survival

the biggest difference for me, between being a student and being a full-time teacher, is 1) i won't be able to work from home as much as before, and 2) i meet and talk to a lot more people than before. when i was writing my dissertation, between january and july, i went out of my apartment maybe twice a week, sometimes even less, and talked to very very few people. some days i didn't see anyone, sometimes for four or five days in a row. i could stay at my house, in my pj's, ugly and dirty, and no one would care. now, i have to be at work four of five times a week, look professional, pretend to be smart, meet with tons of people that i don't know and whose names i won't remember, try to understand thousands of new things that make no sense to me, and talk talk talk talk talk!

and then i have to walk. the kind of walking that you do when you're a tourist in london or something. but every day. some days are ok, but for some reason, some days are really hard. yesterday was hell, for example, and because i couldn't rest today, i'm still half dead ... 3/4 dead in fact. every bone and every muscle in my body hurts, even my hands.

so basically, i am beyond tired, physically and mentally! how am i going to survive??

little me

here's an example of the kinds of problems i'm facing at my new job:

the department where i now work has been offering some esl courses to the engineering and geography departments (don't get me started on that!) for about 15 years. no full-time person worked there. one person, we'll call her mary, has been working (part-time) as the supervisor of 5 part-time esl teachers for many many years. mary is excellent at her job and the esl teachers have worked well with her. last year, the department has decided to create a full-time esl position that would kind of take care of all this and help the esl section work better (and ultimately become a separate department (don't get me started on that one either!)). many people applied for the position, including me and mary. i got the job. mary didn't and is still employed only part-time by the university. now, mary works "under" me, between me and the 5 esl teachers who, every year, don't know if they'll have a job or not, depending on the number of esl/bilingual students enrolled that year. i'm going to have to supervise 5 teachers without knowing a thing about them, how they work, why they do things the way they do them (and trust me, i don't know if i'll ever understand why they do certain things the way they do!), and to tell them what to do when mary's been doing this very well for many years. i am not confortable at all with this position, to say the least. what am i supposed to do? tell them that everything they do is wrong (after all, that's what i was hired for, right?) and change the whole darn esl program and they'll all hate me? tell them that everything they do is great so that i don't offend anyone and change nothing? how can i become the leader of a tight group of people (definitely much older than me) whose names i don't even know and that's been working so well for so many years? where can i find the authority and how can i become respected?

back from the dead

hi all, i'm back, i couldn't not write about my new job!

ohhh goodness, i have so much to write!

this is going to be a public blog for a few months/weeks and then i'll make it private and i'll give access to only those who want it because it's going to be too hard not to give up any details about my new job and my new life.

for now, i'm going to the vet.

see ya here very soon :)