Better never than late?
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My life in Korean hagwons is nearly over and I’ll soon be joining the ranks of the pseudo-profs in a national uni in March - which got me thinking…
How will I adjust to having to work a normal day again after a year of starting at 330 in the avvo? The start time in my current hagwon job is perfectly adjusted to Mike’s biorhythms. I’m an insomniac and when I’m on early morning starts - I WILL BE LATE once or twice per year. I don’t know why. I just will. Call it a malfunction.
It’s usually nothing to do with drinking - although admittedly that doesn’t help. It’s just the way I’m wired. I am very occasionally late.
This never goes down well. EFL is one type of job where lateness on the part of the teacher is THE unforgiveable sin. Students in the class waiting for you and all that. You can be crap, you can be hungover, you can be unprepared, you can look like hell but Lord help you if you are late!
Don’t get me wrong. It is only a very, very occasional thing. But it happens sometimes and it is a failing that does tend to send me into hours or days of soul searching while I wallow in humiliation. It also tends to bring out the sanctimonious prat in others for whom this is never an issue.
Last time I think it happened was actually a couple of years ago now. I started my first hagwon job and I stupidly agreed to do 740am starts when my Dos was getting gip from another teacher about having to do them.
I was a couple of days off the plane and still jet-lagged and had never done split shifts before. The DoS, let’s call him Steve, was showing me the ropes and had invited me into the little personal interviews he had with each teacher when he broke their new monthly timetable to them. One belligerent teacher started acting up about the tt and refusing to do it. This was making my superior look stupid what with me there and all, I felt bad for him so I offered to take it. Big mistake!
I was tired in the afternoons between the shifts and took a daily nap as recommended by the other teachers as a way of dealing with split shifts but by the time I was finished at 1030 and went for the mandatory pint in the local bar after work (virtually expected in this job if you didn’t want to be seen as aloof), I, a natural insomniac anyway, couldn’t drop off till about 4am.
Next thing I know it’s 720am and there’s a 10 minute walk to school! I’m also the type who wakes up with a crazy hairstyle which needs work first thing so in my first month in my new hagwon, I was late about 3 times - all by about 5 minutes.
At that time of the morning, I was the only one in the building except for the very lovely desk girls who were always so nice to me. What I didn’t know was that the girls were under unders to report any lateness by teachers whether it inconvenienced the students (it rarely did -they too were always late at that time!) or not.
Despite all the mitigating circumstances, Steve was old school and couldn’t help himself from delivering a solemnly intoned and totally unnecessary speech about the importance of punctuality. Being unusually sensitive, I was mortified with myself. Steve knew that but enjoyed heaping it on anyway…
I’d worked with Steve in another school for many years. He knew me well enough and knew how reliable I am but still he felt he needed to tell me why it’s not a good idea to be late as an EFL teacher. What got me was that he thought it was useful to lecture me on that as if that would solve the problem. It was as if that gap in my knowledge was the problem. Prat! Steve was never ever late himself and took a special pride in it. I on the other hand can go for months and even years without it happening but it sometimes does but it never fails to surprise me how even when it’s the first instance in a very long time, some people love to put the boot in.
Anyways, I’m aware of this weakness in me so I’ll have to be extra vigilant come March. I’m just a guy who has a very small margin for error when it comes to early starts!
