My Blog

Yes.  my posts will all be about work.  i guess it is kind of a record because my short term memory is not so hot.  so this way, i can keep track.  of what…i don’t know.  why…i don’t know. 

my day today was wacky.  really wacky.  firsts, one of my students tells me this intense, insane story.  she was brought over to this country from cameroon by one of her father’s friends.  supposidly she was supposed to live here and go to school in exchange for some babysitting and light housework.  however, for the next seven years, she was locked inside the house, made to sleep on the floor, periodically beaten, and ordered to babysit/houseclean, etc.  this is what is known as "trafficking".  so, when she was 17, she ran away, found her way to some catholic church, where they sent her to the catholic charities parish support coodinator who referred her to legal affairs, who helped her bring the whole thing to court.  so, in the end, the woman who had kept her captive ended up getting 17 years of jail time.  don’t believe me, do a google search on evelyn chumbow.  apparently this thing was all over the news.  in the meantime, this is my student, sitting here and telling me this story and in the next sentence, wondering where she should go shopping. 

next, one of my older students comes in and gives me a little talk about the vietnam war and black people.  he is a vet with serious ptsd.  give him one small opening, and he runs with it….all the way back to 1968.

next, one of my students tells me that i really need to be locking my hair, and he would be happy to show me.  he is my crazy student.  the one who was masterbating in my office before i got up the nerve to ask him to stop.  now he stands up instead of sitting in the chair…an intentional move so that he will not be tempted.  yup.  totally nuts.  he got his ged over the summer.  i worked with him for a solid six weeks.  he lives in one of our homeless shelters.  he is simultaneously one of the smartest people i have ever met and one of the most paranoid/schitzophrenic people i have ever met.  needless to say, i politely turned down his offer.  incidently, he has been growing his hair for 10 years.  but not in the manicured style that is so popular with todays youth.  nope.  this is more the unkempt straight-up natural look…

what else about today.  hmm.  one of my students was at school for ten hours except for the 45 minutes where he stepped out to make a court appearence for a shooting incident from two years back (where he was actually the victim…i saw the scars myself).

another student showed up at MY office at 8:30 in the morning.  i was not there of course.  why was she there, i wondered?  turns out, she thought (for whatever reason) that i was the one who would be giving her the GED test.  yes.  this is what i am dealing with.  i called and left two messages about where and when her test was, and somehow only the "when" stuck.  gotta love it.

gotta love it all.

Another Monday.  Here are my Monday questions, that will plague me through my week:

Why did I spend this Monday sending paperwork upstairs when about eight of my students have 48 hours until their GED test? 

Why does it feel like the details of budgets, funding, work plans, line items, reporting, etc. are taking over my life? 

Why do I feel like I am living out irony by applying to policy-related graduate programs when the policy portion of my job sucks and the people portion rocks?

  Why don’t i just apply to Social Work programs  so that I can make other people’s business into my business…as a profession? 

Why do I feel like a career only counts if it is "official" because it deals with "policy"?

Why is the death penalty still in this country? 

Why was someone put to death last week in MD and in Cali tonight?

Why is the GED office in DC only offering one partial test per month when 90% of my students pass the GED by taking the test two or three times…an eight hour test is not easy for anyone, much less someone who has been out of school for a number of years and did not particularly enjoy school when they were in it?

Why have I discovered a sudden obsession with the show Oz?

Winter produces wacky wildness.  At least in adult education. The students who are still coming are either crazy or desperate.  The crazy folks just have nothing else to do with their time.  So they show up to GED class.  They are not coming to get their GED or even to make progress towards this purpose.  They are coming to be somewhere, talk to somebody, and do something.  And at the end  of the day, they go back to wherever they came from.  The desperate folks are signed up for the test in the next week or two and they are willing to do whatever it takes to pass it.  So, in the past two or three weeks, with the change in weather, change in holiday season, and change in sunset time, these are the people i have been dealing with all day, every day.

As a side note, I have decided to embrace the role of being a thorn in the side of the GED office.  They really, really do not like me.   Everytime i go up, I intentionally bring up an application that I KNOW will not fly, but i just have to push the limits.   Most recently, i actually helped one of my students attempt to "modify" the expiration date on his license.  Then i made a copy of it.  And brought it up to the GED office.  They noticed it and they rejected it.  Why did i do it.  Well, my reasoning is that students are working  for a GED in order to move themselves a bit closer to self-sufficiency, and to being able  to get a decent paying  job or go to college.  when a technicality like an expired ID is the only thing standing in between them and the test, I get frustrated at a ’system’ that does  nothing for people.  Most of my students owe some kind of ticket…parking, speeding, whatever.  actually, truth be told, they owe multiple  tickets.  I am not excusing them, but I am pointing out the catch-22…that they cannot register for the GED exam without the license, but they cannot afford to pay their tickets without the better job that will come with the GED credential.

And so I help them to try something,  anything, just to get one step further then they were before.  most of the time it does not work.