Met with my mentor earlier today to discuss the feedback. thankfully, no lines were crossed in my interactions with the students. instead, the feedback was about my delivery of the material - the student didn't get the learning points of the class. while it's not the most serious of feedback in terms of magnitude, i still do take it seriously. i'm happy that my mentor approached this with a collaborative mindset, heard my side of the story, and didn't assign blame to anyone. i really have to be more like her when it comes to less-than-pleasant confrontations. and here i thought i'd only be learning teaching skills!
yesterday, i had my first class outside of united square. had to go to century square, which is right next to tampines mall. and guess what? both malls have learning lab branches! guess the demand for tuition is higher than i'd thought. the class i covered yesterday was hands down the best class i've had so far in my 2-ish months with the company. the kids were receptive and engaged, content was something i had confidence in teaching, and it was easy to make the class fun. i realize the teacher's own comfort with the subject material really does affect the standard of teaching. there are 2 ways this information could be followed up on. first, i could request to only teach subjects that i'm comfortable with (ie. no biology). or, i could get comfortable with those subjects. at this point in time, i'm not particularly inclined to option 2, but we'll see if that changes in the future.
i'd also like to introduce you to a word today. i've known the meaning for a while, but never really found a context to use it while blogging. the word is "schadenfreude", pronounced "sha-dehn-froi-duh". it means taking delight in another's misfortune. the closest equivalent in chinese is 幸灾乐祸. i trust you can see why i don't really have use for it while blogging, but something finally happened recently that my feeling towards can't be described by any other word, except maybe "karma". it involves june scumbag, who i shall assign the new codename of 野郎. it's more appropriate, and closer to his actual name, anyway. so what happened is that he got tricked into sending uhh...compromising photos to someone who he apparently wanted to be in a relationship with. disclaimer: this is just what my cursory batman work turned up. i have not looked, and do not intend to look further into this. as with all people i date, i did genuinely want something positive to work out between us. but alas, it wasn't meant to be. actually, no. not alas. more like HENG AH! i went through some matrix-level of bullet-dodging there! can practically imagine myself as neo. best part was that at that time, i didn't realize how big of a bullet i'd dodged. with the benefit of hindsight, i think it was closer to an artillery shell than a plain old bullet. the perfunctory batman work also turned up further inconsistencies in the story that he told me. for instance, i don't think that he's a regular in the SAF. or if he is, he's probably in a non-uniformed role as opposed to the officer that he told me he was. that means the story about having work emergencies were likely to be all lies, and explained his reluctance for me to send him right to the gate of his camp. what annoys me is that there are people out there who are offering him sympathy. if only they knew what he did to deserve this retribution. but that's not my concern.
what he did while we were seeing each other was, in my opinion, wrong. different people have different views on relationships and sex, and that's fine. as long as the couple are in agreement and are both consenting, there's basically no problem to speak of. but when the couple's views are not in alignment (eg. monogamy vs open relationship), that's where problems start. i talked to jedi master about this before, and he said that we shouldn't force others to conform to our own views. for instance, if 野郎 wanted to sleep around while i wanted to remain monogamous, why not have me be monogamous, while letting 野郎 be promiscuous? as long as i had my time with him, it should be ok. while i somewhat see the logic in that argument, i can't really accept it. apart from the emotional insecurity of having a new date sleeping around with others, there's a higher chance of STD acquisition and transmission as opposed to if a couple was monogamous and both free from disease. i just wonder, what would it take for me to agree to that? apart from desperation, of course. there's no attribute that i can think of that would make me swallow my dissatisfaction if such a scenario occurred again with someone else. perhaps that's what they call a hard limit, or a deal breaker. good to know.
on the topic of relationships, i haven't been having much luck. then again, even i'd be impressed with myself if i could find a potential date with my gym-home-gym-home routine. there are some people (well, one guy) at work who i find attractive, but i know better than to try dating in the workplace. although in this case, we're teaching completely different levels and subjects, so...STILL NO. i'm just thinking that if it was a girl that i was interested in, dropping her a note to ask her out for coffee would be so much easier than doing the same for a guy. at least the damage wouldn't be as bad if the offer was rejected and word got out afterwards that the offer was made in the first place. guess i should be looking in more appropriate places, like bars? maybe at certain events? or try getting on the dating apps? maybe when i become super desperate.
