March 14—Pi Day— will mark the two-year anniversary of my career at YB. In some ways, that first day on the job still feels like yesterday, when I was snowed under by bewildering paperwork. Since that time, I've gotten a lot better at the record-keeping; I balance and budget my time more efficiently whenever I find myself in a three-on-one student/teacher situation, and I'm a lot less uptight about lesson planning, which is no longer a big deal for me. It's all been a matter of getting accustomed to the system. While I'm still not perfect at my job, I am a lot more comfortable at it, and it helps that most of my students are good apples.
Alas, the job has its downside. I don't see that YB has much in the way of upward mobility for a bloke like me, so there's no way I'll be making a career of working here. Although I've heard talk of pay raises (aside from the standard yearly raise), I'll believe such talk when I see the raises. I'm still not used to the weird work schedule; starting at 3:30PM during the week, then shifting to a 9AM start every Saturday, remains harsh for my old-fart equilibrium. I'd be a lot happier if I could work regular hours, but we tutors have to work around the students' daily schedules. Of course, if I had to choose between cutting out my Wednesdays or my Saturdays, I'd much rather cut the Wednesdays; Wednesday, when all the bad kids come, remains my shittiest weekday (not looking forward to today, in fact).
All the same, it's amazing how quickly two years can go by. I'm thankful to have gotten this job, which has provided me with a steady, if meager, paycheck for the past 24 months. I've also had the chance to relearn a lot of information I had forgotten since my own time at school; I'm a much better English and math teacher than I used to be, for example. I consider my time at YB as a stepping-stone to bigger and better things, and the time to leave is fast approaching. It'll be sad to say goodbye to great coworkers, decent management, and mostly excellent kids, but two years is about enough for this old hoss.
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Today was an off-day for the English hagwons in town as the owners had to attend the yearly, mandatory government in-service meeting of some sort or other, so I got to find out why Mila Kunis is awesome. Hell, now I want to take her to a boring futbol match as well as she'd certainly liven it up. Anyway, I did get to see her in the new OZ film today, but, while technically brilliant--the technical aspect that is, it was rather ham-fisted and lacking in the story department. However, the weakest point in the trailer for me (Zach Braff), ended up being the breakout character of the film and quite touching at times, but the film only has half the heart and story of "The Wizard of Oz" with none of the wonderful music that contributed to making that film the classic that it is today. It says a lot when I can barely remember the high points to today's film after seeing it only a few hours ago. Even Bruce was pretty much wasted in it.
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