RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

Thanks Kobayashi.

Though I've been in Korea far too long, I've always been socially awkward (no shame here).

I mentioned "Perhaps I am not following your meaning" but it sounds like you and cowboy are better able to "read between the lines" and follow her meaning.

I don't know what the "sad time feelies" are describing, but simply stated that it isn't acceptable to bring one's emotional baggage to school.

Leave that mess at home, where it belongs.

Are you kidding me? Being thousands of km away from home, away from family, and everything familiar will lead to some bouts of sadness. Especially if there was a major event such as a death in the family or not being able to see a major life event such as a siblings wedding. People get sad at times. I'm not saying you should yell at kids when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, but shit does happen.

Not really a rant, but it kind of grinds my gears how native teachers are expected to always have an organized, educational, and fun class for every single class, but for Korean teachers, sometimes it's okay for them to just let students study for a few minutes and then play. Or give them the entire class to practice a roleplay. Basically all these things that are super low-demand on the teacher's energy.

Not like every time. Even the hardest working Korean teachers do that sometimes. Like, that's a normal thing that teachers do everywhere. Even in western countries. Sometimes students and teachers just need a nice, low-maintenance relaxing class period without a lot of structure.

But if a native teacher does that? Clearly not diligent and just wants to avoid making material.

Holy shit this.

God yes, so with you on that #basedcowboyshirt.

Mid terms are next week and this week is full of interruptions like field trips, sports day etc so I thought I'd ease the workload on myself a little bit and let the students use my classes as self study time.  Everyone wins.

Also, just in case Pecan jumps on me for not "fulfilling my contractual obligations", let's remember that for the past three years I've done 100% of all the planning and teaching with no help from anyone.  So I feel like having a few days of self study classes isn't the end of the world.

When I told my CT that the students can just self study, she looked at me like I'd just set fire to the Korean flag in front of her.  She was genuinely stunned at my proposal.

"I think it's better if you prepare something for the class". 

Yea, thanks mate 

Not really a rant, but it kind of grinds my gears how native teachers are expected to always have an organized, educational, and fun class for every single class, but for Korean teachers, sometimes it's okay for them to just let students study for a few minutes and then play. Or give them the entire class to practice a roleplay. Basically all these things that are super low-demand on the teacher's energy.

Not like every time. Even the hardest working Korean teachers do that sometimes. Like, that's a normal thing that teachers do everywhere. Even in western countries. Sometimes students and teachers just need a nice, low-maintenance relaxing class period without a lot of structure.

But if a native teacher does that? Clearly not diligent and just wants to avoid making material.

Holy shit this.

God yes, so with you on that #basedcowboyshirt.

Mid terms are next week and this week is full of interruptions like field trips, sports day etc so I thought I'd ease the workload on myself a little bit and let the students use my classes as self study time.  Everyone wins.

Also, just in case Pecan jumps on me for not "fulfilling my contractual obligations", let's remember that for the past three years I've done 100% of all the planning and teaching with no help from anyone.  So I feel like having a few days of self study classes isn't the end of the world.

When I told my CT that the students can just self study, she looked at me like I'd just set fire to the Korean flag in front of her.  She was genuinely stunned at my proposal.

"I think it's better if you prepare something for the class". 

Yea, thanks mate 

Walk through the school one day and peak into the K-classes. I swear to god, each class has a video playing or the kids are crawling all over the desks/running around like monsters. Coming from a hagwon, I've never seen such a shit show before. For you to want to have a study day isn't some huge problem. The Korean teachers get paid when they do it.

There are also days when I'm just having the sad time feelies and can't be a SHINY HAPPY PERSON.

Huh?

Being kind, polite, professional, etc. doesn't take that much effort.

Mood swings aren't "normal" unless one has some sort of condition.

Perhaps I am not following your meaning, but I certainly don't agree that it is ever appropriate to let your "sad time feelies" get in the way of fulfilling your professional obligations.

This gig is pretty easy.

Have you ever thought about seeing someone about your condition?

There are also days when I'm just having the sad time feelies and can't be a SHINY HAPPY PERSON.

Huh?

Being kind, polite, professional, etc. doesn't take that much effort.

Mood swings aren't "normal" unless one has some sort of condition.

Perhaps I am not following your meaning, but I certainly don't agree that it is ever appropriate to let your "sad time feelies" get in the way of fulfilling your professional obligations.

This gig is pretty easy.

Have you ever thought about seeing someone about your condition?

Yeah, I didn't pick up "mood swings" from that post either. There does seem to be an expectation of the foreign teacher to have to constantly be a goddamn ray of sunshine. For example, this week I have had a severe sinus thing going on, which created a migraine like headache, nausea and vomiting. I was ill and not getting much sleep. I went to school, smiled, was polite etc, BUT instead of doing my run around jumping happy unicorn activities, I had to tone those down to word searches and other quieter, calmer activities. Would I have loved to be able to just show a movie during classes. DAMN STRAIGHT.

