Snape

This teacher I have is like Snape. Not because he’s mean or anything, but because I can’t decide whether he’s good or bad.

He is a good teacher. What he teaches is boring, but they are things that we have to know as future high-school teachers. His experience and knowledge of the field are remarkable. We also can send him our assignments by e-mail, which saves a lot of paper. Awesome.

But he makes a LOT of French mistakes in his notes. I understand that he’s not a French teacher (he specializes in economics) and I would be (almost) fine with that, but he penalises us in our assignments for mistakes that aren’t even mistakes. I originally got 13.5/15 in the first one because I had supposedly made 3 mistakes. Two of them were obviously not mistakes, and the third, I admit that I’m not sure. I did some research since then and I only found part of the answer, so it could go both ways, I believe, depending on what the writer (ME) wanted to say. So I went up to him and said that at least two of the mistakes were definitely not mistakes (« Doesn’t tout à fait take hyphens? » he asked. « No…! ») and he was cool with it, saying he would revise it and send me an e-mail. He did, and quickly so. He left my 3rd mistake there and gave me 14.5/15. Mixed feelings. Good because he did revise my mistakes and give me the points I deserved, but bad because he has no authority to tell me that the 3rd mistake was a mistake.

Now I just got the result of this week’s assignment, which was in teams this time (that means 5 French teachers revising it), and we lost 0.5/15 because of another mistake that isn’t a mistake. WTF?

He seems to remove points just like that, because he feels there’s a mistake there, without even checking. Dude, dictionnaries and grammar books exist! There are even online ones now, so the answers are right there before your eyes! You would save yourself a lot of work (no need to read each assignment twice to re-correct the mistakes), and you would save your students a lot of frustration.

Seriously. It’s like he would write me a paper about economics and I would tell him that he got his facts wrong. I know nothing about economics. And, according to his notes, he lacks some knowledge of the French language. Don’t correct me if you can’t even correct yourself! Isn’t that just common sense?

Now I don’t want to go see him again because of it, but maybe someone else in the team will. How many points like that are lost by the other, non-French teachers of the class, or even those who just don’t bother asking him to revise? He has to realise that we’re university students here, we are adults, we PAY for this class.

Also, did I mention that he copied/pasted something off of Wikipedia in the notes, WITHOUT mention of the reference? That’s like two rules that he broke right there : 1) never use Wikipedia in university works, and 2) always give the reference of whatever you use.

Still, however how bad this is, I just can’t hate him. He’s a sweet guy. He gave us some little bottles of desinfectant, leftovers of an event he went at last weekend. Isn’t that cute? (Actually he told us he didn’t want all those bottles to lie in his house, but still, he could have given them to anyone else.)

Grandma Longbottom

I wanted to tweet that but my next tweet will be the 666th and I want to make it badass. So I’m writing this on my blog instead.

If you don’t know already, at Infinitus there will be « The Final Battle », a musical based on the last 200 pages of Deathly Hallows. They’ve just announced the cast list, and Melissa Anelli will be in it. Playing Grandma Longbottom. Guess who will play Dawlish? John Noe. I’m laughing already.

Of couse they got chosen because of who they are and not because they’re more talented than others and that may be a bit unfair, but that will still be incredibly funny to watch. I even think that the parts have been written just for them (based on some Twitter convos, heh). So if you’re still undecided for Infinitus – yes, I’m looking at you, dear roommates – that should make another thing to consider. You really want to miss it?

Awesome Average Day

Yesterday I had, again, a day that went both badly and greatly. The special thing about it was that I was really split in two. The first part of the day was total crap, the the second half was kind of awesome.

I was starting to work at 10:30, so I had a few minutes to spare in the morning. After I only had to bush my teeth to be ready to go, I went on my PC for a few minutes. I don’t like brushing my teeth right after eating, it makes the taste of the food go away. Anyways. Before I could go brush my teeth, my roommate went to take a shower, obviously in the bathroom, where my toothbrush and toothpaste was. I usually remember to take them out of the bathroom, raah. It isn’t a big deal, really, but it just didn’t start the day too well.

