count Your Blessings" in pretty letters on the bottom. She's all into that stuff. I'll tell her I joined a youth group a couple weeks ago and she'll be proud, but then I'll tell her how stupid and pointless their meetings are, and she'll look at me funny.

But come on, if you have access to a Bible, read James 3:1-12. We spent an HOUR discussing that. It's all basically summed up in Exodus 20:18. Christians can be so pompous. Basically nothing James said was anything new. He was a tool. He just repeated stuff that was said over and over, and I guess you could call that spreading the Word or witnessing or whatever, but seriously...if that's all you're doing, how are you unique? You don't need your own book, or an hour study over something that only took you a minute to say.

Christians, I swear. Anything they did, the Jews did better and more efficiently. Except for killing Jews. The Christians still have everyone beat at that. Look out, though, the Muslims are catching up.

I'm such an ass. I really am. I know I'm a hard read, so for those of you who see me in person, it's basically like this: If I laugh in your presence, I actually like you. If I just smile and nod and look away a lot, I'm probably not really listening to you and don't really give a crap if a ninja star flies out of nowhere and lodges in your skull. Especially if "nowhere" is "my hand."

I wrote to one of my neighbors to the north a bit ago and am waiting to see her reaction to a bit of news before I make it public at all. It's a difficult thing to mention to anyone, and I'm struggling with a shame-factor. I know I shouldn't be ashamed of it, it's just so hard to break old habits. I'm trying, though. Giving more signs every day. Tomorrow I'll make a little pilgrimage and see if I can't get myself into a more supportive setting. It'll be very awkward for a very long time.

And to those of you thinking it: No, I am not a fag. I wouldn't give it up the butt, let alone take it there.

Ew ew ew ew EW.

I need to write Hank, too. Just trying to think of something to write about is the hard part. When I write a letter I like it to be more pertinent than just something that happened that day, however that might be all he ends up with. I'm pretty much in work-sleep-school-sleep-work mode. Whenever I'm not in class or at work, I'm so exhausted that I can't stay awake.

I've been able to get all my English work done, though. Surprising how little effort it seems to take when you ENJOY a class.

My teacher training course thingy, though...it's not pretty. I bombed the last test with a 60-65% (Note to Canadians: That's an F here). It's not that I wouldn't have studied, but since the university is a dumb shit and never orders enough books, I had to special order mine and wait forever for it to come in. It finally did, three days after the exam. The notes we took in class...useless. I have to pull As on the next two exams now just to get a B average, which is required to pass on to the next course.

That blows. Most places you can make a C- and keep advancing. It's good that we have high standards in the teaching department, because who wants a C- level teacher? But at the same time, when shit like this happens, what can you really do? There are no study groups, we were all pretty much in the fog as to what to study. Bah.

Next test I'm busting myself to get a study group set up. There are bound to be other people in a class of 300 that need a good cram session.

The teaching thing I do on Fridays is going well. Dunno if I talked about that any before. Every Friday for an hour or so I supervise a study hall. It's a big ripoff. Everyone else gets actual classes...social studies or at least art to oversee. I get the damned study hall where, of course, it's study hall and Friday so no one wants to do anything or cooperate. But I think it's a far greater challenge because there's no enforcing teacher and I can't just sit through 40 minutes of lessons before I have to do anything. My job starts as soon as I get there up to the second they leave, which has given me more of an opportunity to connect with the kids and get a feel for them.

They're starting to respect me more. The very first week they kept trying the "I don't have any homework" cop-out, so the second week on I've been bringing my huge textbooks from my English courses to make them read from and magically most of them are inspired to find work to do. If not, I have fun giving them nice little writing assignments. I made one kid write about the Bill of Rights, and I have to say I was sadistically amused.

The worst kid in there by far does nothing, ever. He just sits and makes noises and stuff. I finally sat down with him and talked a bit about what he wanted to be, why he'd chosen that, so on. Then I drew a little line about a third of the way down a sheet of paper and gave him a pen and asked him to write to the line about why making good decisions was important. After all, he wanted to be on a SWAT team someday.

He ended up writing about a page and a half, which thrilled me. Even though it was mostly sarcastic crap concluding in the fact that if you didn't make good decisions you might die, the point was that he actually not only did it, but did more than he had to and was quiet and not disturbing anyone for a good fifteen minutes.

I don't mind the sarcasm. Bullshit assignments deserve bullshit answers. I'll always maintain that as a teacher.

Another kid I moved from his friend. At first I thought one of the overseer teachers might be pissed that I was undermining him because he'd made the seating chart and all, but then I realized...fuck them. They don't do shit, they just sit there. The lady grades papers, the guy flirts with 14 year old girls. The kids were in the guy's class, so yeah, screw that nasty old man.

Although if a couple of them were a few years older...

I MEAN...

Yeah, I moved that dude, and to my surprise when I came in the following week, he was seated where I'd moved him. He must've gotten a talking at. Awesome. But I shouldn't have been the one to have to move him, you know...his own teacher should've had that initiative to correct the problem on his own.

Man, I'm going to rule as a teacher. My kids will...you know...LEARN and stuff.

Imagine that. I bet those teachers made Cs in college.