There are a multitude of situational factors that without a doubt will affect someone's mood and affect, also energy levels. I am a high energy teacher, but I have my days, this is completely normal. Also.. I don't know.. LIFE happens to some of us which may affect the amount of upbeat positive energy one might bring top the classroom. Not everyday is a farting rainbow unicorn day.

@Pecan - Empathy- it's a thing. Changes in affect- that's a thing too.  I also think that if perhaps, just for a second you were to climb down off your pedestal, you may see the world quite differently. Perhaps you may think you are the same upbeat teacher EVERY SINGLE DAY and that you never bring "emotional baggage" or "feelies" to school, I can assure you that you probably do, I would ask others around you. Perhaps you have not been able to see that in yourself.

Sometimes it is difficult to acknowledge and empathise with others when one fails to acknowledge the same in ourselves. Or you just struggle with empathy, which you may want to work on, I have people in my life that struggle with the socially awkward situation too, they normally ask more questions before putting out rash statements, they have had to learn to do this though, you can too. Perhaps someone can help you with your condition.

That's not a fair comparison. There's no way to discover what their life span would have been if they died of natural causes. Today's Americans have modern medicine, and no natural predators (besides each other). And we have the technology and available information to measure the average lifespan of just those who live long enough to die of natural causes.

It would have been EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALWAYS, since human genetic lifespan has not changed. Looking at life expectancy as a proxy for health is moronic, every noob suggests doing it, because it is the first thing that jumps into their brain.

Sugar, grain oil, and white flour are not human foods. Vegetarians think they are. That's why vegetarianism fails. Simple, done.

Going to stick up for peeks because I feel like he might just be really awkward. It looks like just
a misunderstanding. Calm down people 


Barring a death, sickness, huge problems at home or something else justified - we should be able to maintain a professional face and polite/pleasant attitude or as we Brits say "Stiff upper lip"

 I think in this case the OP was talking about the difference between being professional/normal and having to be super happy which is a bit different.

My rant.


**** YOU THERESA MAY. You gangly C**t.

There is no way I would ever vote for the tories with her in the lead. It's a sneaky power move because Labour are a shambles. 

Thanks Kobayashi.

Though I've been in Korea far too long, I've always been socially awkward (no shame here).

I mentioned "Perhaps I am not following your meaning" but it sounds like you and cowboy are better able to "read between the lines" and follow her meaning.

I don't know what the "sad time feelies" are describing, but simply stated that it isn't acceptable to bring one's emotional baggage to school.

Leave that mess at home, where it belongs.

Well, as the originator of the sad time feelies (kind of thought wording it like that would dispel any notion that I was showing up and playing all parts of a telenovela but  ), there's a lot I could say. But other sensible people have already piped up so I will land on feeling intensely sorry for you, my dude.

Also, who says 'noob'?

 

#burn

That's not a fair comparison. There's no way to discover what their life span would have been if they died of natural causes. Today's Americans have modern medicine, and no natural predators (besides each other). And we have the technology and available information to measure the average lifespan of just those who live long enough to die of natural causes.

It would have been EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALWAYS, since human genetic lifespan has not changed. Looking at life expectancy as a proxy for health is moronic, every noob suggests doing it, because it is the first thing that jumps into their brain.

Sugar, grain oil, and white flour are not human foods. Vegetarians think they are. That's why vegetarianism fails. Simple, done.

Noobs like the WHO.

Going to stick up for peeks because I feel like he might just be really awkward. It looks like just
a misunderstanding. Calm down people 


Barring a death, sickness, huge problems at home or something else justified - we should be able to maintain a professional face and polite/pleasant attitude or as we Brits say "Stiff upper lip"

 I think in this case the OP was talking about the difference between being professional/normal and having to be super happy which is a bit different.

I would have accepted awkward but for the "Have you ever thought about seeing someone about your condition?"

Also LOL at "beef with vegetarians"

Also, I sometimes say 'noobs'. But I am quite a bit older than most.

That's not a fair comparison. There's no way to discover what their life span would have been if they died of natural causes. Today's Americans have modern medicine, and no natural predators (besides each other). And we have the technology and available information to measure the average lifespan of just those who live long enough to die of natural causes.

It would have been EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALWAYS, since human genetic lifespan has not changed. Looking at life expectancy as a proxy for health is moronic, every noob suggests doing it, because it is the first thing that jumps into their brain.

Sugar, grain oil, and white flour are not human foods. Vegetarians think they are. That's why vegetarianism fails. Simple, done.

Noobs like the WHO.

Personally I'm not very educated on life expectancy...

But isn't a large part of the reason why life expectancy has gone up due to the fact that we have just gotten better at keeping people alive as opposed to creating healthier individuals? Sounds like we are really good at keeping people from the brink of death but not far away from it.

My rant.


**** YOU THERESA MAY. You gangly C**t.

Rant break: I love that in Britain that's not the mother of all terrible, misogynist words, and is used regardless of gender.

Did you have to call her gangly though?

Rant on.

That's not a fair comparison. There's no way to discover what their life span would have been if they died of natural causes. Today's Americans have modern medicine, and no natural predators (besides each other). And we have the technology and available information to measure the average lifespan of just those who live long enough to die of natural causes.

