I am alive

Apr. 18th, 2011 06:04 pm
saffiter: (Don't Panic Mutt)
Just currently swamped beyond belief with Uni work!

I must've looked so bad on Thursday that my boss asked me if I wanted a long weekend to try and catch up on my work. I said yes and got today off. Have made a fair dent in my work, but there's still a lot to do by Thursday this week.

(And I will admit that I did sleep in until midday today, since I haven't got much sleep all weekend and have been getting to bed at 2am only to get up at 8:30am to keep going).

Back at work tomorrow, but it's only a short week (thank god!). We don't work Friday 'cause of Easter and then we get a long, long weekend with Monday and Tuesday off. Thursday night I'm going to put a sign on my door that says something like "If you're waking me up, you'd better have caffiene or else!"

Some student antics to tide you over until I can post again. Was teaching the difference between "Can I?" and "May I?". Queue the next day:

Antics #1

Leonardo: Can I leave the room please?
Rest of class all at once in a sing-song: May I!
Leonardo:.... Sorry, sorry. May leave the room, please?

(Leonardo also introduced himself to me with this: "I'm Leonardo, like the turtle!" *starts humming the theme song to the old school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*)

Antics #2

We'd been doing expressions to do with body parts a week or so ago. Andres asked me how much my dictionary had cost me as he wanted to buy one himself. When I told him the price he didn't miss a beat and fired back with: Jesus! You paid through the nose for it!

I was so proud!

Flyby post

Mar. 18th, 2011 12:08 am
saffiter: (Herger too early for this shit)
So, had some excitement last week. I was in class discussing something with my students (grammar, I think. It wasn't exactly memorable) when, suddenly, over the PA system I didn't even realised existed came this:

*whoopwhoop*"A fire alarm has been activated. Please wait for further instructions................*whoopwhoop*A fire alarm has been activated. Please wait for further instructions" *continuous loop*

Students: O.o o.O O.O
Me: Um.......*wanders over to the window to check for smoke*... well, I can't see anything. Everybody just relax, it's probably just a drill.
Students: A what?
Me: Practice for a real fire.... Just let me ask my boss if he knows anything.

I then walk to my door and poke my head around it just in time for my boss to come tearing out of his classroom with this panicked look on his face.

Okay...drill theory just went out the window.

He tells me to keep the students calm (something he was failing to do for himself) and he'd go find out what was going on. I head back into the classroom and proceed to lie my head off to the students "Don't worry guys. I can't see anything. It's probably just a random drill so we know what to do in a *real* emergency" I then get them to continue with the speaking activity while I go and rescue my handbag and textbooks from the teachers office in case we have to evacuate.

...what? They're at least $70 each. I've got about 5 of them, and one of them cost me $105! I wasn't letting them burn!

I put everything on my desk and put the books in a pile for easy pick-up. I re-assure my students (again) that it's probably just a drill since I couldn't see any smoke, but I was just grabbing my stuff anyway 'cause that's what I'd do in a real emergency.

Queue the boss poking his head around my door and asking to see me for a second.

Boss: Well, they don't know what's happening upstairs. There wasn't a schedualed drill today, so....if the siren changes to this constant 'Whooooooooop' noise get you students to go down the stairs in an orderly line and meet at the evacuation point. Don't forget to take your roll with you.

Um... nobody's told me where the evacuation point is!

Not 30 seconds after he finished that, the siren switches to the *Whoooooooooooooop* noise with this Please evacuate now thing. (Polite evactuation things. Who'da thunk it).

Boss goes white.

Long story short, we get out of the building to see fire engines parked outside with flashing lights (advantage to being literally 'round the corner to the Fire Station. They get to you fast) and Firemen in full get-up running around. I get directed to the evacuation point and attempt to keep my students calm and together. I ended up telling them a story about Polish fire drills to stop them from freaking out (Meanwhile I'm freaked out like you wouldn't believe. This thing was no drill!).

Still no sign of fire or smoke at this point, btw.

