1. Final marks are due tomorrow and so I told my students if they wanted to discuss their mark than today and tomorrow would be their last chance to do so. And so, on that note, I hung out at the office today for a couple of hours.
2. Confrontations today with two of my sports students who thought they’d barge into my office and all in my face about getting a low grade. I was shocked by their rude manners and so I told them to rethink their manners, leave and come back in when they’re able to talk to me with respect. I am not their buddy who they can talk so rudely to and I know for a fact that if I were a Korean prof they wouldn’t dare talk to me like that. So, they left the office and came back in a couple of minutes later.
3. According to one of my coworkers, four years ago at my university two professors were caught changing grades, giving the top 30% in their classes A's and so forth. One professor ended up quitting and the other got fired, if I remember correctly. Now I know that my university has a restriction on how many A's and B's you can give (totally 70% of the classes attendance) and whether or not I agree with this rule is not the point here. The point is that after four years, we're still suffering from the situation these two professors made. The two sports students had come to argue about this “top 30% in class get an automatic A” fanciful thinking that stemmed from those two professors. Common sense, which I noted before is obviously not so common, would have told them that this is impossible. Eighteen out of my twenty-six sports students failed…. FAILED! So, if we went by this automatic A idea, this would mean that many of those failed grades would be an A…. ?!!! What?!!!
4. I love it how students had 16 WEEKS to work for, earn and prove that they deserved a certain mark and yet now, when classes are over, now do they all of a sudden put worth the effort and concern towards their mark. It just blows my mind.
5. Today one of my students came to argue her mark and beg for me to throw her ten extra percent so that she could pass the class. She even came with a back-up team of two but what shocked me the most was when she opened her mouth… long, complicated and complex sentences flowed out of her mouth with such ease. She hadn’t said a word throughout the whole semester and didn’t even show up for the final exam but there she was, speaking in fluent English. Too much…. Too late.
6. Marks are marks and students had plenty of chances and time to earn them and so as much as I do really admire my students, I really have no pity for those who come begging at the end of the semester. As far as I am concerned, those who beg and who make silly arguments, like the sports students with their automatic A thinking, really don’t deserve the mark their pleading for.
7. And so after only a couple of hours of listening to various students’ song and dances, I decided I was going to go home and gear up for boxing.
8. Turns out Junior Mint was having a rough day too and so he ended up taking it out on me and frustrating the heck out of me. During pad work he really drilled me, hitting me whenever I dropped my guard. Hitting,… no, full-on smacking the heck out of the side of my head is more like it. By the end of our pad work, my left ear was beat red and my head was pounding.
9. Q was there to see the whole thing go down, as were many of my team mates. Q approached me after and asked me if I was OK. I felt so dizzy but said I was OK. After training Q and I went back to my house. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with the whole “baby issue” again and so when Q turned to me and told me that he picked me, I felt somewhat relieved. I still feel a bit uncomfortable, knowing that he didn’t just pick me from the get-go. I’m sure my feeling will change but, for now, I just feel like … the runner up.
10. On a happier note, I ended up cooking Q that romantic candlelight pasta dinner I had anticipated the other day. He stood and watched as cooked. It was the first time he had seen me cook and so to fool him into believing I really know how to cook, I showed off my cutting skills with the veggies, added milk and about a million and one spices into the sauce, added crunched crackers as bread crumbs, and examined the cooking pasta like it was a work of art.... hehehe. The real deal breaker though was dessert… jello… hehehe. He’s never eaten jello before and so he kept on asking me, “How did you make this? So great!”, upon which I told him it was a family secret… hehehehe.
QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What kind of student were you in school?
QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!
-- Anne Frank
As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).
After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.
Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.
2 comments:
I totally agree with you, Amy. If you wanna get a good grade in your studies, you gotta work your ass off. If you're lazy, you get a shit mark. I see the same thing in my classes with elementary and middle school students. They get given way too much, and don't really know what QUALITY hard work it (sure, they know quantity, but not quality).
Thanks for introducing them to the real world, where shit isn't tolerated ;)
Haha. I had to laugh about the jello because that's the exact same reaction my guy had to it. I really think you should market jello in Korea. You could make millions. :)
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