various life thingies
Woke at 4.49. Couldn't resleep. Passed the time dozing and storyplanning. Finally, after a bad dream involving Doggo - Serena, our recently-deceased dog - being unable to walk and being rail-thin and being scared of me - I decided FUCKIT and got up.
Lots and lots and lots, these past few days. I'll break it into sections/subjects:
SCHOOL:
Ah, school and classes. You constant companion. Execptionally constant this week, because of many reasons:
1. a holiday's coming up, and in China, you don't have holidays. Technically you have the day/s of the holiday off, but IRL, you make up the work of the holiday/s on the weekend days around it. So technically we have May 1 off, which means we have Apr 29, Apr 30, and May 1 off, which means that Monday's classes are shifted to Saturday, Tuesday's classes are shifted to Sunday, and Wednesday's classes we're left to make up in our own private time.
I teach 7 classes a week. Monday + Tuesday alone, I teach five of those.
2. Consequently, Next week I have one class (yay?) but this week I have thirteen classes.
3. Let me hasten to add that the school sometimes blythely schedules things overtop foreign language classes (because thsoe aren't important!); currently it's two weeks of lab-experiments for my Mon. afternoon class, 8-5. (Poor guys.) Consequently, my Monday classes I've rescheduled to in the evenings - but only for two weeks!
4. When you're a teacher you quickly realize that "free time" is an elusive, inconstant thing. My free time comes in waves, and all depending on what I teach when and how. Let me explain - no, explanation will be too long. Let me sum up:
Monday: I teach 10-11.45 and 3.45-5.30. But I grade journals 12-3, and in the evening I grade more, in prep for...
Tuesday: lolohgod, I teach 8-12 and 3.45-5.30; 12-3 I grade journals, and after 5.30 I Le Collapse.
Wednesday: teach 3.45-5.30. If I'm taking Chinese class I take it in the AM, but am not doing so now, because journals. I grade these previous to class, 12-3; AM is for anything that Needs To Get Done (usually modwork on a website I newly mod; the internets; correspondance, etc)
Thursday: teach 3.45-5.30. Languish.
Friday/Sat/Sun: Picotime, unles there's ....grading.
(and that's not including private meetings/lunches/editing.)
5. ...which there is piles more of during writing-heavy classes than speaking classes; consequently I have two AW assignments x 150 waiting for me now to grade, and three PS assignments x 20, as well as five MC assignments x 35, and one MC assignment x 38.
6. I think I've answered my own question about why I don't mind moving on next year =_=
JOBS:
I'm still working pretty hard not to feel guilty about leaving my IRB. It's not made easier by students hearing about me planning to leave and asking me why and telling me they'd miss me - and I know they would, because their alternate options in teachers are ... members of the Squad D: When they ask me why I'm leaving, I tell them, "because i'm teaching the smae things year after year" and they can understand that that means "and I want a change".
What I don't add or explain: I really do need more than this.
I feel like my brain has gotten lethargic, and complacent. I feel like I'm not having to think. There's times I realize, "oh god, class in 45 minutes!" and I've not yet looked at my notebook at how to teach what I'm teaching - but that's okay, because I can rrive inside that classroom 35 minutes later, formal-dressed and smiling, to deliver a class dependant on What I Already Know mixed with How These Thigns Usually Go mixed with audience/students cues and participation.
I think this is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good first: that I have gotten so that I can deal well with a large, mixed, predominantly-inattentive group of 80 eyeballs, and get them to participate, engage, learn, and enjoy themselves. I have gotten so that I can do this almost automatically - it's mode I switch into - and without prep time - I know how to do it, all's I need is to make my materials. This is good! I think it's called Job Experience and What I Can Bring To The Table.
The bad part: doing something on automatic means you're not using your brain. It means you're not doing someting new. It means you're going, for the three hundred and thirtieth time, through motions that are sometimes novel but never new. And when you're doing things without engaging your brain, you brain gets used to that, and struggles when you want to engage it. What I mean: my brain is getting lazy.
I do not wish this. I do not want this. I do not like this, Sam-I-Am.
LIFE:
Which all moves directly into: what do I want? in a job, specifically, first:
+ I want a job where I actively use my brain. All The Time would be nice, but even Often is better than the current Rarely. (I don't care if it's tiring - it's better than languishing.)
+ I want a job which has variety in it: where I do not, year to year, do the exact same things in the exact same order.
+ I want a job with much direct engagement. Not officework, not flying a desk - spates of that are okay, but I want to be out, doing things, making things, learning things, teaching things, getting things to happen, anything. (The most engaging part of teaching: the teaching itself.)
