If I had been diligently collecting data for the last year, which I should have been, I suspect the data would suggest a direct correlation between Amber's Facebook activity level and Amber's lack of blogging. When one is able to update her friends about every stupid little thing that happens on a daily basis, what is the point of full-sized entries such as this one? Sure, blogging is about more than just journaling for the public, but not for me! That's basically all I use this thing for, and when I can say little witty assessments of my daily life via Facebook, the blog becomes less and less useful.
Even so, my little orange B bookmark taunts me, sighing, well, I suppose Amber is too busy to blog today. Her fake crops, fake cafe, fake zoo, fake pet, and friends she never actually talks to will be so upset if she isn't around to care for them. Guilt trips rarely work with me, but orange B is right. WTF am I doing on Facebook all the time? Other than keeping up with people I otherwise wouldn't talk to, there is really very little use for that blasted site. If I reach level 80 in all those games, what happens? Fucking nothing happens. Little digital fireworks go off, I'm allowed to get a new fake dog or plant a new fake crop or buy a new fake shirt or cook a new fake dish. Nothing that happens actually matters to anyone anywhere on Earth.
Now, of course, I knew this when I started playing these games. As my favorite web cartoonists would say, "it's a great way to fill bars." Given my love of The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and that blasted Animal Crossing game I played religiously throughout college, I am no stranger to pointless simulation games with no end and no actual victory. The problem with the Facebook games I have been playing is that I began playing to waste time in a mildly amusing manner. But given the games' design, that you must return and play for brief intervals several times a week or even every few hours, it soon became a new requirement in my day. It was not a way to fill the void; it was a way to remove the void completely. I stopped watching TV sans computer, because I could be getting so much "done" in these games. While lecturing in class, I would slink over to the computer to see if the Tikka Masala Kabobs were done yet. And though I never actually forked over real money to buy fake items in these games, I began to see why a person might do that, despite it being fucking stupid.
The real problem arose when I started unwittingly procrastinating with these games. Now, I'm not some always-working freakazoid who has never put off writing a paper or lesson planning. I do that shit all the time. But I always know when I'm procrastinating and when I'm not. When I was playing stupid Facebook games, it felt like I was getting necessary work out of the way before I could start that other stuff...you know, college and my job. When you're playing four or five games and the flash load times are excessive, making the rounds could easily take 20 minutes or a half hour. Doing that twice or even three times a day means that I was spending at least an hour doing nothing every single day instead of doing the actual work I was supposed to. Granted, browsing Failblog and Cuteoverload wasn't a super-constructive use of my time either, but those are brief excursions with no penalty for non-participating. The Cuteoverload puppies don't die if I stop going to the website for a week, you know?
Imagine if I spent at least an hour a day doing something awesome. If I spent an hour a day doing aerobic exercise, I'd lose probably 2-3 lbs a week. If I spent an hour a day volunteering at a homeless shelter, I'd be helping a few dozen people in the shitter feel less shitty. Hell, if I spend an hour a day getting more sleep, I'd be in a better mood all day and less reliant on caffeine just to make it through school. In fact, playing these Facebook games is probably the worst possible use of my time that I could have designed, other than, say, putting tape on a kitten's paws or farting aerosolized anthrax.
This is not to say that I have now awoken from some cult-ish nightmare and I have seen the error of my ways, never to play a useless Zynga game again. I still have Farmville and Cafe World on my Facebook profile and will play them on occasion, but I certainly don't have to. The thing is, if I let my crops die for two weeks and then I come back, I still keep my level and my money. Nothing bad actually happens. It's like the reverse Peter Gibbons. "If I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra shares, I don't see another dime. Now where's the motivation in that?" Except for me, it's more like, "if I play these games intensely for many months, all I do is end up neglecting the parts of my life that affect me and other people. So why go crazy on these games?"
Anyway, that's a much longer rant than I anticipated for that topic. I guess my issue is that I've been spending more time on the internet over the last year or so, but less time actually enjoying myself. I don't even know what to do with myself half the time because I've gotten into a Facebook-game-dealchecking-moregame cycle which, when I am out of games and deals, leaves me with no direction. How is it possible to get so bored so quickly on the internet? It's the fucking internet. I used to spend more time on Wikipedia on a daily basis than I now spend on any text-based website. Have I learned all there is to know from my peers? No. So why have I stopped reading? Well, for one, I'm terribly lazy. Clicking boxes in a sequence is a lot more brainless than actually taking in information and storing it in my brain. If I wanted to work that hard, I'd...well, I guess do work. That didn't really go as well as it sounded in my head. Do you see what has become of me?!?