It would have been EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALWAYS, since human genetic lifespan has not changed. Looking at life expectancy as a proxy for health is moronic, every noob suggests doing it, because it is the first thing that jumps into their brain.

Sugar, grain oil, and white flour are not human foods. Vegetarians think they are. That's why vegetarianism fails. Simple, done.

Noobs like the WHO.

Personally I'm not very educated on life expectancy...

But isn't a large part of the reason why life expectancy has gone up due to the fact that we have just gotten better at keeping people alive as opposed to creating healthier individuals? Sounds like we are really good at keeping people from the brink of death but not far away from it.

Here's an interesting quote from the writer of the new book An American Sickness, Dr Elisabeth Rosenthal.

"We've trusted a lot of our health care to for-profit businesses and it's their job, frankly, to make profit," Rosenthal says. "You can't expect them to act like Mother Teresas."

"One expert in the book joked to me ... that if we relied on the current medical market to deal with polio, we would never have a polio vaccine," Rosenthal says. "Instead we would have iron lungs in seven colors with iPhone apps."

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/10/523005353/how-u-s-health-care-became-big-business

It's important to note, however, that flour was introduced long before the polio vaccine, so this quote has no bearing on that debate.

Dang, you love arguing, huh?

What I do is analysis.

What you guys do is arguing from a position of not knowing what you are talking about, with someone who does.

Personally I'm not very educated on life expectancy...

But isn't a large part of the reason why life expectancy has gone up due to the fact that we have just gotten better at keeping people alive as opposed to creating healthier individuals? Sounds like we are really good at keeping people from the brink of death but not far away from it.

Correct.

The USA is a corporation, the above maximizes profit. And it's why life span has nothing to do with health. The formula is to sell sugar and white flour, simultaneously with statins and antidepressants, and make a killing (literally).

That's not a fair comparison. There's no way to discover what their life span would have been if they died of natural causes. Today's Americans have modern medicine, and no natural predators (besides each other). And we have the technology and available information to measure the average lifespan of just those who live long enough to die of natural causes.

It would have been EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALWAYS, since human genetic lifespan has not changed. Looking at life expectancy as a proxy for health is moronic, every noob suggests doing it, because it is the first thing that jumps into their brain.

Sugar, grain oil, and white flour are not human foods. Vegetarians think they are. That's why vegetarianism fails. Simple, done.

That's because health is a more or less undefined parameter defined by the individual using it.

There is no limit to human lifespan. We are machines. Fix the machine over and over and it keeps going. Ageing results from the failure of these repair processes.

Diet along with many other things plays into the bodies ability to continue repairing itself. So if we define health as the ability to maintain life's processes then yeah, life expectancy works as a good proxy.

If you try and use some other definition of health then no it wouldn't be.

I won't argue with you on the foods or veganism. However, you are falling into the natural fallacy. Just because something is from nature doesn't make it good. Similarly, just because something is derived from human ingenuity doesn't make it bad.

Good or bad are objective standards wrt human health (the ability to keep living). The source of the substance in question is irrelevant.

I can't seem to work up the motivation to read through what's been posted since the last time I looked. I'm sure I'll be missing some fun as a result, but I'm just too lazy today.

My rant: I make all of my own materials with the exception of some ppt games I download from here from time to time.

But I've realized today that some of the teachers here think that I don't do anything BECAUSE of the ppt games I sometimes use. The way they see it, if I'm not the one making ALL of the materials that I use for every single goddamn class, then I'm clearly not doing much of anything.

The fact that everything but the occassional bomb game was made by me seems to escape them (seriously, about 98% of the stuff I use is original material created by me). And even if I didn't, most of the stuff that I could and would use from here still requires a lot of prep and editing.

SO OF COURSE NOW IMMA HAVE TO MAKE A FEW BOMB GAMES JUST TO SHUT THOSE GANGLY CUNTS UP (thx Penny)

I don't like making bomb games from scratch because decent ones take up so much time to slap together.

I might cheat a little and use someone else's bomb game as a template and just add slides / change out files, though. sunuvabitch

It would have been EXACTLY THE SAME AS ALWAYS, since human genetic lifespan has not changed. Looking at life expectancy as a proxy for health is moronic, every noob suggests doing it, because it is the first thing that jumps into their brain.

Mostly because there are loads and loads of stats to draw from, while there aren't too many general health surveys out there.

   As for folk from the palaeolithic era being healthier... actually I feel that that's a no brainer. Of course they were 'healthier'.

 Lack of hygiene and medicine would cause most individuals to die pretty quick from minor infections and illnesses. They didn't linger, and would spend far less time in a state of unhealthiness before kicking the not-yet-invented-bucket. Not to mention that resource scarcity, predation, and intense competition would quickly weed out the less than fit.

   Also, as humans tended to be fairly scattered, and there was no animal husbandry, major diseases did not have the opportunity to develop and spread (most human adapted viral endemics were originally viruses that pathogenized other species).

   Still, healthy or not, I would much rather be alive now than any previous time in human history. 

What I do is analysis.

What are you analyzing?

No,no. Anal-yzing.