+ I want a job I do not object to, and even enjoy. (Teaching can be like that sometimes, so I know it's possible.)
+ It would be nice if this job included travel, since I'm young and can do that now.
+ I want a job where I'm needed - I, not some random who can fit into this round hole, I for my skills and knowledge and abilities and experience and abilities.
I'll figure that out. I'll make it work. It might take a few tries and a few jobs and another degree (what the hell, I figure a Master's is in order eventually), but I'll make it happen.
In Life In General, I guess I'd better outline my current goals, too, both big and small, short-term and long-term:
+ writing, whenever I can, as much as I can.
+ moar publishment - both of short stories and eventually of books.
+ financial stability and sufficiency - I just need enough money to live on and do the things I want to do (travel, eat well, write). No giant house, no supercar, no pool.
+ find someone with whom I can live; romance is sort of optional, but I've figured out that I feel better when sharing a living space with a friend who is interesting.
+ to be involved in whatever place I live: I do not want to hermit.
+ maybe to Get To Know Someone? this one's fuzzy and very much background to the others, and more of an "okay if it happens, but I ain't holding my breath".
+ countries I actively want to see sometime eventually later: Turkey, the Baltics, Scandinavia, various Pacific Islands, Australia/New Zealand, Spain/Portugal, Hawaii (I know it's not a country but still), Japan.
blah blah blah, or as they say here, bala bala.
WHAT NOW:
So, for right now, I know what things I should do - thsoe things that I can only do here. I know I need to go back to Chinese lessons, yes. here's a list (because i fucking love coloring lists), in no particular order:
~ get my grading done and out of the way before the semester ends: so as not to be ambushed and whelmed over by the end
~ get back to reading Chinese: come on do this already Pico
~ go to the gym semiregularly: SUCCESS! just keep doing it
~ keep getting things published: WIP
~ get that workshop designed, figured out, and taught: resume-builder ahoy
~ get back to learning Chinese reglerly: uh gotta do this
~ begin closing up affairs here: filter my stuff, figure what bring/leave, etc.
~ good health eating: don't just snacks, don't candy as much: WIP
~ apply jobs/send resume out/get going on that: will do more next semester
~ stop languishing: find thigns as need doing: do them: WIP
And that's it. Balls, this is a long entry. See kids, this is what happens when Pico can't sleep: she thinks. More, I mean, than usual.
end now I shell finis my l'internetting end go to greid zhournalles end possiblie read a chinois le book
le okay
le the end
Lots and lots and lots, these past few days. I'll break it into sections/subjects:
SCHOOL:
Ah, school and classes. You constant companion. Execptionally constant this week, because of many reasons:
1. a holiday's coming up, and in China, you don't have holidays. Technically you have the day/s of the holiday off, but IRL, you make up the work of the holiday/s on the weekend days around it. So technically we have May 1 off, which means we have Apr 29, Apr 30, and May 1 off, which means that Monday's classes are shifted to Saturday, Tuesday's classes are shifted to Sunday, and Wednesday's classes we're left to make up in our own private time.
I teach 7 classes a week. Monday + Tuesday alone, I teach five of those.
2. Consequently, Next week I have one class (yay?) but this week I have thirteen classes.
3. Let me hasten to add that the school sometimes blythely schedules things overtop foreign language classes (because thsoe aren't important!); currently it's two weeks of lab-experiments for my Mon. afternoon class, 8-5. (Poor guys.) Consequently, my Monday classes I've rescheduled to in the evenings - but only for two weeks!
4. When you're a teacher you quickly realize that "free time" is an elusive, inconstant thing. My free time comes in waves, and all depending on what I teach when and how. Let me explain - no, explanation will be too long. Let me sum up:
Monday: I teach 10-11.45 and 3.45-5.30. But I grade journals 12-3, and in the evening I grade more, in prep for...
Tuesday: lolohgod, I teach 8-12 and 3.45-5.30; 12-3 I grade journals, and after 5.30 I Le Collapse.
Wednesday: teach 3.45-5.30. If I'm taking Chinese class I take it in the AM, but am not doing so now, because journals. I grade these previous to class, 12-3; AM is for anything that Needs To Get Done (usually modwork on a website I newly mod; the internets; correspondance, etc)
Thursday: teach 3.45-5.30. Languish.
Friday/Sat/Sun: Picotime, unles there's ....grading.
(and that's not including private meetings/lunches/editing.)
5. ...which there is piles more of during writing-heavy classes than speaking classes; consequently I have two AW assignments x 150 waiting for me now to grade, and three PS assignments x 20, as well as five MC assignments x 35, and one MC assignment x 38.
