This whole day was funny. And the evening tipped the scales.
It started with me driving to school with my brother. We thought there would be ice on the roads because it unexpectedly snowed and freezed over the night.
So I thought it would be wise to drive with my brother instead of with the bus, since the bus is often late at those weather conditions.
Well then. We left home at 7 AM and arrived at school at 7.15 AM. >.< We could drive with the normal speed as the main streets were almost completely free of snow and ice...
So I had to wait 30 minutes in the empty corridors of my school. Not even the library scrat was there yet.
In my first two periods of the day - Math - I barely understand anything at all.
Vectors are such a nuisance. :(
During Politics class I felt confronted with a controversial difficulty that I am going to write about in another post.
In German we had to work on a text analysis in groups.
I basically don't mind group work, but often enough my groupmates are either unconcentrated or uninterested, so I prefer working alone or with mates who are more studious.
My group wasn't that bad, in fact. However, I need my time to focus on reading the text we have to deal with and to analyse it. However, groups always and immediately start talking about what certain lines in the text could mean, but they often mix up things or misunderstand them, for they don't see the context.
So I inwardly withdrew myself from the talks and wrote down my own results, instead.
When I explained them to my team members, they all thought it would be the best summary of our group and that we should use it for the presentation. I was fine with it. I would not have been, if they had just sat around there doing nothing else than waiting for me to finish the task (which some students actually do to those who don't object).
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Now I come to the more interesting part of this day.
In the afternoon, I drove to the city with mum.
There was that "presentation about teaching" on the other Gymnasium of the city (it was for all students of the two Gymnasien though).
Anyway, before mum dropped me off there, we went to the mall to do some shopping... I dislike malls so much!
Those cathedrals of consumption are full of rushed men and women who don't seem to be happy at all while consuming - even though most people seem to think consumption is the nowadays' eldorado to find happiness... [By the way, I think the expression "cathedrals of consumption" fits perfectly, since excessive consumption obviously has become the new religion as well.]
Apart from that, there are lots of pubescent children in the mall, e.g. boys who allow full bent of their acted manliness and girls who sit on benches watching the passing crowd. >.>
After doing the errands, mum dropped me off at the Gymnasium.
It was 6.45 PM, so I was 15 minutes too early. I looked for the assembly hall where the presentation was supposed to take place. I was hoping to meet some people from my school there... which I did.
They were sitting there in a semi-circle with some teachers, who told them about the study of school subjects and the traineeship of teachers... I WAS TWO HOURS TOO LATE. >.<
At least I scored by getting the laughs from everybody for getting the time wrong. :P (it was not a condescending laugh, though).
The presentation ended a few minutes after I arrived, so I didn't get anything from it. But there was one of my classmates (I would have never thought that that person could be interested in teaching) and another guy who is one grade below me. They both told me what the teachers talked about, so it was not completely for nothing, after all.
The problem was just that mum went downtown again. She said she would wait in the car infront of the school building one hour after the presentation begun...
Thus I had to pass one hour somehow. :P The borough of the city was quite remote from the inner city or any shops, cafés or the mall (I would have even gone back there, in that case :P). The hospital was nearby, so I went into the lobby and read some tourist guides of the city, lol. After about 40 minutes, I went back to the school building and waited for mum to pick me up. When I told her that we were wrong at the time, she was not amused... :P Neither was I, but I guess those silly things happen to all of us from time to time.
All in all, this day was certainly weird.
Nonetheless, it taught me some things I am going to write about, soon.
Runners
10 hours ago
2 comments:
It's fun hearing about your day - so thanks!
These days so many people seem to want things 'NOW' and not be prepared to wait - that makes punctuality more and more important.
I used to work for the railways here and, of course, we tried quite unreasonably hard to run the trains on time and therefore hated people who arrived at the last minute or late!
Still, it doesn't seem to have done you too much harm this time. At least some of those people at school who you so often deride were willing to help you out and tell you what had been said.
Your comments on working in a group might make you think about what sort of job or career you might be happiest in.
My partner, Pete, works in a small group of people in which each works, mostly, alone. They only interact for some light relief (!) and occasionally when one asks another a question about his/her speciality.
They are engineers of a sort you see, working for Rolls Royce who make aeroplane engines and stuff.
Part of Pete's group's work is to predict when a particular component or system might fail so as to prevent some catastrophic engine failures.
On the other hand - when I worked for the railway I worked, of course, with other people to a large degree and enjoyed not being alone for too long at once.
It's horses for courses but your experience of trying to work with others might give you food for thoughts in this area.
'Gymnasia'? It's a well known mis-use (different use?)of an English word perpetrated by many German speakers!
As for working in a group, I think the most important factor to make groupwork good and fun is the communication. If some group-members exclude themselves from the rest of the group, or if some don't work at all, the others don't feel motivated to do the work either.
By the way, what makes you think I "deride" my classmates? :)
Was your work at the railway exhausting? If yes, I'm sure it was nice to have other people around as a sort of distraction from the exhaustment. :)
With "Gymnasien" I mean the plural of "Gymnasium", which is a type of school here. My English-speaking readers may confuse it with a gym, which is why I used the German plural (and a capital letter at the beginning, to point out that it's not a sports hall :P)
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