Surreal Moments of Late at the Workplace

-When my kids asked me what they had to do to pass their semester.
-You mean what skills and work habits do you need to succeed in my class next semester, I asked.
-No, how do we know if we passed this term? Do we have to pass all our classes each semester to have credit for the year? No one ever told us.

-When one group revealed that they thought that phonetics and multimedia were the same class because they had the same teacher for these 2 (obviously different) courses.

-The umpteenth time that a student came looking for me because they forgot when their exam was (yesterday) and wanted to make it up at a time that was more convenient for them. Here's a good time: the examens de rattrapage in the first 2 weeks of September.

-Each time a student walked into a classroom while I was giving an exam (a little busy there!)because they needed to ask an Urgent Question that they would already have the answer to if they ever attended class, like what will be on the final exam.

-When I discovered that the HR Rep and department head who explained my incomprehensible job contract to me in 2007 were misinformed about minor details like how many hours I actually need to work each year.

-When you realise that the entire administrative organisation (a term I use loosely) of your workplace relies exclusively on the use of post-it notes. In some ways, this is almost reassuring-- at least they try to follow some kind of principle of organisation, but post-its do, unfortunately, fall off.

-When you, as an American teacher, finish reading 35 compositions that argue that higher education should be free and accessible to everyone (ok, fine) and universities shouldn't "discriminate unfairly" by taking only the best students. Wow, no correlation to make at all between being a good student and going to uni, eh?

And sometimes, the kiddies just feel like chatting after class about Irish music or the decline of family values in modern society, or flattering you so that you'll write a recommendation for them (there can't be ANY connection between that and their sudden appreciation of your greats teachings skills, can there?), or sometimes they just impress you with an excellent composition about Egypt and then despite all the ridiculousness you suffer daily, for a brief second before reality sets in again, it's actually not so bad to be a teacher.