Earlier, I met a friend (and former coworker) for lunch and I was telling her about the recent evolution of Karma Academy. How I feel that it's become too focused on "business as business" and is forgetting the business of education. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's becoming a much less pleasant place to work, in my opinion.
Still, I can't rule out that it's partly subjective. My own feelings about my indefinite stay in Korea have been evolving, and I keep returning to what has been one of my core reasons for being here: my desire to somehow learn Korean.
But I'm not. I'm not learning Korean. I'm failing. This isn't Karma Academy's fault (though it might be karma's fault, with a lowercase 'k'), obviously, but my feelings of failure about that project are impacting my ability to maximize my potential in my work environment.
These feelings of failure are further combined with my coworkers' utter lack of demonstrative compassion about my efforts to learn - it's mostly just amusing to them that I want to learn Korean, as they seem to find it strange if not downright suspicious that a foreigner wants to learn their language, and they definitely find it amusing (in a laugh at me rather than with me kind of way) that I'm so remarkably bad at it, especially after having been here for so many years.
So I was talking about that with my friend, and meanwhile I have a toothache that means I should be seeing a dentist, which I've been procrastinating on. I fear dentists more than North Korea. But lately, when I eat something spicy, it really, really hurts to eat it. The fried rice at the Vietnamese place where I was having lunch with my friend was a little bit spicy. Normally I really like spicy food - I love spicy food - but because of this toothache it really hurt. So I was in pain.
I need to go to the dentist. I will go on Monday.
Anytime I feel pain, I feel negative about human existence - this is natural. It's harder to keep a positive outlook. This toothache is so much my own fault, because I so despise if not downright fear dentists (due to past bad experiences) and so now... it's my fault, and I'm feeling this pain.
Now I'm just whining, aren't I?
But then there's this next thing. I had a rather horrifying class, during my last scheduled hour at the end of the day. The class was so horrifying, I wrote about it separately, in a previous blog post... so look for it and read about it there.
Then one more thing happened. I came out of the horrifying class to be told by the assistant director that I'd had my students do the "Parents Day Letter" assignment (see previous blog post) wrong, anyway. You see, there were special prepared papers that the students were supposed to fill out, not just write them on regular paper. These letters are supposed to go to parents, of course, but only on the special prepared papers - like forms to fill out.
I felt really upset by what had happened in class, and now this was like a "last straw" - because I really had zero recollection that I'd been told about these special prepared papers.
"Perhaps you told me this in Korean, not realizing I didn't understand?" I asked the assistant director.
"No, I told you, in English," she protested.
Nothing is more upsetting than the feeling that one is losing one's memory. At least... for me. So on top of these other issues, I'm losing my memory, too.
"I really don't think you told me," I complained, feeling helpless. I felt very angry, though. "I really don't like how so often people don't tell me what's going on around here," I finally exploded.
It wasn't exploded exploded. But I was showing my anger, which I really rarely do.
I added to my rant: "And then people think they told me because they said something in Korean and they think I understood," I added.
The fact is, I'd much rather believe that she was misremembering and had said something in Korean where I hadn't understood, than it turning out I had had some kind of weird blackout during some announcement in English in the staffroom yesterday.
There was no resolution to this, except to underscore that if I would just get my butt in gear and learn Korean, I wouldn't have the excuse I took recourse to above, and perhaps I'd have known about the special prepared papers.
All of which is to say, I'd traveled in a full circle back to my earlier frustration I'd been expressing to my friend about being unable to learn Korean adequately.
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