Well, I’m glad to say that after a weekend of stress and even a certain amount of impotent rage, things seem to be sorted. The whole mess could have been avoided if the guys on Friday hadn’t been utter dolts, but at least someone higher up intervened and rendered their dolthood less than all-powerful today.
Tag: teaching in Korea
I Need My Own Everything
… because too many people in this world are moron, and those morons seem to be the ones tasked with making sure things don’t fall apart. Yes, my closet is still subject to a huge water leak from the floor above, the Housing Office people remain idiots — and potentially larcenous idiots, given how they went through the apartment above looking for loot to steal (to the point of unwrapping a present left on the counter), the old, junky washing machine ruined a shirt I’d just gotten and had worn twice — because it’s so old and crappy that the …
Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind by Gerald Graff
This is, basically, an excellent book. Make a gift of it to those you know who are decision makers in departments. Read it if you want to help make things better for your students. More for those who want details, as well as my reflections on a few of the things I learned reading it, but for most of you who are teaching in departments (in Korea) where students actually have enough English to learn, you know, academic stuff, or for those teaching in the mother tongue of their students: trust me! Order it! Go! Now! University EFL teachers in …
Fleeting Update
Let’s see: Personal Stuff Lime got a job today! Short term (till mid-September), but she wanted that, while she studies for the Neverending Huge Giant Evil Big-Boss (for you arcade game fans out there) Exam. For two months she’ll be working part-time in a hospital near our home. We’re going to Hong Kong next week. Just for a few days, because Lime won’t be able to travel the rest of the summer. I’m bringing my computer and writing on the plane, and for at least an hour a day. But travel is still travel, right? Theere’s a Korean expression I …
& Here Once Again Commences the Deluge. (Wherein Students Grumble Their Way to a Higher Grade… Not!)
The grades went up late this afternoon, and then I took Lime out to celebrate. She has a job interview next week, and I’m done grading. On the way home, though, I joked with her that my email inbox would be full of emails from students begging for a higher grade. This is a binannual ritual in Korea: professors enter grades into the system, and then students email pointlessly begging to have their grades increased by some modest, or immodest amount. Korean professors claim that this is much rarer occurrence between Korean students and themselves — that Korean students seem …