An 'Unconfessional' Confessional Jellyfish Preacher

so this past week and a half has easily been the busiest i've had in years. even surpassing that week and a half where i said i'd never be sober again. i've been doing 'teaching practice' at something analogous to a public high school and it was a lot of work, and i don't really like work. there i said it. but getting little vietnamese kids to say they'd like to be astronauts because they want to 'leave earth' is just as entertaining as it sounds. and then making them say they dream about 'going snowboarding' with 'a penguin' and 'fighting monsters' with 'a giant robot' is like seeing my dreams come true right before my very eyes.

so yeah, i did actually have fun this week, but i was waking up at 6 in the morning and going to bed after 1 most nights. i don't usually consider myself a morning person, but last saturday i woke up at 5:30...at night and i think that might be a new record for me. if i'm not married before i'm 30 i'm going to propose to Sleep, because i love it so much. and i won't even sign a pre-nup to show how much i really mean it.

the week was not without the now familiar threat of failure however. fucking fat people. on wednesday, i was completing my lesson plan just before my class began while i was supposed to be observing my classmate teach... which i was, but i guess the senior observer (let's say his name is 'tom') in the room felt that those two actions were mutually exclusive and said to me in a real low fat slob kind of voice, "you can't be doing that now."

flashback: last week he had observed me (he wasn't observing me this particular day) and had requested to see my lesson plan which i would put at something close to 90% complete...80-90% maybe. he got all in a tissy about how the lesson plan is the most important part of the bla bla bla and whatnot and then said the next time it happened i wouldn't be allowed to teach and i'd fail and have to wait another month before i could make it up. then in my evaluation, he stressed that i needed to 'tighten the screws.' oh yeah, i'm actually paying this guy to tell me this.

so fast forward to this class i was in, observing my friend while making sure to have a complete lesson plan before i teach. i had stopped writing when he spoke to me, but given that if i didn't have my lesson plan complete before my next class i'd supposedly fail, i really didn't have much of an option except to ignore him and continue writing. again he says, this time more forcefully, "you can't be doing this nowww." so i did what came naturally to me in my new role as teacher: i looked at him, put my index finger to my lips, and made a 'sshhh' sound, motioning for him to pay attention to the class. he must not like me as a teacher though because he ripped the lesson plan from my hands, and called me a 'fuck' in an enraged breath of muffled frustration and fat.

well i was still in need of a lesson plan for my class which was about to start in 30 minutes, so i moved seats and took out a new lesson plan and wrote it from scratch, finishing just in time. as i left the class i handed my observation to pat, the guy i was observing and went to the classroom i'd be teaching in. well of course this fat fuck walks in right behind me and rats me out to my senior observer, who also happens to be the course instructor. "uhhhh i think we have a bit of a problem...he was writing his lesson plan in class and then he snubbed me." i thought to myself, 'is that what it's called? i thought a snub was when you turn your nose up in the air and turn away fromm...oh ok, i guess it was a snub...ha...snub."

but c'mon, this guy's a professional, why is he handling this as if we're in high school? and then i looked around, and realized i was in a public high school surrounded by vietnamese kids and my course teacher and this half-american half-vietnamese shit bag of a slob has tattled on me to the teacher. i was quite mind-fucked at the moment so after removing the dong from my ear, i pleaded my case. i didn't say anything about him calling me a fuck in the middle of class or him ripping the lesson plan out of my hands, i simply said i had a complete lesson plan, like i was told to have.

so after all this, nash (that's my instructor's name) allows me to teach, but because i didn't have any time to prepare mentally for class it was complete crap, one of the worst i've had, but still not even close to the worst i've seen. afterwards, during my evaluation, he tells me that because i showed a 'lack of professionalism' and had 'no crediblility' with my students (ouch), that my teaching practice wouldn't count. "wait let me finish...if you perform better over these next 2 days then you can still pass." i was real close to not letting him finish but luckily i did, nodded an 'ok,' and walked out of his office.

this whole episode left a bitter taste in my mouth and poisoned my mind with the most distracting thoughts. i couldn't believe that i, the one minding his own business was the one accused of unprofessionalism. and no credibility? where'd that come from? god i hate fat people. but the next day one of my classmates didn't show up because she was sick so i took her place, and saved face by teaching twice in one day.

long unclimactic story short: today i received my TEFL certificate and am now an 'unprofessional' professional english teacher.

...well, an unemployed english teacher, which is actually quite similar to an unemployed professional economics uhhh guy, but now i have a new piece of paper with my name on it and it's written in fancy font.

"hmmm, i want to look smart. someone hand me my dictionary... i have some reading to catch up on."