Petulant Children
So today was one of those days where I wish I hadn't bothered to get up out of bed for.
ABC #1: So this guy started in March and had been by yesterday. He wants to apply for a tuition waiver scholarship, except he's missed too much class for the Spring Term. He puts the blame for this squarely on me and his teacher. He says that we told him that he didn't have to go to all his classes. I told him, yes, as he is not dependent on us for a visa he can miss as many classes as he likes but they will still show up as missed hours on his transcript and that he has to deal with those consequences (such as applying to grad school or for a job) if he should submit these transcripts to anything in the future. He wants me to write a letter stating that I told him it was okay for him to miss all this class. I told him no, if he missed classes than he missed classes, he should be the one writing the letter of explanation as to WHY he was missing so many hours.
He demands to know why no one in our office will help him get around the scholarship requirements. I told him it wasn't our job to help him "get around" scholarship requirements, it's actually our job to enforce the scholarship requirements. He says: "So you just won't take responsibility for your actions." I told him, "Actually you're the one being irresponsible and you have been since day one."
Quick Flashback:
Feb 15: Application deadline
Feb 21, 22: Registration dates
Feb 24: I receive an email from a student wanting to know what he needs to bring with him to registration.
Feb 25: I ask him whether or not he's receive his admissions letter yet.
Feb 26: He tells us that he hasn't even applied yet.
Feb 27: I inform him that we're actually no longer accepting students for the Mar term.
Feb 28: His daddy calls and yells at another coworker because this student is ALREADY ON A FLIGHT BOUND FOR TAIPEI and how dare we tell him just NOW that we're not accepting him.
Mar 2: He shows up with big brother and we basically tell him we'll make an exception for him since he's already here, but it will depend on whether or not there is still an empty seat in a class. He ends up enrolling for the Mar term because, in fact, yes we do have an empty seat.
Return to present day Friday:
He says: "You told me to come to Taiwan!"
Wait.... now it's MY fault that you came to Taiwan? I distinctly recall that my email was to tell you NOT to come.
So he eventually leaves only to return that afternoon and go around and ask at least 3 of my coworkers: "Jenny cussed at me earlier! Didn't you hear it?! (He has the word 'shit' written on his hand and is showing it to everyone trying to get people to say it out loud. Hm....) You're lying! And you're lying! You're all lying to protect her! Oh, you must really like her if you're willing to risk your job to protect her! Wait until I talk to your director, you're all going to lose your jobs!" (I couldn't help but make a little snort of laughter here, that didn't help....) Anyway, he did get up in my face again, I told him that I was no longer going to speak to him and ignored him. He ranted some more about my entire office getting fired and then left.
Luckily (or unluckily) my director is currently on a business trip and is supposed to be back sometime next week. Well, Tuesday I believe but as we also have a typhoon headed our way with an arrival date of Mon or Tues I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.
Anyway, this guy is like a petulant child! He needs a time out room, you know, a small penned in area where they put screaming kids until they calm down enough to join the rest of the class. And if the previous incident with the failure to apply OR register on time his brother will be making an appearance and his dad will probably make another phone call to yell at someone.
ABC #2: This guy from Virginia Tech is here and wants to transfer credits from us back to his university. He told (someone) at his university that he had awesome Chinese and would be enrolling in a Level 9 class. He only tested into a Level 4 class. He comes to argue with us about his class placement, so we give him the Level 9 book and ask him how much of it he can read. He looks at it for about a minute and then pushes the book back across the table and says: "I can't really read it but I'll only need a few days before I can read it."
My coworker tells him: You want to do the best thing for your Chinese so you should take a class more suitable for you, there is not only a lot of reading for the Level 9 class but you will also need to be able to write essays. You can barely write.
Student's response? "I just want credits. I'm not here to actually learn Chinese."
I try to explain to him that at a Level 9 class he wouldn't receive a passing grade so he wouldn't be receiving credits from his university ANYWAY.
Doesn't go over so well as he starts demanding whether or not I think he's stupid. (I obviously do, but manage not to say anything.) So.... now he's going to wait for our director as well, complain that he didn't get the class level he WANTED and about how my coworker and I think he's stupid.
Overseas Chinese #3: She's actually from Korea but is of Chinese decent. She tells her boyfriend (a Taiwanese) that her teacher has been discussing politics in class for the last 2-3 days and hasn't covered very much text material. She couldn't just come tell us as well. But her boyfriend comes in, guns blazing, and spends 20 minutes yelling at a coworker of mine.... we got to listen to the entire thing. He keeps demanding how, as a school/as an institution, that we could ALLOW teachers to digress from the teaching materials. He also keeps demanding to know why he's paying SOOOO much money for his girlfriend to sit there and listen to her teacher's opinions on politics. He's also screaming about how he had to take half a day off from work to come in and talk to someone. (Uh... there's this amazing invention, sir, it's a called a phone.) So after that he goes to our director's secretary (more like a vice-director in Taiwan really) and spends another 30 min in her office repeating the entire thing. Oh and earlier when my coworker asked for the girlfriend's student ID to check the boyfriend also flipped out and wanted to know WHY she needed the girlfriend's ID card. My coworker (very calmly) told him that with 160 teachers she needed the student's ID so she could check what class she was in and which teacher it was.
