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Sunday, December 12, 2004

 

Verily, I Am Fucked

Oh, lord.

So I believe I’ve mentioned before that I’m in a program that fast-tracks “professionals” towards a Masters in Education to get them teaching in New York City’s underperforming public schools. You take classes toward that degree while teaching full time. It’s called New York City Teaching Fellows and I hate it. Okay, that’s an overstatement. I think it’s a good idea. I think it’s extremely poorly executed. I think I’m not cut out to be a teacher. But I can’t quit. I need the job. That’s what I hate.

I’m almost done with the program. I’ve got one more week in this semester and then I’ve got one more semester and then I’ll be done. I can have a nice, spiffy degree that I hope I’ll be able to stop using as soon as possible.

I’m not done yet, though. Therein lies my current problem. My enthusiasm for this program ran out about a week after I joined it. I can’t help it. I just don’t find education interesting. The theories bore the shit out of me. The practical applications I don’t care about because they involve being in a classroom, which is someplace I don’t really like to be.

Because of this complete lack of enthusiasm, I’ve had a harder and harder time as the program goes on—especially this semester—getting myself to do the work. I’ve done pretty much none of the required reading; only the bare essentials to scrape by. Before two days ago, I hadn’t picked up the goddamn syllabus in a month. November was an easy month to pay no attention, because we had a lot of classes canceled or skipped for one reason or another.

So we come to the last week of classes and I find myself with (no exaggeration) six papers to write. I have sat on my fat, hairy ass for almost an entire semester, not caring, doing pretty much none of the work. Now I have seven days to write six papers. While working full time. And decorating for Christmas. Yahoo.

I’m so very, very fucked.

I’ll be honest, this isn’t medical school. This isn’t Harvard. I’m in an essentially half-assed program in a tiny college. It’s not the hardest stuff in the world to do. But it isn’t a cake-walk, either.

I write this to explain why I probably won’t be doing much in the way of creative writing this week. Which is the kind of writing I really, really prefer. In some alternative reality, there is a Joe who is writing screenplays for a living and hating it. That Joe desperately wishes he could do something more meaningful, like teach, but he can’t seem to find a way to get there. Asshole.

Comments:
That other Joe is a total asshole. We should find him and kick his ass. You'll do fine, Joe. You're brilliant.
 
Thanks for the offer, Mrs. G. I'd take you up on it in a second, but these are all, unfortunately, the sort of papers that I have to write myself, as they're meant to contain work from my students and opinions on things we've talked about in class.

I cannot wait until I am through with this stupid fucking program.
 
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