44/2 Hardline

It was always going to be a hard day with 3-4 hours sleep and a big opener like a 80km cycle.

I had a few girls...let's see, 2 sets of 2, and then another girl in a third class who just gave me a hard time. Not sure if it is teenage woe or just being difficult, or trying to take chances. Maybe I'm too easy on 'em too often. Basically whatever I say I'm wasting my breath. Maybe I wouldn't have cared on any other day. But the odds are, an attitude like that is eventually going to rifle your feathers. I mean, where they say "shiro" or "pabo" under their breath, just as you turn your back or walk past. After the 111th time it's annoying. Shiro means "I don't like that" and pabo means "dumb".

On any other day, but today I wasn't lus for annoying nonsense.
The two girls I so kindly chaueffered in a taxi and paid for their hour at an internet room, they were the first. Scribbling in their books and basically using the entire duration of the class to go "ach...shiro...sekiro...". As luck would have it, just as the class ended they scrunched up their empty worksheets, and the director walked past. I quickly showed him the mess they'd made, and then opened one of their books to reveal a forest of squiggles. That was my part done. I left her as her whiny excuses and balling took over. No doubt she explained what an awful teacher I am for asking her to answer a question in English, in an English class.

Next class the artist (who still hasn't clicked that it's not an art class - the second I walk into the door, out come the colored pencils) and her compadre just drew pictures through the first half of the class, while not interrupting their conversation to acknowledge an eventual "SHUTUP!" from me. Maybe they thought I was joking when I said they couldn't leave the class until they had actually finished what all the other students had done. 5 minutes later they still hadn't started, and a few 'shiros' bheind my back and I brought them to the front of the class for some reach-for-the-sky. I kept them for 5 minutes after class where they scribbled 3 answers untidily over the page. Don't really understand how they can't see that their obstinacy just makes the whole process worse for themselves.

In the 6pm class Merry did the same thing, and when I confronted her, she packed away her stuff and stomped out of the class, slamming the door behind her.

Wasn't all bad. Don't get the wrong idea. Just trying to figure out what is wrong with a few of the young girls today. Did they all become young women on the same day? But it's this stuff that I'm basically at my limit at. Not going to waste my brain and energy dealing with this silly behaviour much longer. Specifically, this lark of teaching English at this level of pathetic is going to end, for good I think, in just a few months. Can't do this for much longer. It's just dull and dumb, and makes the mind numb. And you know, it's not like I don't like teaching. I just think I need more maturity from my students, and I'd much rather be teaching a much higher level, literature or philosophy or essay writing than getting them to see that an answer with the word 'cookie' belongs under the picture of a cookie. Talk about dumbing down the teacher! Did I really think, once upon a time, that I could do this till 2008?

Time now to be creative, and choose a good new direction for the near future. I'm the master of my own destiny, so must be careful and fully conscious because it's me who has to live out the decisions that take me into the next chapter after this one is done and gone.