Because I had to find some toothpaste lying somewhere in my bedroom and brush my teeth with my finger, I was a little late. I walked, trying to remember to go a little faster, but failed. I missed the metro by about 45 seconds. I saw the doors close as I was up the stairs. Because it’s the weekend, the service is a bit slow, so it would take a few minutes before the other one came. I decided to sit and tell Twitter that I had finally found some toothpaste. I played a little with my phone, and then the metro arrived, I got up, embarked, and then realised that I didn’t have my cellphone pouch which also contained my phone’s stylus. I turned around and, as the doors closed before me, I saw it there, lying on the floor. Too late. I only had two stations to go before I changed lines (about 3 minutes), so I waited to get there and hoped that the guy at the station would be friendly enough to help me. I was risking being late to work, but I didn’t really care. I got lucky, the guy was nice and called the other station to have them look if they had it. I had to wait for a bit, and then they called back. They didn’t have it. Insert cursing word here.

I still managed to thank the guy and to get to work on time. I even got there a little early, actually, which was surprising. I went to get my student’s file… it wasn’t there. I looked into the whole binder, because the schedules weren’t the same as last week, and I couldn’t find it. Then it was the time to start, and I didn’t have the file, so I chose a random reading exercise (because those take longer to do) and made him do that while I went looking for his file. It wasn’t hard to find, and it was probably me who had forgotten to put it back in the binder last week, but it was still frustrating.

Work went well with my student, and then I had an hour for lunch. I went to get a sandwich at subway and asked for italian white bread, ham and cheddar cheese, and I forgot to say that I wanted it grilled, and the girl was ignoring me or something, so I had to wait a little longer and let the next client go on before me. The bread wasn’t italian white. I didn’t dislike it, but still, it wasn’t what I had asked. While I was eating, I decided to call my mum to vent all that had happened by then, but my brother picked up instead. My mum’s cousin was visiting, so I figured it wasn’t a good timing. I was going there for dinner anyways… I went back to work, and my boss told me I would be working an extra hour starting next week, cause a new student had just registered. Yay? NOT. My other boss talked to me a little later about that new student: he doesn’t speak either French or English and apparently he’s a little bit rebellious. And I’m having him at the same time as another student who doesn’t want to do anything. Well, that’s just GREAT. Then I went to teach to that one who has an attitude problem and to his brother (who is very nice).

Back on the metro, to the bus station, I saw that I had a good 10 minutes before my bus left, so I decided to go buy some more tickets since I only had one left. You may remember that I was having trouble to get the student fare on my card a few months ago. I had gone to the service center and had gotten it fixed, but apparently, the student fare is STILL unavailable this month. It seems like I will have a big trip to make to the service center: see if they found my cellphone pouch, and get this FIXED once and for all.

Then I got on the bus, and the Backstreet Boys were playing. Old-school Backstreet Boys, « Quit Playing Games (With My Heart) ». Cool.

When I got at my mum’s, I ran to the computer to watch « Helping Haiti Heal » an online « telethon » to… well, help Haiti. When I got there it was the PotterCast people with Andrew Slack, I think (the sound was weird and I got there in the middle of everything so I was confused). Then it changed to Jason Munday and Luke Conard of Ministry of Magic and Alex Carpenter of the Remus Lupins, who first played a MoM song, Accio Love (which I LOVE), then Looking For Trouble from TRL, and then a song from their other band, the Oceanic Six (about Lost), called Mr. Eko. And then Hank Green came on, and it suddenly got very, very crazy. I think he was on for about 30 minutes and they’ve raised more than $5,000 during that time. He got the #hhh hashtag on the Trending Topics of Twitter. I personally don’t know how many tweets I made with the #hhh tag. All I know is that the night before I saw that I was close to 600 tweets, but not quite there yet, and by the end of the day I had 649. I’m sort of glad that the Twitter system didn’t kick me out for spamming. Then, PotterCast came on again, and they called Evanna Lynch. EVANNA LYNCH. She’s so sweet! I love her even more. She said she was going to go on the set and see if she could get either a book or a DVD signed by the cast to give to the people who donate. Also, people in the chat suggested that she made a pair of raddish earrings, and she responded: « oh, yeah! sure! » like it was nothing at all. And then the call dropped and they called Darren Criss, from A Very Potter Musical! I suspect that the live stream chat was used mostly by younger girls, because the reaction when he came on was almost crazier than the one that Evanna got. So they asked Darren if he could give something to the people who donate, and he’s going to record a version of Harry (the song) but with the person’s name instead of Harry’s. Then he left and Evanna Lynch came back, and then they added Matt Lewis. MATT LEWIS. AT THE SAME TIME as Evanna Lynch! They had an interesting discussion about Twitter, to which Matt said he had the most boring tweets of all of Twitter, and Evanna said she didn’t want to get Twitter, because she would always be tweeting about the movie set and then she would get in trouble. To which I thought (and I think the PotterCasters said the same): « GET. TWITTER. NOW. » That was so great! Unfortunately, I had to eat dinner at some point (I was at my mum’s for that, after all, lol), so I missed the rest of the call. My mum’s cousin had made her delicious broccoli cream soup. When I came back, they had just left Evanna and Matt (whose phone died, apparently, heh) and were wrapping up. It ended with Harry and the Potters singing « Save Ginny Weasley » and another song that I can’t remember.

