Going Postal

There was a time last spring -- 2008, I mean -- that I was cleaning out an old cabinet at the school and found an old pirated copy of the computer game POSTAL 2.

It so happened that I was teaching a lot of FCE and CAE test preperation classes at that time, and this involved a lot of practice tests as we got closer to the date of the exams. This meant I was sitting doing nothing for most of the lesson while the students did one hour and thirty minute timed tests.

There was also a computer in the room.

Now, I should say that my computer at home would not play the old pirated disc, as my new computer used Vista, and the game would not play on Vista.

The computer in the room where I was giving the practice tests, on the other hand. . .that still used Windows XP.

I suppose I don't need to tell you what I started doing while the students were taking the tests.

"My god that's incredibly unprofessional," even my rather slothful colleagues said, over drinks.

"It's so unprofessional that I don't even understand why you're telling me it's unprofessional," I agreed.

This was shortly after the school had tried to put me on working only weekends with no advance warning. I tried to quit over that, but they backed down. All the while, the school continued giving people split shifts ending at 21.30 and starting at 09.00; they were changing our schedules practically every day and giving us very little notice for starting new classes.

Unprofessional. . .

I thought of fifteen years of shitty school administrations while I shot the crap out of the small town of Paradise, Arizona, and burned and electrocuted digital civilians, even blew up Gary Coleman, while my students took practice tests.

Suprisingly administration only got wind of this recently. Now of course, it's too late. . . probably isn't going to help me get that emergency visa flight to Germany paid for, though.