EFL Recovery

I will not lie: teaching English as a Foreign Language was tough for me.

I don't like grammar. In fact, I pretty much hate it. I love editing, but this could be seen as a form of aggression against grammar: if it's wrong, it makes itself obvious. Kill the bad grammar, and it turns back into a harmless sentence again.

But--grammar theory? I spent 7 years studying French, and spent most of my time drawing comic books. Direct object pronoun, indirect object pronoun, subjunctive, conditional...horrific. It's like talking about the shapes of lines in a painting but never getting to see the work itself.

I took summer classes in college just so I could spend a year studying in France, which gave me no credit towards my major, because I realized finally that there was no way in hell that I was going to learn French unless I got out of the classroom. I moved to Chile to learn Spanish. Basically, I can't learn a language unless I use my obsessive urge to socialize against myself. Even then, I only get so far.

All this means that coming up with either the enthusiasm or the creative lesson plan I needed to teach well was a miss more than hit situation for me. Half the time, when trying to prep for a lesson, I found myself thinking, "They should just get a book, what am I supposed to do about it?"

Anyone who followed my last blog, if there are any of you left, will know that this lead to a severe period of permanent irritability.

So having an actual job, that I actually care about, has been a relief. But there's another side to that coin.

English teaching is unpredictable in many ways. You have no idea what's going to happen in your class. Class 1 might get through your lesson plan in half the time you expected and leave you flapping your mouth like a fish for 45 minutes while you stall. Then Class 2 might spend the entire 90 minutes on your warm-up exercise, after which time your whiteboard will be covered with arrows, stick figures, and other useless illustrations. Put these two together, and it adds up to an hour and a half of misery (generally for the students as well, I'll be fair).

Whatever happens though, it's an hour and a half. Time-wise, English teaching is very predictable. And your lesson planning can vary somewhat, but not wildly. Grading can be disastrously time-consuming, but it too is a limited time. The semester ends. You breathe.

Not so in the normal world of work (to the extent that my situation can be called "normal"). All of a sudden I'm back in the zone of unexpected projects, unexpected bumps in the road, unexpected complaints....just general day-to-day unpredictability. Add to this the fact that I care about my job, and the fact that I live in my workplace, and then I find myself randomly working for 10 hours straight before I notice what's happening and remember that I need to prioritize. A year of a very patterned work life, preceded by several months of an hour-to-hour job at a bookstore, preceded by unemployment, preceded by six months of wandering...well, it's fair to say that my time management muscles have atrophied, if I had any to begin with.

I'd be lying if I said I missed teaching. Last year taught me that, at least when it comes to foreign languages, that is not the path I belong on. In fact, I'm pretty much thrilled to be where I am: busy, interested, working hard.

I'm sure I'll appreciate it once my head stops spinning.