6. I think I've answered my own question about why I don't mind moving on next year =_=
JOBS:
I'm still working pretty hard not to feel guilty about leaving my IRB. It's not made easier by students hearing about me planning to leave and asking me why and telling me they'd miss me - and I know they would, because their alternate options in teachers are ... members of the Squad D: When they ask me why I'm leaving, I tell them, "because i'm teaching the smae things year after year" and they can understand that that means "and I want a change".
What I don't add or explain: I really do need more than this.
I feel like my brain has gotten lethargic, and complacent. I feel like I'm not having to think. There's times I realize, "oh god, class in 45 minutes!" and I've not yet looked at my notebook at how to teach what I'm teaching - but that's okay, because I can rrive inside that classroom 35 minutes later, formal-dressed and smiling, to deliver a class dependant on What I Already Know mixed with How These Thigns Usually Go mixed with audience/students cues and participation.
I think this is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good first: that I have gotten so that I can deal well with a large, mixed, predominantly-inattentive group of 80 eyeballs, and get them to participate, engage, learn, and enjoy themselves. I have gotten so that I can do this almost automatically - it's mode I switch into - and without prep time - I know how to do it, all's I need is to make my materials. This is good! I think it's called Job Experience and What I Can Bring To The Table.
The bad part: doing something on automatic means you're not using your brain. It means you're not doing someting new. It means you're going, for the three hundred and thirtieth time, through motions that are sometimes novel but never new. And when you're doing things without engaging your brain, you brain gets used to that, and struggles when you want to engage it. What I mean: my brain is getting lazy.
I do not wish this. I do not want this. I do not like this, Sam-I-Am.
LIFE:
Which all moves directly into: what do I want? in a job, specifically, first:
+ I want a job where I actively use my brain. All The Time would be nice, but even Often is better than the current Rarely. (I don't care if it's tiring - it's better than languishing.)
+ I want a job which has variety in it: where I do not, year to year, do the exact same things in the exact same order.
+ I want a job with much direct engagement. Not officework, not flying a desk - spates of that are okay, but I want to be out, doing things, making things, learning things, teaching things, getting things to happen, anything. (The most engaging part of teaching: the teaching itself.)
+ I want a job I do not object to, and even enjoy. (Teaching can be like that sometimes, so I know it's possible.)
+ It would be nice if this job included travel, since I'm young and can do that now.
+ I want a job where I'm needed - I, not some random who can fit into this round hole, I for my skills and knowledge and abilities and experience and abilities.
I'll figure that out. I'll make it work. It might take a few tries and a few jobs and another degree (what the hell, I figure a Master's is in order eventually), but I'll make it happen.
In Life In General, I guess I'd better outline my current goals, too, both big and small, short-term and long-term:
+ writing, whenever I can, as much as I can.
+ moar publishment - both of short stories and eventually of books.
+ financial stability and sufficiency - I just need enough money to live on and do the things I want to do (travel, eat well, write). No giant house, no supercar, no pool.
+ find someone with whom I can live; romance is sort of optional, but I've figured out that I feel better when sharing a living space with a friend who is interesting.
+ to be involved in whatever place I live: I do not want to hermit.
+ maybe to Get To Know Someone? this one's fuzzy and very much background to the others, and more of an "okay if it happens, but I ain't holding my breath".
+ countries I actively want to see sometime eventually later: Turkey, the Baltics, Scandinavia, various Pacific Islands, Australia/New Zealand, Spain/Portugal, Hawaii (I know it's not a country but still), Japan.
blah blah blah, or as they say here, bala bala.
WHAT NOW:
So, for right now, I know what things I should do - thsoe things that I can only do here. I know I need to go back to Chinese lessons, yes. here's a list (because i fucking love coloring lists), in no particular order:
~ get my grading done and out of the way before the semester ends: so as not to be ambushed and whelmed over by the end
~ get back to reading Chinese: come on do this already Pico
~ go to the gym semiregularly: SUCCESS! just keep doing it
~ keep getting things published: WIP
~ get that workshop designed, figured out, and taught: resume-builder ahoy
~ get back to learning Chinese reglerly: uh gotta do this
~ begin closing up affairs here: filter my stuff, figure what bring/leave, etc.
~ good health eating: don't just snacks, don't candy as much: WIP
~ apply jobs/send resume out/get going on that: will do more next semester
~ stop languishing: find thigns as need doing: do them: WIP
And that's it. Balls, this is a long entry. See kids, this is what happens when Pico can't sleep: she thinks. More, I mean, than usual.
end now I shell finis my l'internetting end go to greid zhournalles end possiblie read a chinois le book
le okay
le the end