Monday 25 June 2007

The sub-shift....

At least once a week, all ECC teachers have to work as emergency substitutes, covering anyone who's ill or on holiday that day. If no-one's away, you do what's called a base shift, where you go to your base-school and act as the office monkey doing whatever admin they need doing. The standard thing to do is stuff tissues with flyers - if you don't know, the standard Japanese advertising practice is to give out little packets of tissues (about the size of a cassette tape) with a flyer whatever you're hawking in. It's always good to have one about your person, because a fair few of the toilets here don't have toilet paper. Nothing quite like the sweet sweet irony of grumpily waving your hand "no" at half a dozen people handing out tissues and then finding yourself 15 minutes later wondering how absorbent your Starbucks receipt is. Anyway, to keep things interesting, you can also pile up the packets of tissues into different shaped towers and stacks. I'm sure you're already getting a picture of how fun this type of day is, but just to further enlighten you here's a detailed breakdown:

1530 - Arrive at school bright eyed and ready to go, full of baseless and wholly misguided optimism about the tissue sculptures that exist in potentia and what magnificent edifices you'll construct that day.

1535 - Begin stuffing flyers into tissues. Realise that actually, there's not much you can do with them except stack them, or place them next to each other. Enthusiasm runs down a notch.

1600 - Try and combat rising tide of boredom by engaging in conversation with Japanese staff. Achieve moderate success - although very friendly, they are also very busy and often break off mid chat to answer the phone or deal with customers at the front desk. Decide to focus all energies on construction of a wonderful tissue palace.

1630 - First tissue sculpture finished. It is crap. Enthusiasm takes a major slump. Decide to go for toilet break to raise spirits.

1645 - Stuff some more tissues. Consciousness begins to dim and extremities become numb. A second tower takes shape, but it's half hearted at best.

1647 - Despite several hours passing, a look at my watch indicates that only two minutes have gone by. First feelings of anger manifest.

1830 - Utterly bewildered in a sea of effusive Japanese as the efficient ECC machine hits full tilt and staff run around dealing with phone calls, shouting "welcome!!" at students coming in, and generally being very busy. No-one wants to talk to me about the hilarious poo sculptures I saw no matter how loudly I yell. Toilet breaks become a tired necessity rather than the thrilling excursion they once were.

1900 - Sanity is restored when given two lessons to teach of 40 minutes each. Teach the hell out of buying a train ticket, and terrify students with wide eyed zealotry about how trains are late all the time in England. Try and run over by as much as I can, but eventually have to unlock classroom door and allow my weeping charges to leave.

2020 - With only an hour to go, suddenly all energy is restored and shift becomes a joyous and happy time. Stacks of flyer-stuffed tissues are wracked up at a rate of knots. Questions regarding English grammar from Japanese staff are answered fervently and - it's fairly certain - incorrectly. Smiles all round from the sub-teacher!!

2045 - Still forty-five minutes to go!? Bollocks.

2130 - Shift ends. Clock out, walk to the station with the other teachers, discussing day and expounding how - all things considered - it wasn't that bad........

And that, is a subshift. Also, July is hawaiian shirt day, so I have to get some in to wear. You can bet they'll be some pictures of that.....

2 comments:

Mattalica said...

Sounds dreadful... makes academia look that much more appealing in comparison, no?

You missed an excellent opportunity to run a real-life Festinger & Carlsmith replication: "I'll give you 1 yen (vs. 50 yen) to tell the next person that it was fun!"

I'm in NZ now.
-matt

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