Friday, March 21, 2014

March Madness 2.0

The week of 16 March is officially the March school holiday period. The key word here is 'officially'. Unofficially, it has been pretty much business as usual, with the most noticeable (but still minor) differences being having the opportunity to dress down and sleep about one hour more than usual.

Now, this is not meant to be a complaint post. After all, in a way i have gotten myself into this situation by requesting to teach the classes i'm teaching, fully expecting that the words 'March (and for that matter, September) holidays' would not eventuate in the way that they would be expected to (by those who don't have any direct contact with the education system here, at least). And pretty much all the stuff that i've been up to this 'holiday' has been meaningful, and not a waste of time (or at least i hope that's the case). Even if it's meant that i think i've not felt so tired or, dare i say, worn out for a long time. I guess i may have felt worse before, but i think that the amount that i've to handle now is more than it was before [experience does build up resilience, or as i'd like to refer to it, staff capacity (capacity to tahan the worst that the job can throw you].

The fact of the matter, or at least in the way i see it, is that there's plenty of meaningful stuff that we do (and inevitably, a fair deal of stuff that at most helps to boost CVs but is really far more of style and substance), but some of us (or at least me) are not able to sustain doing the amount that is expected without some serious sacrifices being made (which in my case, being as utterly inefficient as i am, would be the giving up of a life outside of the holidays). And in such situations, i can't help but question if the result is really worth the effort.