nobody knows you when you're down and out
I was bored today (Thursday) and my legs felt fine, so I decided to risk going to soccer in spite of what happened last time. Fortunately, the mean outsider didn't show. Perhaps the five dollar entry fee deterred him. Whatever the reason, I had a great time, and I'm glad I went. A life lived in fear is no fun.
One of my student groups canceled their lesson this weekend for Chinese New Year's (thank Frith!), so I've only got two left, both on Sunday afternoon. I haven't lesson planned at all. I have a bad habit of getting started early on tasks like that and then dilly-dallying on them all week, not actually finishing them until hours before class. I'm trying to remedy wasting that time by using Parkinson's law to my advantage, the idea being that the time pressure of starting lesson planning only a day or two in advance will force me to be efficient. I hope it works! I'm meeting this trio of second (?) graders for the first time Sunday afternoon, and to be completely honest with you I'm dreading it after my last dumpster fire of a class with the three fifth grade boys. I signed up to teach writing, not to babysit over Zoom.
As I start to take on more students and classes, I'm starting to realize that I need to set my own boundaries or other people will set them for me. Thus far I've been sending parents of soon-to-be students my entire availability, which often means I end up with classes scattered across the weekend in a way that prevents me from having any day (or even half day) free. I find it hard to strike the right balance between being available and making time for myself: if I block off my entire Sunday, then my supervisor might notice when parents can't find any common times. But letting parents dictate how my weekend goes isn't great for me either.
My brother got the return offer he's been waiting for, finally. I'm happy for him — it's a lucrative offer for the Big Tech company he's worked for the past two summers now, more money than I've ever seen in my life and based in New York, no less. But my happiness is marred by the realization that him settling his unemployment situation means that my parents' scrutiny will fall solely on my shoulders now. The Oh, now only Misu needs to get a job refrains have already begun, and I'm not looking forward to hearing them more.
I keep getting rejection emails for internships I haven't even applied to. Since the emails aren't addressed to me in name, I assume some kid at my alma mater accidentally put down my student email instead of his. (We get to keep our addresses for life.) I feel a little bad for him, but he's only gotten rejections so far. I wonder if he'll ever find out.
The title of this post comes courtesy of Nina Simone's rendition of the song by the same name. I can't get enough of her singing: she might not have the most mellifluous voice, but her delivery and variety of texture is utterly spellbinding.