So.............. yeah, it was a good day to go to the cookie shop and smash almonds.
ABC #1: So this guy started in March and had been by yesterday. He wants to apply for a tuition waiver scholarship, except he's missed too much class for the Spring Term. He puts the blame for this squarely on me and his teacher. He says that we told him that he didn't have to go to all his classes. I told him, yes, as he is not dependent on us for a visa he can miss as many classes as he likes but they will still show up as missed hours on his transcript and that he has to deal with those consequences (such as applying to grad school or for a job) if he should submit these transcripts to anything in the future. He wants me to write a letter stating that I told him it was okay for him to miss all this class. I told him no, if he missed classes than he missed classes, he should be the one writing the letter of explanation as to WHY he was missing so many hours.
He demands to know why no one in our office will help him get around the scholarship requirements. I told him it wasn't our job to help him "get around" scholarship requirements, it's actually our job to enforce the scholarship requirements. He says: "So you just won't take responsibility for your actions." I told him, "Actually you're the one being irresponsible and you have been since day one."
Quick Flashback:
Feb 15: Application deadline
Feb 21, 22: Registration dates
Feb 24: I receive an email from a student wanting to know what he needs to bring with him to registration.
Feb 25: I ask him whether or not he's receive his admissions letter yet.
Feb 26: He tells us that he hasn't even applied yet.
Feb 27: I inform him that we're actually no longer accepting students for the Mar term.
Feb 28: His daddy calls and yells at another coworker because this student is ALREADY ON A FLIGHT BOUND FOR TAIPEI and how dare we tell him just NOW that we're not accepting him.
Mar 2: He shows up with big brother and we basically tell him we'll make an exception for him since he's already here, but it will depend on whether or not there is still an empty seat in a class. He ends up enrolling for the Mar term because, in fact, yes we do have an empty seat.
Return to present day Friday:
He says: "You told me to come to Taiwan!"
Wait.... now it's MY fault that you came to Taiwan? I distinctly recall that my email was to tell you NOT to come.
So he eventually leaves only to return that afternoon and go around and ask at least 3 of my coworkers: "Jenny cussed at me earlier! Didn't you hear it?! (He has the word 'shit' written on his hand and is showing it to everyone trying to get people to say it out loud. Hm....) You're lying! And you're lying! You're all lying to protect her! Oh, you must really like her if you're willing to risk your job to protect her! Wait until I talk to your director, you're all going to lose your jobs!" (I couldn't help but make a little snort of laughter here, that didn't help....) Anyway, he did get up in my face again, I told him that I was no longer going to speak to him and ignored him. He ranted some more about my entire office getting fired and then left.
Luckily (or unluckily) my director is currently on a business trip and is supposed to be back sometime next week. Well, Tuesday I believe but as we also have a typhoon headed our way with an arrival date of Mon or Tues I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.
Anyway, this guy is like a petulant child! He needs a time out room, you know, a small penned in area where they put screaming kids until they calm down enough to join the rest of the class. And if the previous incident with the failure to apply OR register on time his brother will be making an appearance and his dad will probably make another phone call to yell at someone.
ABC #2: This guy from Virginia Tech is here and wants to transfer credits from us back to his university. He told (someone) at his university that he had awesome Chinese and would be enrolling in a Level 9 class. He only tested into a Level 4 class. He comes to argue with us about his class placement, so we give him the Level 9 book and ask him how much of it he can read. He looks at it for about a minute and then pushes the book back across the table and says: "I can't really read it but I'll only need a few days before I can read it."
My coworker tells him: You want to do the best thing for your Chinese so you should take a class more suitable for you, there is not only a lot of reading for the Level 9 class but you will also need to be able to write essays. You can barely write.
Student's response? "I just want credits. I'm not here to actually learn Chinese."
I try to explain to him that at a Level 9 class he wouldn't receive a passing grade so he wouldn't be receiving credits from his university ANYWAY.
Doesn't go over so well as he starts demanding whether or not I think he's stupid. (I obviously do, but manage not to say anything.) So.... now he's going to wait for our director as well, complain that he didn't get the class level he WANTED and about how my coworker and I think he's stupid.
Overseas Chinese #3: She's actually from Korea but is of Chinese decent. She tells her boyfriend (a Taiwanese) that her teacher has been discussing politics in class for the last 2-3 days and hasn't covered very much text material. She couldn't just come tell us as well. But her boyfriend comes in, guns blazing, and spends 20 minutes yelling at a coworker of mine.... we got to listen to the entire thing. He keeps demanding how, as a school/as an institution, that we could ALLOW teachers to digress from the teaching materials. He also keeps demanding to know why he's paying SOOOO much money for his girlfriend to sit there and listen to her teacher's opinions on politics. He's also screaming about how he had to take half a day off from work to come in and talk to someone. (Uh... there's this amazing invention, sir, it's a called a phone.) So after that he goes to our director's secretary (more like a vice-director in Taiwan really) and spends another 30 min in her office repeating the entire thing. Oh and earlier when my coworker asked for the girlfriend's student ID to check the boyfriend also flipped out and wanted to know WHY she needed the girlfriend's ID card. My coworker (very calmly) told him that with 160 teachers she needed the student's ID so she could check what class she was in and which teacher it was.
So.............. yeah, it was a good day to go to the cookie shop and smash almonds.