The Dramaturgical Theory

I haven’t started working at the Education Academy yet, but I can tell that I’m already shaping up to be the kind of person that I really am. I’m lucky I haven’t been fired yet because, for all the four times I met with my manager, I fucked up somehow. The first two times, my interview and my observation, I was late.

For my staff orientation on Wednesday, she sent me and email attached with some tax forms and told me to print and bring them. I didn’t.

I brought them for the staff training that I had Friday, which was good, and the whole training went pretty well. However, at the end of the evening, she handed me my work schedule for this week, and, as she was explaining how the scheduled hours for the week absolutely had to be committed to and couldn’t be changed once set, I noticed that she had scheduled me to work Saturday morning, when I would already be back in NorCal for Thanksgiving break. The conversation that followed was awkward, but my manager sternly told me she’d make an exception for me just this one time. And then I accidentally took home a clipboard.

All has been forgiven though, and I’m sorta doing my manager a favor to make up for everything by giving rides to another employee who has some car problems. But favors like this won’t get me so far; the tutoring that I do is what matters in the end.

First day of work is tomorrow. I excited, but also a little scared because I feel like I’m having a lot of trouble switching back into my professional teacher mode*. Probably because I had never in my life spent so much time just having straight up fun and not caring about anything else as I did during the last two months with the Funksters and my friends here in Irvine. Parents, Trung, and even schoolwork were hardly around to keep me grounded to a sense of responsibility. But I guess, with a job I care about and with money problems back at home, it’s time to come back to earth.

*I know some of you are asking if I ever had a professional teacher mode. There’s still a difference between my normal self and what I consider my professional teacher mode, I swear.

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“One of those Days at Work”
Written September 24th, 2007

One of my 8-year-old kids at work was touching himself today.

I even caught a glimpse of his underdeveloped stuff when I had turned around to see how he was doing with his lessons.

I shot away with disgust and shock contortedly etched on my face.

=(
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My last day at Pippin, by the way, was Thursday, and it happened to be our Thanksgiving themed dinner, which means that we were swamped with students and everything was crazy. Instead of the usual cleaning, I got to slice some pumpkin pies. Good way to go out with a bang, I guess. And I managed to piss off Head Chef again. He asked me to do something during closing, but my shift had already ended and so I told him I was leaving. He stomped away mumbling something. Whatever. I’m done.

**Trung gets credit for coming up with the title again.