2001-06-11
Busy Week, posted at 4:07 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Phew! What a day, and it's only half over. These two weeks (last week and this week) are the two weeks this summer where my two jobs overlap. So I'm basically going from 5am at the gym until 11pm at night, with a little break between 4 and 5. I'm spending my break in my air-conditioned apartment with diaryland.Actually, things are looking up. I finally wrote my final today and made the copies, which is a good thing because it's at 7:45 tomorrow morning that I have to pass them out. I'll have my kids staple them. That's a good job for them. The final is fairly easy, but there are some challenging aspects as well. I'm going to miss these kids. I'm trying to think of parting words of wisdom I can tell these freshmen before I leave, but am having a hard time. A lot of my kids failed last semester but are pulling A's or B's with me, and I worry about them. There's one kid I love. He's gone from a 43% to a 93%. Actually, I've become quite fond of a lot of the students I've taken on in these six weeks. They're all intelligent, lively, and excited kids. But our school has about a 60% dropout rate (much higher if you're a minority), so I'm a bit worried about them. It's so hard to say goodbye to these kids, especially knowing I won't be there next year. (And even more hard when they're all asking me if I'll be there next year, with things like, "I'm gonna see you next year, right, Mr. M?")
My summer job is going okay so far. We had senior staff training all last week. One thing I'm lucky about is my supervisor is the kind of guy who just makes you want to do a good job. He's so enthusiastic, he makes me want to be a better employee. That's unusual for someone as hardened as me, having spent six years on this campus in various work capacities, and having spent three years in this very camp job. The staff training starts this week. Along with two other supervisors, I am supervising sixty CA's (Conference Assistants). Today's training will be boring for the most part, but we're all going for a BBQ in the middle of it and that should be fun. Lots of softball and volleyball.
I'm still trying to figure out if I want to get another job this summer. I tried applying to be a summer high school teacher, which pays an amazing $28.50 an hour, but was told not even to both because I have no seniority. I wish they could have seen me in my room these last six weeks, reaching kids who had given up on school. These are the types of kids who go to summer school. I can reach them, and do well with them. And the money would have been nice. Oh well.
I should have gotten more work done over the weekend. Jason came up, and we ended up getting drunk and watchign SNL on Saturday night just because we were bored. That's probably not a good reason to drink, but I suppose it's a better reason than because we're depressed or because we were getting ready to drive somewhere. We were just bored, so no harm done, I guess. But I didn't get any of the work done that I needed to do. I need to plan a scavenger hunt over the complex, finish planning the "Weakest Link" game over Camp Policies, and figure out the Night Receptionist program. And I'm supposed to do that, I suppose, in between my 7-3:30 job, the long hours of training, and doing grades. Ugh. It'll be a busy week.