By the end of the show, which had lasted for around 6 hours, they had raised $32,000 for Haiti. That is amazing. And that, alone, couldn’t make me feel angry about that bad day anymore.

And it certainly helped that the Canadiens crushed the Rangers 6-0. Oh, and there was chocolate cake and pudding, too.

Crazy Day

Ok, this isn’t an « average » day because neither of those are good or bad things. It’s just some crazy stuff I’ve witnessed, all in about 30 minutes yesterday.

I was going to the bus station to go at my mum’s and a lot of little things happened, all on the way there. First, just as I step out of the door to the balcony, I see a guy with an enormous pink chalk who’s writing something on the sidewalk with it. He had finished by the time I had locked the door: « POTENTIEL », which means, as you may have guessed, « potential ». I kept wondering, as I was walking, what was the meaning of that. If the sidewalk had been cracked and old, I’d have guessed that he was from the city people and marking a « potential » place where to rebuild the sidewalk. But our street was completely re-buillt last summer, so the sidewalk is brand new. So I had to think of crazier theories, like he was a very bad theft and marked the « potential » houses that he wanted to rob before he actually did them, so he doesn’t enter the wrong one when he comes back. But it doesn’t work either, since  a) that would be VERY stupid, and b) he went back inside the house after he finished writing, so I think he might live there (and robbing yourself isn’t really the most brilliant idea).

I was pondering that when I saw this guy riding to his home casually. Except he was on an unicycle. A freaking unicycle, people. Now I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but people who ride BIcycles in January are fairly rare here, because it’s dirty and wet everywhere. This guy was on an UNIcycle. I still can’t believe it.

Then I went to cross a street and I almost got ran over by a car. I hate that cross because it’s like the tip of a triangle with four other streets, so it’s like five places that you need to watch before you cross. I’m always careful, I wait to see if the car has seen me before I cross, or I stay on the sidewalk, because it’s also hard for the car drivers to see if there are any pedestrians. So there’s this car that’s apparently going to turn right on one of the triangle branches (I came from the other), so I cross behind him, thinking I didn’t have to worry because I wasn’t on its way. WRONG. It wasn’t turning right: it was making a U-turn! WTF? And the guy was driving super fast, too. Fortunately, I saw it on time and I walked/ran a bit faster to reach the other side.

I think there was also something else in the metro, but I can’t remember what it was, so it was probably not that crazy. At this point, I was looking everywhere to see if there was something to watch. Like the whole world had only me to entertain.

So, when you want to get to the bus station from the metro, you have to pass some revolving doors. There are two revolving doors and a « normal », automatic door, but I’ve tried that one once and looked like an idiot because it didn’t open when I approached it. I never tried it again, but I often saw some other people try it and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. I never took the chance and always used the revolving doors. Yesterday, one of the revolving doors was condemned with yellow « ATTENTION » (« warning ») tape everywhere on it. It was so obvious that I immediately saw it from a distance. Apparently it wasn’t clear enough, because there was this old man, standing in front of the door, completely clueless. I saw him bend down a little to read more closely what was written on the yellow tape. Seriously. As he was doing that, people were walking right past him, using the functional revolving door. But no, instead of going with the flow, he went to the flat, automatic door and tried to open it. It didn’t work. THEN, he finally realised that at least 50 people had gone through the other revolving door while he was trying to figure out how to get to the other side of those doors, and got through a little bit after me. May I add that all those doors are made of transparent glass, so he definitely could see the people on the OTHER side that had been on HIS side a moment before. Poor guy.

Suite Scarlett

I’m currently reading Suite Scarlett, by Maureen Johnson, and the main character is a 15-year-old girl who has a story with a guy around 19 who is a friend of her brother.

