So it's been pretty much the longest week of my life, near equal to stress and anxiety levels around this time last year during the thesis. I guess I should just thank my lucky stars that I don't have hives...yet. I'm so tired of pretending to be an adult lately, when everyone else seems to be able to act like a child. Whining probably isn't the most productive activity, but this is electronic communication, so in some way that makes it okay. Right? Whatever. Somebody told me when I signed up for this experience that I was "tough as nails," and recently I've heard that I'm "resilient" and "strong," but pulling up to MCHS this afternoon from the courthouse I realized that I'm fucking tired of trying to juggle all of my responsibilities, and I just don't have it in me to be the stoic. I'm tired, it's not me, and it doesn't really even work that well.
I'm a bit in awe that it's finally Thursday night, and that we have our teacher workday tomorrow. Honestly, on Monday I really wasn't sure how I was going to make it to Friday; on Wednesday night (was that really yesterday) while driving home from FIU after a 4 hour presentation, I couldn't remember the day before. There are still things left to do, but I've reached my point of not caring.
I'm over that stupid place, and just want to finally be enrolled in the program so that we can start negotiating. They desperately need people in the Urban Master's school, and if they're not all of a sudden super fucking nice to me, I'm going to tell everyone from the '05 Corps exactly how we've been treated: with patronizing condescention, broken promises, rude administration, unflexible and inconvenient schedules, and overpriced tuition. Yeah, that should get the enrollment you need, you bastards.
Finals week is hell normally, and when you haven't got a car, have to commute 1.5 hours to class, and work a 60 hour a week job at the same time, that doesn't make it any easier. I was in Broward County at 10:45 on Tuesday night, got up at the usual 5:30 to go to work all day Wednesday, sit through a ridiculously childish faculty meeting with some confrontational angry bitch who marched in and told everybody that we had to change our curriculum for a BLACK URBAN SCHOOL to include a UNIT on the Holocaust before the end of the year because black kids need to learn about racial persecution. Excuse me? What didn't help was when the "adult" teachers started catfighting with her and she showed us a clip of that god-awful HBO documentary with Kenneth Branaugh and Colin Firth as an "exemplary lesson" for our students. She "knew" they'd identify with that. Could we be a little further out of touch with reality?
Mary and I then drove to FIU, missed getting my car by 15 minutes because 826 was a parking lot, and then sat in a room from 7:00 pm to 11:30 listening to TESOL education presentations. They weren't bad, but the class has been all semester, and I'm sorry if 4.5 hours of sleep isn't *quite* enough to get me through an 8 hour teaching day with 90 students. Did I mention that both residents of apt. 2 have lost their voices? Yeah. Fun to tell kids to stop running out of the hallway and calling each other "dirty haitians" with no voice.
Then, in the midst of trying to orchestrate another logistical feat to somehow, someway get me down to SW Miami and pick up my car (pay and arm and a leg for my car) , and be able to transport myself again in the city of traffic jams and inept drivers ASIDE: I was informed by my sagacious roommate that the Florida legislature recently passed a law requiring slower-moving traffic to move to the right hand lanes on interstate highways. Are you *kidding*? And people wonder why nothing gets accomplished in the government around here. It's because they don't have time to spend on trivial issues like education and election fraud, when they're so busy taking care of keeping our roadways safe., when I had to pack up and head off to my depostion at the Juvenile Justice Center.
If ever I thought that there was some sort of cosmic order, and that karma evened out things in life, this week as most thoroughly disabused me of that idea.
I'm really to exhaused to get into it, and it's probably not safe for me to say anything in even a quasi-public forum, but let it suffice to say that I find it disconcerting that school employees can give partially falsified statements to court officials, and that I find it *very* hard to believe (as apparently, MY testimony was hard to belive) that "nice, respectful girls" 1. attack teachers, 2. hang around teachers' rooms whom they have attacked after they have been expelled from school, or 3. say blatantly untrue things like "my teacher hit me" when security drags them into the police officer's room for the first time. Maybe it's just my skewed perspective on things, and I should be a little more open to "alternate views" of Februrary 5th. Please excuse my cynicism.
So now do I not only think that my school administration, security, and half the faculty is out to get me fired, but hey, there's not a goddamnn thing I can do about it because the justice system is fucked too. It's like some kid told a rumor, and because she's the cool one at school, everyone believes her instead.
I can be mean, I can be hurtful, and I can assume things without enough background information, but I take quite a bit of pride in the fact that I don't lie. Maybe that's just a childish thought.
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