O Simple Thing, Where Have You Gone?

I had the nicest philosophy tutorial group last semester, with a very good tutor and proctor who actually took their work seriously, and a wonderful group who actually did their work and offered comments in class and were friendly and encouraging. But this semester I've been stuck with an awful group and I feel immensely annoyed after the lousy proctorial we had today.

The proctor had obviously not prepared for his lesson (he didn't even bring the book or the notes) and couldn't give intelligent comments on anything we'd said at all or inspire us to further discussion. He didn't bother about whether we'd done our work or not. Only four people had turned up and one of them came with a set of answers that were his friend's, and the proctor didn't seem like he cared. Whenever a point was seriously raised, the proctor didn't even allow us to discuss it in its entirety before moving on to the next point and brushing over any comments without giving feedback on them.

Long rant there but I hate it when people don't take their work seriously or don't put in their best in preparing for things especially if their work affects someone else and someone else is trying to learn. I know that there's a time for play and recreation, but I do expect other people to give their best in work or studies as well, and it makes me upset to see people skiving off their duties (especially if they are teachers!). Grr.

I guess that's why I keep having these recurring nightmares about teaching and not preparing properly for my lessons and my students getting all irritated and rebellious. I hope that I'll always come to class prepared; I'll try, to the best of my ability. I believe that if students aren't enthusiastic in your classes and if they don't do their work, a large part of the reason could be you. So prepare, prepare, prepare!

Another reason why I'm kinda slightly in a bad mood (again) is that I was in the library earlier and I saw Mr Asian Fetish with (no prizes for guessing) an Asian girl. Maybe I should have gone up and said hi, but I let my hair fall over one side of my face (the side he was sitting on) and studied away with my head tilted in that position until I got a crick in my neck, whereupon I dared to look up and to my immense relief he was gone.

I'm not a racist nor do I have anything against my own race. That would be silly. But I do get annoyed whenever I see him with an Asian girl. He deludes himself with the idea that all Asian girls are mysterious, submissive, gentle, well mannered and willing to pander to his every need. I quote: "When I came back from Nepal I just couldn't date British girls anymore, because I found them fat and uninteresting. Since then I've always gone for Asian girls".

That's really annoying because it shows such racism and stereotypicalism and horribilism. There are different races in the world and they do have their differences of culture, true. But there will always be different kinds of women within different races so the stereotype that you can only date Asian women because they're all of a particular kind is wrong. Because it's terribly prejudiced to typecast women according to their race, whether you typecast them favourably or not.

(Disclaimer: am not against mixed race couples in the least. I truly find it nice to see mixed race couples around. Am just against people having the set idea that they only want to date this and that race. Cos when you see this same guy around with different women who are all of the same race, it gets really annoying.)

This was a long, boring kind of nerdy entry, written in very bad grammar, and typed in haste and fury. Promise you will still continue reading this webpage though.... *grovels*..... and I promise never to write anything like that again. : )

I'm getting old and I need something to rely on...