I was going to write on Twitter about that, that I’d love to be 15 again to get something with an older-guy-friend-of-her-brother, but then I realised that it actually sort-of happened. Oops.

Oh, what a tragic life I’ve lived. Hm.

Oh, Hi.

I was sitting there in front of my PC, taking back my good (bad?) habit of checking Facebook and Twitter until my brain wakes up and urges me to do something more intelligent. It was around 11:30 when it happened a few minutes ago and, even if the thought of going to bed did come, I felt like it was a good timing to update my blog. I neglected it during the Holidays, didn’t I? And the last article was kind of creepy, so I needed to post something else to make it lower on the front page. Ha.

In fact, I just wanted to ramble about a lot of random things.

Because I need to get this over with: yes, I did see the English student teacher yesterday, but not when I thought I would see him. The class we had at the same time in the same corridor was in the morning, but I ran into him when my second class (which is in that corridor too, by the way) ended early. I tried to be cool and asked how were his Holidays, but he changed the subject because he was looking for the washrooms. I didn’t know where they were, unfortunately. But now I guess I know that my two Monday classes are in the same area as his? Oh and the other student teacher (social sciences) who was at the same school as us is in three of my classes this semester. I talked to her a bit yesterday, too. Asked about her holidays.

She told me she had subbed at our school last Thursday, and I did as well. Cool coincidence, though we didn’t see each other. I’m just a bit disappointed because apparently she subbed into an Ethics class, in no relation to her associated teacher, when I’m kind of convinced that I got to do mine only because I was subbing my associated teacher. She must have asked for me to replace her, because I already knew the students and such. I hope they call me back sometime. The thing is that they know I live in Montreal and that I can’t get there in 10 minutes if they need someone really quickly. Though I wouldn’t be able to be there in 10 minutes if I still at my Mum’s, either, because public transport there is bad. I guess I could take the taxi… at the price I’m paid for each period, I could afford it, I think. But still. Apparently, you need 45 credits in the uni program to sub in Montreal, and I only have 44.

In completely unrelated news, I learnt tonight that my brother is getting his car tomorrow! They’d said it wouldn’t be there until mid-February, or late January at the earliest. So that’s cool. I’m going to go get it with him tomorrow night, because I’m excited for him, and I think he’ll like to show it off to me. And it’ll certainly be a pleasure for him to drive me back at my appartment later on. Maybe he’ll let me try it? I haven’t driven since I got my license, though, and that was in August. Oops.

I’m not going to tell you a lot about uni and my classes because that’s boring and I’ll probably end up complaining about them on this blog anyway. I’m just going to say that I think I’m going to enjoy this semester a lot. It seems surprisingly interesting, even if only 2 of my 5 classes are related to French. I’m even more seriously considering to pursue into grad studies. But then I’ll have this big decision of studying in education in general, or in linguistics, or French, or… All of that stuff is just SO interesting!

I think I was going to write something else but I forgot what it was, so I’ll leave it here. It’s already long enough.

A Little Bit Of Stalking

Wow, I haven’t written in a while here. Part of the reason is that my faithful Albus – my laptop – died exactly on its 3rd birthday. I might try to help it live a little longer, but I feel like it’s cursed like, you know, another Albus. Also, I’ve been unusually busy during this holiday season. I’m really glad I chose not to work because I’d probably be just like Albus right now.

In the past few days, I’ve had a little more time on my hands, so I worked on some « Soap Queen duties ». Which basically means that I thought of my (quite non-existent) dating opportunities a lot. Which translates to cyber-stalking some guys I could be interested in.

I wanted to get news from one of my guy-friends for a while now, so I went on his Facebook profile (I know he doesn’t update it though, but it’s the only place he is online) and a girl had posted something like « I love you sweetheart » 3 days ago. Well, I have news now.

Then I went on the profile of the-one-I-haven’t-talked-to-in-six-years-and-who-doesn’t-want-to-add-me-as-a-friend and saw with delight that now his pictures were publicly available. I could see his niece and some people’s wedding. But the rest was still private.

Oh and I went on the profile of the Spanish+English classes guy from last year. Some new pictures were added, probably family parties over the holidays. He’s still sooo good-looking. Wow.

