(Trying to) Stay Positive

Some days I wake up, look in the mirror and think ¨What the hell am I doing?¨

I don´t mean to sound as though I´m not enjoying my time here in Santiago.  This place is, and always will be, one of my favorite cities in the whole world.  I love where I live, I love my friends and I even love my job.  The problem is I only love my job when I´m doing it.  The rest of the time it´s kind of a nightmare.

I´m in my fourth week of teaching.  I can hardly believe it.  I still can hardly believe anyone would hire me to be a college professor.  When I think back to week one I remember the optimistic thoughts I had.  I was sure things would start to come together, that I would get more guidance, that I would get paid, etc.  To my chagrin, none of this seems to be happening.  I´ve been a part of the Chilean school system before so the disorder isn´t exactly a surprise.  It is a surprise how much worse it is on the teacher´s end.  Allow me to enumerate my woes.

1) It seems that the likelihood of receiving a paycheck on payday (this Friday) is incredibly slim.  Apparently it is entirely typical for the first check to be late.  They shared this information with us and said ¨So don´t worry about it.¨ I´m sorry, it´s tough not to worry about not being paid when you´ve been working for a month and your rent is due, your fridge is empty and your metro card is low.  I think they are laboring under the delusion that we are a bunch of rich Americans with unlimited funds and while my parents will never let me starve or lose the roof over my head I shouldn´t have to ask them to send me money.  I´ve been working as a full time college professor as a month.  Give me a break.

2) We don´t have our login information necessary to access our online resources.  This means we can´t assign our students online assignments which are not only 10% of their grades (supposedly) but are also useful practice for the quizzes we give.  Also, somehow, lacking our login information is another reason our paychecks are going to be delayed and as many times as I have emailed my director(s) and as much as they are ¨trying to work everything out¨nothing seems to be getting accomplished.

3) We still don´t have a locker.  Now, this isn´t the biggest crisis in the world but more of a further indication of how little we seem to mean to this institution.  Apparently all that is necessary for us to gain access to our shared locker, which the American English teachers have every semester, is for a formal email to be written requesting it.  A) How ridiculous is it that that is necessary for us to be granted a locker? B) How ridiculous is it that if that´s all that is required we haven´t gotten it yet?  The answers to A & B are ¨completely ridiculous.¨

4) Our listening exercise CDs to use in class don´t work.  How hard is it to burn a CD?

5) While all these woes have been shared between me and my other three American English teachers for four weeks now and while we have each communicated these woes to several different directors not only has nothing been taken care of, we never receive communication about when these things might be taken care of.  This is what frustrates me more than anything, the sheer lack of communication.  I feel like I´m constantly fumbling around in the dark.

The Teaching Chile directors have been as helpful as they can because now we are mostly in the hands of Duoc.  I know that our directors are busy and dealing with a lot, but frankly so are we.  We are dealing with living in another country, speaking a foreign language, teaching at a college level without training and all the while having to worry about being paid and having to field questions from our students that we don´t have the answers for.  The time I have in the classroom is an incredibly positive experience but I´m afraid that so far the time outside has not been when it comes to dealing with my job.  I hope things change because I want to teach for another semester but honestly the last four weeks have me seriously considering taking my chances with finding another job in July.