Frustration Cha Cha Cha

I yelled at my students for the first time today... this class has been asking for it for weeks now, and finally today, when 1/3 of the class hadn’t done the homework, and 4 students didn’t even own the textbook (We are now in Week 6 of the semester...the books were late, but they’ve been available for 2 weeks now)... well, I just exploded.  Plus I’ve got this little shitter who likes to make jokes in Chinese for the benefit of his Chinese classmates (and no one else).  He is disrespectful in a hundred other ways as well, like making faces and strange sounds in the middle of class, and picking up his cell phone in class (!!), so this kid is just itching for a beating.  I was talking to this older Irish fellow the other night, and he asked whether Malaysia has corporal punishment, which is what Irish schools had during his childhood (and they honestly beat the shit out of kids; he said that the nicest, sweetest, most gentle priests turned into sadistic monsters when wielding a ruler or this leather-strip-like weapon).  I really want to throw him out of my class, because everyone else seems, if not exactly reverentially respectful, at least pliable.  This kid is a monster.

But the best part is that as various students confess their lack of homework and textbooks, and I start getting frustrated, this ridiculous storm breaks the sky open, and it’s fucking raining sideways again with a fury to match my own.  So I throw my teacherly fit, and the skies throw their rain fit, and it was so marvelously timed... I’m sure my students now think that I am a witch who can summon storms, but all the better that they respect me as a supernaturally wicked and cruel being (as opposed to being hailed as ‘nice sweet teacher whom we can walk all over’).

Also, I got to talk to Leah and Laura and Mike (briefly) the other day, but since my office phone was broken (to be fixed God-knows-when), I had to call from the Department office, where all 8 of the secretaries waited around, listening to catch as much as possible of my conversation so they could report to absent staff members.  This place has a serious Big-Brother atmosphere that really freaks me out.  Half the teachers whom I’ve met have introduced the conversation with “So, your mother is Japanese?/Do you speak Japanese?/Have you been to Japan?/Wow...you don’t look American—don’t all Americans have blonde hair and blue eyes?” and this is the first meeting.  I was better off  being a freak show in the States, where at least I didn’t need to have prolonged working relations with the idiots who ask me these questions before normal questions like “Are you the new Princeton teacher?/What is your name?/Where do you come from?” 

Also, this is a really small island, and I’ve been informed/warned by various people that if I date someone, or if I do something outrageous, everyone will know.  For example, two European teachers who were visiting teachers last year were seen doing the “kiss-on-each-cheek” thing that Europeans just do, but the rumours started flying, and by the time they trickled back to the two Europeans, everyone knew that they were boyfriend-girlfriend, and had been caught making out in a staff room by one of the secretaries.  I hate to be sexist, but I’m sure that the 95/5 Female/Male ratio doesn’t help; these ladies are interested in nothing more than everyone’s private lives, and since the workload here is so light, they’ve got nothing better to do than investigate what’s going on in the world (aka the world of USM).  They literally do NOTHING all day long (now I’m referring to the secretaries) which I find a little frustrating, as I end up doing all these nonsensical secretarial things, while they read the newspaper and discuss so-and-so’s marriage or why that one woman really shouldn’t bring in her cooking because it’s so heinously bad.  Of course, I have no idea what they really talk about, but those’re my guesses... your guesses are welcomed, as I don’t haven’t spent enough time around vulturous gossiping old ladies to know what they really think about.

In short, this is not my ideal professional environment; I have heard that a lot of law firms are the opposite of this (ie very professional, no space for the personal/gossipy stuff at work) and that sounds just marvelous right now.  The law school applications have not been progressing, though I am still quite positive that that is what I want to do (88% sure...as in 12% of me wishes there were an easier faster way to do it)... now to shed the laziness.

Ohhh, the final frustration of today... The Deputy Director (aka the Big Bad Wolf, for she is known for preying on weak and vulnerable persons, aka first year teachers) left a note that she needed to see me urgently, ASAP.  So I’ve been worrying and fretting ever since I got it, since in our first encounter she basically bawled me out for cancelling classes (every teacher cancels classes during Convocation, and last year the entire department cancelled classes because the building was unavailable, and since no one here does anything until the last minute, I wasn’t expecting to recieve notice until like Sunday night about Monday morning... at which point, I’d have to walk the 2 miles to campus to put notes on the door of every one of my classrooms for my poor students who’ve been badgering me for weeks to know exactly what classes will be cancelled and what days, and do they need to do this/that/anything?  Poor kids, this is what they grow up with, this frustration and agonizing bureaucratic slowness.  I feel bad for them, though I fear that 99% of them will grow up to perpetuate this behavior (-“Which was is the train station?   -“Yes.”). 

Anyhow, I have been trying to arrange my schedule to mesh with the Deputy Director so she could bawl me out/lecture at length/whatever, and meanwhile her secretary has been harrassing me and insisting that the deputy director absolutely had to speak with me,a nd a note wouldn’t do.  So I finally see her now, and she had one question for me: “Did they translate the notices into English for you?”  To which I answered “Yes, I recieved the translated notices about how to change rooms.”  END OF CONVERSATION.  Two days of buildup... and really, that not only could have been a note, but it should have been a note (on scrap paper, minus the ASAP).

I’ve gotta go meet with a student now to teach him what ‘nouns, verbs, and adjectives’ are... because somehow he has reached an intermediate level English class IN COLLEGE without knowing these vital things about the English language... furthermore, he’s got 5 buddies in the same class who also do not know!  I’m meeting with another one of them on Monday (Allah permitting, because Allah did not permit on Friday) to explain the whole rigmarole again.  The other three might know what they’re doing, so hopefully I won’t have to haul them in for a review of elementary English... though I am scared that if I ask any of them to seek help at Klinik Bahasa, they won’t understand what I’m saying:-/