So now my stalking options were more limited. I remembered the English student teacher and how it was sad that I couldn’t find him on Facebook. But before there was Facebook, there was real-life stalking, right? Creepier, but it may be more efficient. I was hoping to run into him at some point this semester, but I remembered that many of my classes were in separate buildings, and anyway the uni is so huge that the chances are slim. But hey, I know what he’s studying. I just have to find which classes he has this semester and when/where they take place and then running into him would be easier. I’m doing my research right now. So far, nothing good. The ESL program isn’t like mine – it’s not written in big letters which students take which classes. And now that I think of it, I’m not entirely sure which year he’s in. Pretty confident it’s the second, but not sure. Oh wait, the second years are supposed to go into primary schools I think, so he was probably in his third year, since he was in a high school. FOUND the list of classes, yay! WAIT! Am I seeing right or we’re going to have a class together?? For real? This is crazy, haha. Wait-whaaat? No way! Turns out I’m not in the same class after all. They must have changed the teacher cause I was sure it was the same. BUT! it’s at the same time, in the room right next to it. Or close, anyway. So I’ll definitely run into him on Mondays. That’s still crazy. Doing all of this was probably crazier though. I hope I didn’t scare anyone with all the creepiness. I’d never actually stalk someone in real life, just so you know. I was just curious. And kind of bored.

And now I’ll go to bed before this gets even more awkward.

Almost Finished

I have 8.5 papers still to mark. I feel like I’m almost finished and that I’ll be on time, but when I think about it, it’s still around 5 hours of work.

Yesterday I discovered that I’m more productive when there’s Backstreet Boys music playing. So this morning I started off with that, and then I realised that I still hadn’t listened to any Christmas music this year, so I tuned in to a radio station that plays Christmas music. It worked too, but I really need a break from marking now. I think I’ll switch back to the BSB for a while.

I also need to eat. I’m hungry. Yesterday, I had a better breakfast, and at a later time, so I just drank V8 all afternoon and I was okay.

Oh and my goal was to mark 10 papers yesterday and 10 today. I only did 8 yesterday. I started earlier today because I knew I had more to do, so I’m only 1.5 paper into what my goal was. I should have kept the best students for last, that would have been more encouraging. I did put one of the papers at the bottom of the pile because I wanted to have a little treat at the end – it’s a good student who is hilarious – but I could have done it with more of them. That’s a thing I’m learning from my field experience, but somehow I don’t think I should write that into my report.

That’s random, but I had my job’s end-of-year dinner this weekend. Parts of it were awkward, some others were great. I got to socialize a bit with some colleagues that I never had the chance to socialize with.

FOOD NOW.

Student Teacher

We are at least five student teachers at the moment in the department I’m in. One of them I’ve only seen once in the staff room. Only one of the others is a guy. An English teacher. He speaks French without an accent (his name is French too) but I kind of discovered that I like bilingualism a lot.

Tonight there was the science expo at the school and the student teachers were volunteering for judging the kids. I ate quickly at home and went back to the school, early enough to get to talk a bit with the other student teachers. The English teacher guy told me he remembered seeing me at the university. I didn’t even know we were going to the same uni, so I have no idea where he could have seen me. The English as a second language and French as teaching language programs are in completely separate departments.

We were free to leave once we had finished marking, but all student teachers decided to stay. The other volunteering teachers had left, so we were the only ones in the staff room at the end. That was kind of funny, like we owned the place. Then we walked to the exit, and I had to wait for my brother to pick me up so I waited outside. The English teacher guy said he’d wait with me, he just had to drop some stuff in his car.

When he came back, he lit a cigarette, and his cellphone rang. When he finished talking, my brother was almost there, so we only got to exchange a few words. He repeated that he thought he’d seen me at the university, or else it was my double. And I said awkwardly that I’d never seen my double at uni, so it must have been me, heh. Then my brother was there and I left.

Sexy: not being tall.

Unsexy: smoking.

« Is Our Other Teacher Coming Back? »

I’m not really going to talk about my experience in this post, so I’m not putting this post on private and I’m writing in English.

Yeah, a kid asked me that randomly today. That was pretty funny, actually.

I don’t feel like writing stuff about my experience at all. This weekend I just forgot to do it (and I didn’t really have time anyway) and today I just don’t feel like it and I’m very tired.

Oh, last night I had dinner with a few friends from university who are also doing their field experience, so we talked A LOT. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel like talking about it again, because I did it too much in the last 24 hours. Because today I had my first supervision with my teacher from uni and I got comments and talked… kind of sick of it at the moment.

I think I’ll go take a short nap before dinner. Needed.