A year away

There are times when I forget I lived in Korea. Having been away for over a year and having moved back to the U.S. has put some much needed physical and psychological distance between between me and my time in the country. I’m glad I left. I was angry and frustrated. A cursory look at anything I’ve posted here regarding teaching would tell you I was burned out. 

So a year has passed and the blog’s still here. I’ve kept it around in case the urge to write comes back. 

Take what you will from those earlier posts. They were a product of a time, a place, and a mental state. 
Rock on, everyone.

The escape from Korea

For some, writing rage/rant blogs works to preserve their sanity. Having some keys to mash on helps them deal with the pains of _____. Doing so is cathartic. For me, I’ve found that raging just means I have to love through the pain once more. It’s not cathartic, it’s torturous.

But I suppose this needs telling…

I wrote “The Chattering Vortex of Apathy” a year ago and posted it 9 months ago. Things got worse…just after I made that post, in fact. A Bible-thumping main coteacher made a powerplay and forced me to transfer schools, so I moved and got thrown in with three coteachers who were just out of college. Two were okay, but the other one only communicated via Post-Its with me. Our desks were next to each other and she was my main coteacher. Frustration ensued. Most of what I said about classes “not being interesting” came true.

 left in February. Mid-contract. Couldn’t bear the mental strain anymore. Lady Buckeye and I had split up in October (amicably) and that combined with the idiocy of Korean schools had me thinking my time was finished in the country. Just getting through the day was difficult enough. I was wrecked.

Rant from 31 March: The chattering vortex of apathy

I wrote this several months ago about my high school 2nd graders, to they stayed the same all semester. More on that later.

There are days when I have to wonder just what I’m doing here. What, if any, utility do I have for the kids besides being another 50 minute block of time to get through. What, if anything, I can teach them when they’re too busy being sick, sleeping, or talking about who knows what. Two classes in a row. Slap happy or sleeping. That’s all it is. Monday morning and they’re carrying on like it’s the last day of school. Because that’s what it is. Every damned day is the first day and the last day for these kids. It’s the first day because they act perpetually dumbfounded about where they’re supposed to be or what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s the last day because they know my stuff isn’t on the exam and therefore isn’t worth listening to. They know that in 50 minutes, the bell will ring and they’ll have 10 minutes of nothingness and craziness before the next class begins…so they can continue dozing or yammering.

They’re 17 damned years old. They’ve been in school for over 10 years, yet some have yet to master the first principle of school: LISTEN.

Was today’s lesson difficult? Well, maybe. I don’t know. Asking them about inventions or important inventions doesn’t seem that hard, not when enough of the students can (in a few words at least) explain why Facebook or Twitter is important. And for them to draw up an invention? Sheesh. Draw something–anything–present it in a few words or phrases. Move on.

My coteacher does her best to translate, but even she thinks its difficult. Maybe she’s right. I don’t know. Plenty of middle and high school lessons were difficult, but I got through them. Everyone else did too. There is no learning without thinking. There is no progress without some difficulty. It goes with the territory.

Maybe she’s right. I’ll try going with the words, phrases, and idioms list she has. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll work. I doubt lecturing for 50 minutes will do a damned thing to improve their speaking, but that’s not what this is about, is it? No, it’s Korea, where everything is about tests and memorizing stuff for tests. It doesn’t matter that some can barely write their own names, but I’m supposed to explain what “Evolve” means. Well hell. And getting them to write stuff down? Forget it. It’s been 2 years and it ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS takes them 5 bloody minutes to write their names and the dates on their papers…EVEN IF they know their names and the dates and page numbers are WRITTEN ON THE BOARD. Yeah, I have to do the thinking for them because despite their advanced teenage years, they all seem incapable of doing ANYTHING independently–aside from going to the mart next to the school, that is. Oh, they KNOW how to walk to the mart and buy ice cream.

And bloody hell. I sent her the damned PPT on Friday afternoon. She has my email address and my phone number for phone messages. If the PPT was that bad, she could’ve told me and I would’ve fixed it over the weekend. The problem is, that didn’t happen. No, she tells me AFTER we’ve done the first two classes. So now I’ve got to draw up something completely new for the last class. That and do the middle school stuff for tomorrow. And the midde school stuff for Thursday. Sure, that’s all SOP, but this is nuts.

Funny how the kids say class is a waste of time when they’re the same ones who spend the time joking and, well, not paying attention. It’s IMPOSSIBLE for something to be a waste of time that way, but to them, it is.

And therein lies the Catch-22 of teaching here: I’m supposed to make the lessons interesting, but the MOMENT I have them do any actual work or do any thinking, they become “too difficult,” which means they must yammer incessantly about who knows what, because all of that’s certainly preferable to actually DOING THE FRAKKING WORK. How can I POSSIBLY make an interesting lesson this way? The EPIK gospel is “If the lesson’s interesting, then you’ll have no problems?” Oh yeah? What about the kids who don’t give a damn? What about the sick kids that cough all hour? What if they don’t want to be interested out of spite? And yes, I’m convinced it IS spite for some of them. Why not? They’ve nothing to lose. They can bitch about me, give me a bad eval, and have me fired. They’re part of THAT equation. Once I get fired, another person comes in…who they can continue tormenting. I’m starting to wonder if that’s indeed the case here.

