Woe is My Career

I know the title sounds a bit mellow-dramatic, but it was all I could think of to tie the two things together.

First: I'm calling the people at Penn Foster in the morning and getting out of doing that online teaching gig. It's horrible. It's everything that's bad about teaching with all the excitingness of online text. It's a text book you can read online, complete with those ridiculous, vacuous test questions that's nothing but memorization. I was going to stick with it until I started looking at the assessments. I have to be honest, I couldn't pass the tests because I don't have that minutia memorized. I've been fired from gigs for refusing to teach that way and I gave up my family and friends to move 6000 miles away so that I wouldn't have to teach that way and I'm sure as hell not going to start doing it because it's the internets. I'm just going to use all my experience with women blowing me off to do this: It's not you, it's me...I'm just at a point where I have to focus on my career...I don't deserve a school like you...your pedagogy just doesn't satisfy me. So let's just be friends.

Second: Oh, Lord have mercy. Today I woke up at 3:30am to get on a plane to Oahu for an online class that I'm taking on how to use online learning to teach Hawaiian Culture. Too early...way too early. I didn't wake up until...actually, I think I was in a fog all day. And I was surrounded by...ew...teachers.

I may have blogged on this before, but as a group, teachers bore the hell out of me. I don't find them to be a very creative group, intellectually speaking. Oh sure, they'll know 101 uses for a glue stick, but none of them are very kinky and involve a spatula and a midget. Sorry, Mom. I meant, Little person. So I was stuck on a plane, on a bus and in a classroom with teachers. I couldn't tell what was making me nod off more...getting up at 3:30 or the vacuum of excitement from the class. We had laptops and the class itself was so slow that I worked on campaign stuff for half the time. I actually got some stuff done!

And just about everyone in the class, including some of the instructors were either Hawaiian by birth or by living here forever and they all spoke pidgen! Seriously. Educators. I'm thinking - no wonder these kids suck at English, dey owe kine teecha doh nevah no use it, yeah?

And of course every single thing I ate today was a big lump of carbohydrates. This class had nothing but carbs...I swear the water I drank had more protein than my lunch.

Oh, and just to top it off...on the plane on the way back...you know how the flight from hell is you surrounded by a bunch of screaming kids? Well, for me it was worse. Me surrounded by teachers and honeymooners. I swear, there was one couple who giggled and took pictures of themselves making out the whole flight. Luckily it was only a half-hour flight, but if TSA hadn't have confiscated my weapons and shoe bombs...

Third: Oh...and at the YMCA today, a few minutes after I got there I was talking to the new supervisor and one of the members, and I saw way down the hall, the Mom of one of my students. And I accidentally said out loud, "God damn!" Bad form. But the Mom and kid were pretty needy last year. There were a number of afterschool meetings - the kid is pissed off and pretty mean. Well, the kid's not my student anymore because Mom got laid-off and can't make the daily drive from Upcountry. So Mom pulled her out of the program to go to a closer school. And because of their financial situation, they got a scholarship to the Y so they don't have to use the pricey fancy-schmancy gym Mom was going to before. So I still get to see them all the time...special.

And I guess I'll just continue in Y-mode. My new supervisor is starting to get to be a pain. She's nice enough, but for being so pro-Hawaii, she's not very laid back. The fact that a lot of members do not bring their cards in when they come has become her number one purpose in life. She spends most of the time she works either complaining about it, or trying to figure out ways to fix it. She really treats it as if it's Maui's version of Darfur. And she's my boss so it's not my place to tell her to chill the eff out.

I really thought I had blogged on this before, but looking for the link, I couldn't find it. I guess I hadn't, but I know we talked about it on the Award Winning podcast. About 2 weeks into my starting at the Y, there was this woman who would come in and use the facilities. She's pretty old, sounds like Carol Channing and has seriously leather skin. Way too much sun. For some reason, she thinks my name is Roy. At first I thought it was funny so I didn't say anything. But after a month or so went by I realized that the joke was now on me because it was waaaay too late to tell her tht my name isn't Roy. So everyone's been teasing me about it. Today I received something that I never thought I'd be happy to get before...a name tag. It's not really my style. But since the whole Roy situation has gotten intolerable, I knew it was time for a YMCA name tag. That way I can just SHOW Leather Channing that my name is not Roy. So one of the big cheeses decides it would be funny to order me a name tag that says "Roy". I guess I'm one of the gang now. So now I sign all my internal paperwork, "Roy". Looks like we're gonna have a Roydown.