Something about listening to Jimmy Paige and David Coverdale's album made me feel like writing again. Well that and the guilt I feel every time a student asks me how I can use English so fluently and I calmly tell them it's because I read and write knowing that the real answer should be because I try to read and I used to write.
It's funny how summer used to be a time of white noise and a standby button just spent relaxing and doing nothing after the months of school. Nowadays summer is full of commitments and work so it tends to be even more stressful than the scholastic year. By the end of the dreadful month I'm almost begging to go back to University simply to get away from all the stress that summer itself has come to represent. I whinge about the heat constantly while trying to teach teenagers English knowing that 70% of them don't give half a rat's arse about anything I'm saying other than, "Time for break!" or "We're done for today, see you tomorrow!" I use the exclamation marks because I'll be as excited for the end of their lessons as they are most of the time.
Don't get me wrong, I do like the vast majority of all my students but a small number of them are just horribly spoilt little arseholes who have been sent here so their parents can have a break from them and possibly try to conceive better offspring in the mean time. Usually, I also genuinely enjoy my job, except when I have to bow down to authority and do things which I know I will hate and so do the students. And what's up with all the goddamn paperwork? Jesus Christ every day it's a new paper to fill in myself or to get the students to fill in while wasting 15 minutes of lesson time. Granted for most of them it's a welcome break but for the few who genuinely go the extra mile to learn something, it's a nuisance.
Final note, I think it's hilarious that teachers who tend to be pretty much in the same age group as our students, are actually forbidden from being friends with our students. It is outlined in my teachers' guidelines specifically something along the lines of "Remember that the student is not your friend!" So you mean to tell me that if I have a student who is my age, who I see every day for four weeks or more, have shared laughs and serious discussions with and have actually enjoyed my time with invites me to go meet him/her on his/her last day in Malta as friends, not as student and teacher, I need to decline because I was ordered not to be his/her friend? Fuck that.
Anyway, just a little look into what's been taking over my life during the last couple of summers. I still have suggestions left over from my reader suggestion series. I'll get to them eventually. Maybe.
Good afternoon, the interwebz
