Tuesday, March 27, 2007

I thought life was hard until it got so much more difficult. Over the last week, I have had to say goodbye to 18 wonderful second graders who adored me, lose my supervising teacher, and move into a classroom of out-of-control-fourth-graders-who-know-it-and-are-PROUD-of-it.

To begin, my supervising teacher switched me out for another student to save on driving time and to stay out of her control group (for her doctorate work). Therefore, whether I like it or not, I am stuck. I loved my first supervising teacher. She made me comfortable, didn't give homework, and was as flexible as an overcooked green bean. I get switched to a supervising teacher who gives four assignments a week and has deadlines like "Midnight Saturday" instead of sometime before your first placement ends. Supposedly my new supervising teacher picked me, but...I was so happy where I was...soooo very happy. *world crashes* *sigh*

Some of my students seem to have it out for me and have decided that they want to get away with murder. I have had a student respond to my request with a "make me" and then a "no" until the other teacher punished him once for what I said, and then again for not listening to me. She said that if students did not do as I asked exactly WHEN I ask it, they will automatically get the worst punishment available to us as teachers. The boys decided to play in the bathroom and too many went in at a time. So, one of the urinals got totally messed up and when I sent a student for a custodian, she walked over looked in the bathroom and yelled, "You boys better stop taking advantage of this nice teacher. You know there are too many of you in here, and that this behavior is not allowed. Get out NOW." All this as I am standing out in the hall dying from embarrassment...telling my students they are getting away with taking advantage of me.

Well, that is enough for now. . . hopefully more to come.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Junk

Today I decided to go through and check all my email accounts and make sure that there were no emails I was dying to read. My yahoo account had over 100 emails and my hotmail account (which was recently reset due to me not checking it enough) had 80 emails. What is up with that? I can never find the emails I want because I get so much junk mail I cannot get through it all. I do not need to receive emails for the "perfect match" since I am already happily married. Other emails are just...junk. Those services think they can get you to buy stuff from them if they send you an email with what you desire. Seems the only thing they want to sell is laptops, dating services, credit cards, and free ___ when you buy ________ and ________ and ________ etc. I find it totally annoying.

While I sat down to write this rant on junk mail, I receive a phone call...11 am on a SUNDAY. Yes, it is Joe calling from India on behalf of some dumb cell phone company to offer me my free phone. His English was terrible and I could hardly understand him. That annoys me, because when I tell them, "No thank you", they try to talk more, and I cannot understand them so I just have to hang up on them and that is rude. Or they cannot understand me and when I say anything they try and repeat it back, and it is never even close to what I was trying to say. They are totally obnoxious and I am sick of them. I will never buy something off the phone or off an ad on the internet or from an email from some random company. NEVER. I tried once when I was a lot younger and it was a scam and since then I will never do it again, yet, even though I have never again followed through, I have to deal with hundreds of emails and dozens of phone calls. Why do we let these companies harass us? Does anyone ever buy from them? Don't they have anything better to do? Is it to scam everyone at least once? Is it to get children to try and take them up on their offers?

Sometimes what they do is offer one thing and then they do not actually give you that but they instead try and get you to buy something else. In stores that is called bait and switch and we made it ILLEGAL! Yet, internet stores do it quite often and are accountable to no one. Any business that will stoop so low as to offer one item to get you to buy ten should be shut down. That kind of business practice is disgraceful and if it were a store with an actual location, it would not be allowed to bait and switch without consequences.

Now pass this on to ten of your friends or you will have a piano fall on your head. HA!
My first placement has ended. I will truly miss those 2nd grade kids. It is my senior year and the last semester. In less than two months I will have to go and get a real job. That is a scary thought. My plans for the summer so far consist of trying to find a summer job. Yeah, nothing really fun or interesting. Also, Jared is trying to get a group together later in the summer to go to the Texas Shakespeare festival.