that's it for now. hope i haven't written too much here such that tomorrow's post ends up lacking in content. it shouldn't. i might take a page out of chemical engineer cousin's book and rate the different aspects of my year, or not. i will probably recap the major happenings, have a few highlights and lowlights, and round it off. to quote one of the final fantasy game developers, please look forward to it.
yesterday, i had my first class outside of united square. had to go to century square, which is right next to tampines mall. and guess what? both malls have learning lab branches! guess the demand for tuition is higher than i'd thought. the class i covered yesterday was hands down the best class i've had so far in my 2-ish months with the company. the kids were receptive and engaged, content was something i had confidence in teaching, and it was easy to make the class fun. i realize the teacher's own comfort with the subject material really does affect the standard of teaching. there are 2 ways this information could be followed up on. first, i could request to only teach subjects that i'm comfortable with (ie. no biology). or, i could get comfortable with those subjects. at this point in time, i'm not particularly inclined to option 2, but we'll see if that changes in the future.
i'd also like to introduce you to a word today. i've known the meaning for a while, but never really found a context to use it while blogging. the word is "schadenfreude", pronounced "sha-dehn-froi-duh". it means taking delight in another's misfortune. the closest equivalent in chinese is 幸灾乐祸. i trust you can see why i don't really have use for it while blogging, but something finally happened recently that my feeling towards can't be described by any other word, except maybe "karma". it involves june scumbag, who i shall assign the new codename of 野郎. it's more appropriate, and closer to his actual name, anyway. so what happened is that he got tricked into sending uhh...compromising photos to someone who he apparently wanted to be in a relationship with. disclaimer: this is just what my cursory batman work turned up. i have not looked, and do not intend to look further into this. as with all people i date, i did genuinely want something positive to work out between us. but alas, it wasn't meant to be. actually, no. not alas. more like HENG AH! i went through some matrix-level of bullet-dodging there! can practically imagine myself as neo. best part was that at that time, i didn't realize how big of a bullet i'd dodged. with the benefit of hindsight, i think it was closer to an artillery shell than a plain old bullet. the perfunctory batman work also turned up further inconsistencies in the story that he told me. for instance, i don't think that he's a regular in the SAF. or if he is, he's probably in a non-uniformed role as opposed to the officer that he told me he was. that means the story about having work emergencies were likely to be all lies, and explained his reluctance for me to send him right to the gate of his camp. what annoys me is that there are people out there who are offering him sympathy. if only they knew what he did to deserve this retribution. but that's not my concern.
what he did while we were seeing each other was, in my opinion, wrong. different people have different views on relationships and sex, and that's fine. as long as the couple are in agreement and are both consenting, there's basically no problem to speak of. but when the couple's views are not in alignment (eg. monogamy vs open relationship), that's where problems start. i talked to jedi master about this before, and he said that we shouldn't force others to conform to our own views. for instance, if 野郎 wanted to sleep around while i wanted to remain monogamous, why not have me be monogamous, while letting 野郎 be promiscuous? as long as i had my time with him, it should be ok. while i somewhat see the logic in that argument, i can't really accept it. apart from the emotional insecurity of having a new date sleeping around with others, there's a higher chance of STD acquisition and transmission as opposed to if a couple was monogamous and both free from disease. i just wonder, what would it take for me to agree to that? apart from desperation, of course. there's no attribute that i can think of that would make me swallow my dissatisfaction if such a scenario occurred again with someone else. perhaps that's what they call a hard limit, or a deal breaker. good to know.
on the topic of relationships, i haven't been having much luck. then again, even i'd be impressed with myself if i could find a potential date with my gym-home-gym-home routine. there are some people (well, one guy) at work who i find attractive, but i know better than to try dating in the workplace. although in this case, we're teaching completely different levels and subjects, so...STILL NO. i'm just thinking that if it was a girl that i was interested in, dropping her a note to ask her out for coffee would be so much easier than doing the same for a guy. at least the damage wouldn't be as bad if the offer was rejected and word got out afterwards that the offer was made in the first place. guess i should be looking in more appropriate places, like bars? maybe at certain events? or try getting on the dating apps? maybe when i become super desperate.
that's it for now. hope i haven't written too much here such that tomorrow's post ends up lacking in content. it shouldn't. i might take a page out of chemical engineer cousin's book and rate the different aspects of my year, or not. i will probably recap the major happenings, have a few highlights and lowlights, and round it off. to quote one of the final fantasy game developers, please look forward to it.
-random thought of the day: Some people just aren't worth feeling bad for.-
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