Interesting classes require thinking. Something isn’t interesting if it doesn’t brook any thought, yet telling them what to do removes all thinking from the equation.

Hiatus

Haven’t read much of anything blog-related lately.

The job’s been keeping me busy.

Rock on.

Scarcity mentality as defined by Charles Bukowski

Today’s post will be a quick one, for it’s meant to show how we can find many Manosphere ideas in popular literature

Charles Bukowski’s a favorite writer of mine. His work might be described as “drinking various liquors and screwing various women,” but his autobiographical protagonist, Henry Chinaski, did more than just that. His novel Women‘s a veritable compendium of hookup situations and how he handled them for better or worse. Alongside his typically excellent dialogues, he gives us this nugget:

“My problem was that I couldn’t rest my cock-godhead like I could my typer-godhead. That was because women were available only in streaks so you had to get as much in as possible before somebody else’s godhead came along. I think the fact that I quit writing for ten years was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. (I suppose that some critics would say that it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to the reader, too.) Ten year’s rest for both sides. What would happen if I stopped drinking for ten years?” [Emphasis mine]

Excerpt From: Bukowski, Charles. “Women.” HarperCollins Publishers, 1978. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=360628615

Up there is the scarcity mentality many men have women it comes to women. The man must hang on to whatever women he can because he has no idea now long they’ll last. Rational Male has written more about scarcity mentality here, as have many other ‘Sphere writers and how it can be detrimental to a man’s psyche because it breeds desperation. Enjoy.

Musings on Korean Life

Using the lens of Fight Club to see Korea. Brilliant. I cracked up reading this because of it’s humor and truth. Stuff like this underscores what a watershed book Fight Club was. You’ve outdone yourself, Via Korea!

Solo Christmas

They nail it here.

Koronicles

Christmas in Korea is quite different from Christmas in the United States and many other parts of the world. I was first alerted to this fact, of course, by my students.

“Are you excited for Christmas next week?” I innocently asked a class the week before Christmas. “Oh, solo Christmas!” students yelled. In my next class, while eliciting words related to Christmas, I got some standard responses: Santa, tree, snow, Rudolph, presents, etc. However, I also got “couples,” “girlfriend,” and “boyfriend.”

On further research I have discovered that although Christmas is celebrated in Korea, it is not the widely celebrated family event it is in the U.S. In Korea, Christmas is more of a day for couples to go out on a date to a nice dinner.

This video maybe sums it up best. “Lonely Christmas” by Crayon Pop with English subtitles. Enjoy ^^

^^ This little symbol is how…

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The Buckeyes go to ‘Nam

The Korean Air check in counter opens at 6:10am in Incheon. We arrived at 6:00..Our papers are in order and we’re heading to Ho Chi Minh City to escape the Korean winter. We’ll ring in 2014 there.

Rock on, everybody.

Ramen and chicken wings

http://foodbeast.com/2013/12/20/ramen-wings

Heard about this from a friend in the States. Here’s hoping they get to Korea soon. The kids will.love them.

The Fresh Air Fetish and the Slamming Door Symphony

The fresh air

My vice principal keeps an open door policy, and not just the figurative idea of always being available: His office door is literally open all the time. This would make no matter if his office wasn’t part of the larger 교무실 (teachers office), but it does because his open door does us no favors during the winter. All the combined hot air of the teachers room’s three overhead heaters goes to waste thanks to his negligently leaving the door open all day, thereby letting the frigid winter air waft its way into the room and keep us all in a state of refrigeration. As Korean schools don’t usually have central heating and Koreans usually keep the outside doors of the schools open (at least in the country) for “airflow,” the schools are basically cold all the frakkin’ time. One of the outside doors sits not 20 feet from the VP’s door. Whether he likes to keep us cold and waste heat or he just doesn’t care is yet to be determined.

The slamming doors

Holy Moses Malone do my high school students delight in slamming doors as harshly as possible. The doors clang and slam at double intervals every hour: Once to signal the end of one class and once more to signal the end of the 10 minute passing time and the beginning of another class. Much of the time, they make as much noise as possible so they can squeeze all the drama they can from their over scheduled lives. Those 10 minutes between classes provide endless delights for the petty and dramatic as well as recurring assaults on the ears of yours truly. How the doors stay intact is a miracle of engineering. Why nobody’s told them to frakkin’ stop it already, well, who knows.

Oh well. I’ll have a respite from this nonsense soon enough, for Lady Buckeye and I will be flying out to Vietnam come the morrow. Rock on and stay tuned for more.