Work.

The past couple of days at work have been spent programming. And suddenly I have an arrow shooting down my direction – I have to use XOOPS to build a portal for my college. I’ve always heard that XOOPS isn’t exactly a tough thing to play with, but my fear for PHP is always going to make it a bit difficult for me to come to terms with all these PHP-powered CMS. As for why I have a fear for PHP… it all went back to 2002 when I was asked to build the Computing Club website using PHP, which I knew nothing about at that time. So I spent much time trying to figure out the whole thing, and in the end I managed to learn enough to get the site up, but since then I’ve always tried to shun away from PHP as far as possible. Not fun, but well, I’ve got a job to do.

When I’m not programming, I’m contemplating about my job. To be honest, while I have no idea if all the other jobs that I’m applying would eventually take me in, I still don’t really feel like staying in the job. I find that I simply cannot come to terms with students with bad attitude, like those who claim that “they are here long enough so a new teacher like me should not fail them” or “even the senior teachers don’t fail them so a new teacher like me should not fail them”. I mean, there’s just no logic in those claims. If you are not worth a pass there’s no reason that I should give it to you. And I hate it when they try to threaten me with things like “I’ll reflect to who who who because you failed me” – I feel that it simply makes no sense in trying to teach students like these. It’s like, you are telling me that you want to hang around in class, play games, talk to people, have your own fun and not even bother to make the minimum effort to study, and at the end of the day you want me to give you a pass. I think anyone with the basic knowledge of being a human being would tell you that is not possible. My colleagues are telling me not to take it to heart with students like those, but it’s hard. It’s quite amazing to think that the scoldings I get are never from my supervisors, but from the students. Whatever happened to this world?

I can’t wait to change jobs. If I continue any longer as a teacher I think I’ll go mad.