Teaching Workshop, Day One

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO REMEMBERED AND GREETED ME! ♥♥♥♥

See some of you guys on Saturday? :3

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So~ dragged myself out of bed at 6:00 AM today because of a required workshop on how to teach Literature 13: Introduction to Fiction -- it's one of the basic classes that all freshmen are required to take up in Ateneo. Suffice to say, it was VERY helpful and EXTREMELY enlightening, but I am still going to flail over the course syllabus and possibly fumble my way through my first semester.

Quotes of the day include:

"A short story is a one-night stand. A novel is longer and thicker and therefore more pleasurable -- hence, it's a long-term commitment."

"How do you teach your students? BY HOLDING THEM BY THE NECK -- but not too tightly."

I won't say who said these because this entry's public. 8D

Other highlights include smoking with my future smoket buddies in the Eng Dept, being appropriated for several in-department jobs that may lead to other career possibilities in the future and realizing that a lot of the part-time/new faculty share many, many similar interests of mine (read: video games, animu, sci-fi & fantasy works). The only "bad" thing that happened was my crazy older brother stepping on my space again.

...Let me quantify that statement. Some of you know this already, but he's taking up English Language and Literature Training under the English Department. It's technically not the same course as mine, so you'd think that we wouldn't really run into each other too much, right? Well, it turns out that he is "required" to take nine units, and "required" to take a free elective. Since he can't take undergraduate classes as electives, he ended up picking Lit 202, which is one of my required courses.

No worries. We are not classmates, at the expense of me changing my schedule (aka, compromising on his behalf yet again) and taking up Development of Fiction instead. That delays my taking up a class that I might very well need when it comes to research for a whole year.

He couldn't understand why this bothered me that much, and had the gall to tell me to chill and not be so uptight. "Don't sacrifice your future because of me", he even muttered. I felt like ripping his face off right then and right there in the Eng Dept. See, with Paolo, much of the things he says can be unreliable because he's kinda slow and usually doesn't think up of alternatives when it comes to this sort of stuff, so for all I know, he's bungling around when there are actually ways that would allow the two of us to get what we both want without either of us compromising anything. For example: he could easily decide to NOT TAKE NINE UNITS ALL IN ONE GO AND THEREFORE NOT NEED TO TAKE AN ELECTIVE NOW, THEREFORE NOT TAKING UP MY SLOT IN LIT 202, WHICH IS A REQUIRED CLASS FOR ME.

Let me remind you all that this brother of mine has not been in school for nearly a decade. He also has anxiety problems and difficulty handling pressure. Now he's setting himself up to choke on 9 grad-level units in a single day, because that's how the schedule's lined up.

That leads me into a whole new rant, but srsly: it's my birthday. I don't need any more bullshit.

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My second and last teaching workshop is tomorrow -- I've learned my lesson today, and will sleep earlier (NO REALLY I WILL) so that I can survive it a little better. I also need to register for my classes, if it's possible to do so.