working for the weekend

Well I managed to aggravate a friend last night. I had been making some comments in casual conversation that finally got to my friend and I got to hear about it. The worst part for me was that I made someone angry. I spent half the night with a queasy stomach wondering how I did that.

I had noticed that this friend was generally looking forward to being done with their job for the day, or looking forward to the weekend to be more exact. Said friend was interpreting my remarks as an indicator of their work satisfaction. I am sure that the friend does enjoy their job. From what I have gathered, said person simply enjoys what they have planned after the paid job as much as the paid job. Maybe they are putting up their weekend countdowns as a way to remind themselves of what they also enjoy. At any rate, I misspoke in such a way that finally got them riled up. I will have to be more cautious about what I say in the future. The boiling point was when I suggested that their life might mirror a sitcom characters. In this sitcom, the woman character suggested to her cohort that she was done dating for a while and was only going to be concerned about her job. Her male friends scoffed at this and gave examples of other people who said the same thing and were married six months later. My friend interpreted this and things I have said in the past as them not caring about their job. This was not my goal, but I will have to stick to more generic, safe, items in the future.

I enjoyed my job when I had it and there was some times that I was anxious about being in a classroom. I do miss getting to interact with the students. Being a sub is not the same thing. The students know that I can't be trusted to teach them what their regular teacher wants known. My best bet it to present what was left for me and act as dumb as possible for the rest of class. When I was a full time teacher, I had the students attention much more than I do as a sub. It was pretty cool to have a group of people depend on me for an interpretation of their textbook.

The weekend or end of day assumption was a fault of mine. When I grew up, the weekends were not all that different from the weekdays. I rarely looked forward to a day of rest on the weekend. Or getting to do something special because it was the weekend. Sundays were rarely cased or planned as a day of rest. Sure, during the school year we had our religion classes in the morning, but as soon as we got home it was back to business as usual. When I got my one and still only full time work away from my family, a weekend wasn't that special. I would still have just as much work to do on the weekend as any other day of the week. If and when I got all the farm work done, I would do my planning. There were several weeks that I did no planning at all until late sunday or early monday morning.

One time I was tasked with a tough question by my superintendent. For whatever reason or technique of his, he gave me an ultimatum. I was asked if I did want to teach science or ag. Because of my ag degree, he might have decided that I was slouching on my science teaching as an indicator of my work desire. Anyways he told me that if I wanted to be an ag teacher, I would be taken out of my current classroom and work the remaining duration of my contract as a tutor or something else. I told him that I wanted to be a science teacher. Currently I would take a job as an ag teacher, but would use that as a stepping stone to a science education position. Sometimes jobs are posted internally first and I may have to work as one to get the other. A science teaching position is much more stable. There is no future in teaching ag. Schools are looking for ways to cut money, and ag programs are going to be gone in my lifetime. That program is not necessary for a high school diploma and will be out of the picture if need be. The schools will lose many students to the career centers, but if they were concerned about student retention, they wouldn't allow the PSO program.

times typed "oftern"-0