"Me Fail English? That's unpossible!"
So today was the last day of final exams for all students and the last day for seniors (underclassmen take exams at the same time but then have three weeks of school left...not a perfect system, but the school is too small to do it any other way). This week has been really rough, but today was a fucking nightmare. The day began innocently enough: seniors giddy and pretending to study but really talking about plans for later, students going around to see if they owe work (and hence seeing if they will have to stay after the exam), a few students quizzing each other on material before the last exam begins. Following the first test, things went to shit.
Many of the students did not owe any work, meaning they were allowed to leave, but they hung around anyway in the hopes that their friends would be finished soon. We had to shoo away at least 5 or 6 students who should have left at 11am but were still trolling the halls at noon. Students who had missed two or three 90-minute exams from earlier in the week decided to try to cram them all into today, harassing teachers to get them started on exams while the teachers were trying to help other students. Students whom we hadn't seen for weeks on end came in to try to get Bs and Cs in classes they are currently earning low Fs. Seniors who had seemed to do their best to fail all year attempted to order teachers around rather than asking politely for missing work or for help on exam topics.
The best part came around 3pm, when my least favorite student ever (and I mean out of the 150+ students I've had, ever) suddenly realized that she was about to fail at least one if not several classes for the year, and not graduate. Instead of getting sad, or just going home (as others had done), she threw the angriest and scariest tantrum I've witnessed in person. She went from room to room, yelling profane statements regarding her feelings for the school, her classes, her teachers, and anything else she could think of. She disregarded requests and, later, demands that she leave classrooms and check her shitty attitude.
The program director was on his way out the door for a weekend trip when this started brewing, and as soon as he left, she really kicked it up a notch. After kicking several chairs, slamming every door she could find (literally going from room to room to slam various doors), and wishing harm upon the math teacher and the school, she finally stormed out. Despite serving "at-risk youth" at my school, I have never encountered someone who so flawlessly blended disrespect, entitlement, wrath, and complete detachment from reality. I guess this is what psychopaths are like. If you've seen any of the Celebrity Rehab or Sex Rehab shows on VH1, she is Kari Ann. Not kidding. She is exactly Kari Ann.
The icing on the cake, really, is a piece of news we received just before Kari Ann went Chernobyl. One of our former students, a gang-involved young man who dated and impregnated another one of our students (one of my "best and brightest" as Dean Eastman would say), died last week. This is the first time a student of mine has met serious harm, much less died. Did he get shot or stabbed by a rival gang member? Maybe OD on drugs? No. It was a totally random accident. It's a fucking waste. Now he has left a dependent girlfriend and a 2-year-old child without a father. The math teacher didn't know him and the history teacher pretends to be all nonchalant about shit like this, although I know it hit him, so I don't know what to do with my feelings here. My first instinct was to attend services, send flowers, send a card, do something to help out the family, but is that even my place? I was their English teacher for a year, two years in the girlfriend's case. Do I even get to be upset about this, given what they are going through? Is expressing my profound sadness and sympathy the right move here? I don't really know. I've never been a grieving teacher before and I don't know how it works.
Sigh. I've run out of things to say. Fortunately, since I started writing this post, the weekend has improved my spirits and I was able to get some delicious Kelly's at the new location in Allston. I am ten days into a renewed effort to reduce my risk of heart disease and back boobs, and so far I feel I'm doing really well. I'm 2.4 lbs down, eating a lot better (kid's meal at Kelly's, lest you worry), less caffeine dependent, and saving a lot of money by skipping the fast food lunches. Also, Dan and I are closing on a condo on Corey Rd. in Brighton on June 21st, which is also the first day of Summer, my mom's birthday, the due date for the DemiDec workbook, and Nico & Jeremiah's anniversary. Quite a day, eh? I have 16 days left with students and 19 days left total for the school year, and my summer online course starts on Tuesday. Oh, and I'm adopting a pug pretty much right after we move into the condo. So...a bit busy in the coming month. But a pretty good kind of busy, I think. We'll see how this affects my blogging tendencies.
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