YAY VW!!! GO YOU!

Go vw!!!

YAY VW!!!!!

Juliana, will you remind me sometime soon that I need to start making plans for Halloween?

Hey Perkins? Start making plans for Halloween, sweetie.

Actually, I'm thinking we may want to post a tidbit in F2F, once we're sure that it won't interfere with the NOLA plans.

VW is DONE!!!!! Whoooooo!

*Technically* I have two classes I still have to sit through. But, my brain is done for day.

Thanks everyone, though!

The pencil test, it seems, depends largely on posture, for me.

I know you all were dying to know that.

ION, I'm going to visit Big!Boss at the hospital this afternoon. I haven't seen him yet, and I'm afraid I'm going to start crying when I see him.

I'm going to visit Big!Boss at the hospital this afternoon

Tell him a bunch of crazy liberal internet feminists are rooting for him.

Tell him a bunch of crazy liberal internet feminists are rooting for him.

He's nice enough to really appreciate that, actually, but fundie enough to try to convert you once he's out of the hospital. Neato.

He's nice enough to really appreciate that, actually, but fundie enough to try to convert you once he's out of the hospital. Neato.

If he's healthy enough to try, I'd happily listen to him. I hope he's well.

My headache is stubbornly trying to hold on. O went down for a nap at 9:30 and I managed to squeeze 40 minutes until the stupid dogs started barking at someone walking by. *sigh* I'm going to take a shower and see if that helps.

Wow, Stephanie's hosts were spectacularly rude. Like, comedy movie rude. Blimey. Some people just have no interpersonal skills at all. Huh.

Well done vw!

So, today I told my boss that I would not be renewing my contract. The conversation that followed was crammed with threats and accusations on his part, but not for nothing do I have counselling training. I diffused the situation repeatedly, until eventually I felt quite emotional and teary, and decided to go with it. I mean, I was sincerely quite upset - he was being (predictably) nasty, and threatening to try to blight my future and all this, claiming he could prevent me from working in this country next year and citing a clause that is not IN my contract (although it is in the standard contracts he's got, but somehow I got given a non-standard one, thank God) which supposedly prevents me from working for anyone else in Egypt for 3 years after starting with him, and yada yada yada - and so I burst into tears. It seemed the thing to do, and it wasn't faked, but I went with it because I thought it might help. And it did. I pointed out, rather emotionally, that I was trying very sincerely to be honest with him, and that I appreciated that he'd had a number of members of staff do an overnight Houdini on him this year and that I didn't want to create trouble for him, and that this was why I was telling him now, rather than lying and pretending I'd come back in order to keep him sweet and then just not turning up to work at the start of term.

Let us keep in mind, boys and girls, that I am not breaking a contract. I am failing to renew a contract. And, yes, granted I'd indicated that I would renew when pressed to say some 3 weeks ago - I ticked a box that said I would be returning. (I didn't date it or sign it, and I did angst over it, because I didn't want to lie when I knew I was in two minds - but in the end I made the decision to safeguard a job in the hand, type of thing, and I do think that that's a rather dirty trick.)

But it's half way through May. In the UK, the end of May is one of the 3 times of the year when people hand in their notice. I'm not breaking a contract. My contract expires and I'm failing to renew. And let's not even go into the myriad ways in which he's failing to uphold his side of the things that were promised in my interview.

...okay, let's touch on them - having no furniture when you arrive, and then only half the chairs and tables you need for weeks, so the kids are getting to sit on chairs in alternate lessons and do fucking tests sitting on the carpet in the other ones; nonexistant resources; no support when you're robbed in school; getting the phone line cut off with no explanation; having to teach music, art and computers when you've been explicitly told that specialists will teach those subjects [and, okay, I'm happy enough to teach these subjects, but it's the principle of the thing - I'm teaching 6 periods every week that I was told would be non-contact time, and in addition I'm teaching another period that was initially a French class, but is now my teaching time again because my kids suddenly lost one of their three weekly French lessons. This has never been explained to me, despite repeated requests for an explanation; I understand, 2nd hand, that parental pressure led the French department to send homework, and that they decided to do this instead of teaching one of the 3 weekly lessons. Since the head of the French department is married to our Headmaster, she can do whatever the hell she likes]...yeah, it just keeps on getting better, my job. They've FINALLY introduced a report-generating database from which we can create our reports, which I've been asking for since the beginning of the 2003-2004 term, and we got one half hour crash course presentation in it on Monday night - I think I'll be fine, it all looked just what I wanted, but I'm used to using computers. Plenty of the staff came out of the meeting looking and feeling like they'd been addressed (continued...)

( continues...) in Urdu throughout. It's not yet up and running, this database, and there are no plans for actually training the staff in its use beyond that short presentation. The deadline for completion of reports is 3 weeks away.)

...and I'm ranting. Long story short - I'm not the bad guy. I'm trying to do the right thing here, because I really don't want to screw the school over, and I don't like lying to people. I don't like dealing dishonourably with people, regardless of whether I like them or not. I don't want to be that person.

But I'm fairly sure that I'm going to be punished for this, because he's so unprofessional and vindictive. And although the meeting went well, imho, and although he ended it by shaking my hand and being pretty much soothed out of his tantrum, if still pissed off, I know that he'll be able to work himself up into a vengeful state at the drop of a hat.

And I'm not breaking my contract. Damn it. I shouldn't have to feel like this. I shouldn't be scared that he's going to try to stab me in the back, but at the end of last year he sacked three people on the last day of term, and he's just - he's a bad guy. He really is. Damn it.

On a cheerier note - don't think I've been able to pass the pencil test since I was 15, not that I knew of its existence then. (Hell, I've managed to smuggle an entire bottle of really rather drinkable red wine into a bar hidden in my cleavage. The bottle hidden in the cleavage, not the bar. My knockers aren't that big.)