AAARRGHHH …

I’m bored! I’m so bored! I can’t remember a time I’ve been so bored. You’re asking yourself, “What in the hell is she doing NOW? What can be so mindnumbingly boring?”

I’ll tell you! I’m in Austria and being a good friend I’m jumping in for the afternoon at my former working place, torturing an 8th grader, who’s got a written English test next week. How do teachers do it? Teaching the same stuff every year for … well, forever? I’m so endlessly bored waiting for my student to finish the exercise that I’m chewing my well-manicured nails and looking at my watch every other minute.

The weird thing is, I had been doing this English (and German) tutoring for more than ten years and don’t know how I did it without hopping mad. It’s as if I’d never stopped doing this. As if I’d never been away. Rattling on about the tenses and their use, Passive Voice, Reported Speech, Adverb-Adjective … and then the stories. They are the same! Can you believe it? They are still the same! My gosh, it’s as if I’d given my last lesson to an 8th grader two days ago – and not five years!

I still remember the stories by just reading the headlines. (How tragic I that? That I can still remember all those stories?) My student’s chapters are about Extreme Sports (Boxing, Climbing El Capitan and basketball) and Native Americans, how they live today, the Trail of Tears and a story called “Indian Heaven”. Dozens of students, dozens of times, dozens of hours chewing through the same grammar, the same stories, the same exercises. How happy I always had been of the times I could teach senior high school students. Where all I had to do was doing conversations, giving them topics to write and correcting them. How much more gratifying, challenging and satisfying.

And now I’m back in my old life for a brief time, and I’m so annoyed with myself that I could kick my butt. Instead of enjoying one of those marvellous ice cream sundaes at the “Cortina” I’m stuck here in an endless loop … and then … thankfully I wake up. Ohmy gosh, it was just a dream. A bad dream. Cause I just couldn’t do this anymore. I’m so grateful to be allowed to live the life I live. With a job I like, earning enough money to be independent and afford some small luxuries like my books and travelling.

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