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Extra Teaching at the College of Water Resources
Tuesday, April 19, 2005-2:01 PM
In order to defray some of the costs of the May 1st trip to Tibet, I've taken on some extra teaching at a local college. I can use the money, but some of the arrangements are turning out to be a hassle.
I was recruited for this job by Adam, a guy whose excellent English amazingly fails to compensate for his unparalleled ability to irritate people. Even over a short phone conversation he comes across loud and clear as someone who is out for a quick buck and isn't even willing to do very much to earn it.
He schedules meetings and gives teaching assignments at the last minutes, uses other teachers as messengers and couriers to deliver information and documents to each other, and even fails to show up for appointments.
On Sunday I received a typical phone call from him. He wanted to remind me that I was supposed to teach the next day.
The problem was that he was mistaken.
I explained to him that it was a different foreign teacher, Peter, who was scheduled to teach the next day. After I made it clear to him who was teaching, he tried to shove more teaching hours on me.
In fact I wanted the extra money. It was solely on account of his behavior that I refused to teach.
The school itself is a little below average in terms of the support and resources they allocate for the foreign teachers. I teach six or so classes but only see each class once every two weeks for two hours. This year the students will have a total of about eight hours of instruction from a foreign teacher.
It's hard to see the benefit of such a miniscule amount of instruction. I guess I think it's better than nothing. But just barely.
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