Long story short, it was a false alarm. The gym below had an installation fail. They were putting some new equipment in and the electritian wired it wrong. It started smoking and they couldn't turn the fire alarm off, hence the evacuation. This was the second time in 3 months that we've had to evacuate...though the last time was an evacuation of the entire city.

I was amused, but pissed at the same time. This was the second time in the last few months that my boss has left the calming of students up to me when we've had to evactuate the building (the last time was during the floods) while he's run around panicking.. Good in an emergency he ain't.
saffiter: (Don't make me slap you Indy)
I was not born yesterday, just so you know. I may be nice in class, I may joke and laugh with you, but I'm not stupid. I trust you about as far as I can throw you when it comes to academia. If your two essays appear to have even a slightly higher level of English than I've seen you utilize (in some limited form) in class, then I am going to run sections of your essays through google. My predecessor may not have done that but I do.

I'm paranoid. Deal with it.

If, by some small chance, I discover that you have been cheating, then I am going to fail you and alert my boss. End of story.

Also, if you're going to copy the entire essay, don't reference the webpage you got it from. I do check references. Trying to throw me off the scent by having two references won't work either if you give the address to a movie review for Shrek.

Also, if the webpage you're referencing has a name like "Online Essays" then I am going to have alarm bells ringing in the back of my head. Checking your essay against the webpage is gonna be the first thing I do before even attempting to mark it.

Sincerely,

Your annoyed, and yet bemused teacher...seriously, I'm a Uni student. You don't think I've never heard whispers of online academic essays? You're lucky this isn't an actual University or your arse would so be expelled!

Translation: I caught 4 of my students plagarising today. Two of them actually put the website they cut and past from in the reference list *headdesk*. If you're going to plagarise, at least make it a bit of a challange for the teacher otherwise we just doubt your actual intelligence.

One of them tried to throw me off the scent... he had two references. I checked the first one...only to find that it was for a review of Shrek...... Seriously, mate, that was so far away from the topic it's not funny. At least try and make sure the reference is related in some way to the essay topic!

I'm kinda curious what the essays that my predecessor marked are like. I'm not going to check, though. It'd take me at least several hours and I just don't have the time for that now that Uni's started back up again... unless they're willing to let me do it during class, give my class to Zac for the day or two it would take me, and pay me for it. I flat out refuse to take all of that home with me, again, to do in my own time.
saffiter: (Default)
So, things are going at the moment. Neither good nor bad. I'm still looking for a job, though my application to McDonalds (I did say no-brainer jobs) is being reviewed. All I want at the moment is employment. Once I get a job and am in a position where there's steady money coming in every fortnight then I can start looking for something better, but at the moment, if all I can get is a job at Maccas, I'll take the job at Maccas.

Uni is driving me slowly insane! One week I get what the linguistics course is talking about and the next I have absolutely no idea what just happened. I actually enjoy the semantics side of it though, go figure *laughs* The TESOL course is slow going. Interesting but I'm wondering when the lecturer is actually going to come to the point. We just seem to be meandering from topic to topic and the only real thing holding this together with some sort of cohesion is the Critical part of the course.

I swear, if it weren't compulsory, I wouldn't be doing this course.

I have an exam next week for linguistics... crappitycrappitycrappitycrap! I'm still not sure about half the stuff they've been talking about! I tried reading some of that Grammar Survey thing today (which the tutor said would help....HAH!) and it made only a tiny bit more sense then the lecture does.

Crap.

In other news I got a random compliment on a T-Shirt I was wearing yesterday (Purple G1 Megatron) from a guy on the train.

Also my ling6100 class is full of nutballs. I fit right in. Tutor one day says "If I were a rich man..." when she was giving an example of something, I can't remember what it was, the other day. The entire back row (myself included in this) starts singing the next line from Fiddler on the Roof at the same time.

Nothing else much is happening at the moment. Weather's being screwy, hot, cold, hot, cold. Last night was cold. I slept with leg warmers on last night.

Profile

saffiter: (Default)
saffiter

January 2012

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718 192021
22232425262728
293031    

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 28th, 2025 12:44 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios