fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2074 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2074 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Sam Winchester, Young Hercules]

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[La Pucelle: Tactics]

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Notes:

Important: I'm really sorry about this, but I accidentally misclicked and deleted the submission post from last week instead of saving it. Managed to save the first page (25) of secrets, but the rest (about 100 or so) are gone.

If you submitted something last week (Aug 26-Sept 1), please resubmit it here.

The submissions post for next week is below as usual.

Secrets Left to Post: ?? pages, ??? secrets from Secret Submission Post #296.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The next day, I was expected to show up for work, but I was given a week's worth of free time, to get used to the school and teachers. The week after, I was told, I would sit in classes with the teachers, but not have to teach just yet. I thought this was the most awesome arrangement, and very considerate. I had an incredible school.

As the days went by, my co teachers would drop in and introduce themselves, and go over what they do in their courses, and how they hoped I would figure in. (This would change drastically later on, when 3/4ths of my co teachers either got sick or crazy, and left the classes all to me, but hey.)

At any rate, one of my co teachers had come in to talk to me, and was being super nice and adorable and I loved her. Then Hyunjae comes in. The way this lady moved, you would call it a skulk. The vague surprise/fear/vacuity in her eyes always alarmed me to a degree-- she never seemed quite together.

At any rate, she slides into the door and stands awkwardly by my desk, with the other coteacher there. After a few seconds of the first coteacher talking, she barges in breathlessly to say, "Sorry, sorry, but Khronos! I have a class right now, and I was wondering if you would like to come?"

I was frozen. This was an entirely new situation to me, and I didn't want to make a faux pas by refusing, but I really was not ready to stat classes yet. Thankfully, my other coteacher immediately saved me. "No no, it is too early! She needs time."

This was not good enough for Hyunjae, who brushed her off. "Yes, but I was just asking."

Other teacher: "Well..."

Once I was given implicit permission to decline, I did so. Hyunjae, flustered, flew back out. At the time I thought she may have been just a little awkward, but not altogether a bad person.

A few days later, while being given an unofficial tour around the school by the head native teacher by Aaron, a great ex-Army vet old enough to be my father, we got around to talking about our classes. Me and the other new foreign English teacher both had Hyunjae. Aaron whistled in sympathy. "I don't envy you guys."

"Oh, I dunno," I tried to defuse the situation of talking about my new coworkers behind their backs. "She just seems a little lonely."

Aaron laughed. "Wait til you get to work with her. The other girl, the one who worked with here before you, Kelly? She had a really hard time with Hyunjae. They had fights and everything."

This suddenly seemed a little more severe than an isolated woman. But I still withheld judgement, since I didn't know if the other teacher had been abrasive or something anyway. I only replied with a "Hmm."

All the while, students had been passing us on the boardwalks, too and from the cafeteria. Several seniors, girls, saw Aaron, and hailed him. He was a favorite with the seniors, and he didn;t care that they heard him. "Oh! Are you talking about the Psycho?"

I was kind of floored. Even the students, who are normally very polite at least to your face, had no problem airing their derisive nickname about a teacher. "Yeah," Aaron confirmed, in that humming, sypathetic tone you use when you know someone else has to deal with shit you don't.

They began to expand, warming to their subject. "She is so literally crazy. Like, the stuff she does is so weird. We had what was supposed to be a conversation course? That all she did was literature in. Like, she picked a whole bunch of weird books, and our 'conversation' was supposed to be by reading and talking about it in class. But then all she does is argue with you! Like, she never supports your opinion, and just tears you down."

Please keep in mind, gentle readers, this was a Korean high school. And this woman was introducing college-level reading material from American universities and expecting college-level discourse. But we'll discuss that in a bit, when we talk about the school fighting her curriculum.

At any rate, Aaron shooed the kids off, and I wandered back inside to my desk.

Waiting a bit to see if there's any interest...

Definitely an interested anon here!!

I wanna hear! I love hearing about crazy people. Especially crazy teachers because I want to be a teacher and I can console myself that no matter what, I will never be as bad as them.

Keep goinnnnnnnnnnng!

don't stop! :D *encouragement*

okay one or two more...

This is really sad. I know Korea has a social stigma against mental illness but the social reaction of the teacher and student doesn't exactly help and actually feeds the crazy.

She said she thinks her students despise her and it's true. It could be a self-fulfilling prophecy but it doesn't exactly help that it's true and just brings out a defensive nature.

To be fair, no one despised her. The students were all very polite to her when she was with them, but vented about her when she wasn't. That was, until pressure from other places in her life drove her to start acting out more, at which time the students took a less kind view of her. The two students I mentioned were kind of special cases, and didn't represent the behavior of the rest of the class. If they did talk about her, it definitely wasn't in public, in view of other students and teachers.

The thing is, Hyunjae really did have a legitimate persecution complex. Every little thing was amplified a thousand fold in her eyes; what was just a lukewarm relationship between too offices to her was a hostile attack, in the case of the Spanish teacher.

I still do feel sorry for her, but there was a good deal of refusal to compromise on her part. Even when it came to her bosses. If she thought something was right, then by god she was going to do it, regardless of whether or not she was allowed to. This didn't help with things like teaching classes together, or listening to students about their ideas in literature.

So yeah. It truly is unfortunate that she couldn't get help for all of this, but there was still a lot that at her age, she should have known better.

Yes, I agree that at her age, she should've known better and I am actually in favor that she needs some sort of mental health counseling at the very least.

But the fact that they talk negatively behind her back just enforce/encourage her... erm... "mindset"? And while it may be more out of courtesy to you as a warning, the teacher's warning you about the crazy one would probably just fuel her paronoia if she knew. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the fact that mental illness is a social stigma leads to a spiral that escalates insteads of pacifies outbreaks. I think it's very easy to have one small mistake, one small break that would go unnoticed in, say, America that would brand someone as "crazy" in Korea and once you are branded as "crazy", that's that, you're ostricized from the community... which only feeds the crazy thoughts. I guess I'm trying to say it's all a downward spiral from there.

At least that is how it seems to me in the Korean-fob community in the US. (Had a very nice Korean friend go through this. Thankfully she found non-Korean friends to help her though her troubled time though no one in the Korean community seems to keep in touch with her anymore.) Motherland Korea seems so much hardcore about it than the second gen US citizens.

No, it doesn't absolve her for her own negative actions or the fact she thinks she's always right, but I'd like to think the community isn't completely blameless as well. At the same time, I don't think they should've coddled her in anyway. I think having an anonymous hotline with no judgement and having a community that holds no stigma on mental illness might have changed your situation.

Haha, in a perfect world... /delusions

I am very glad you got out safe and unharmed from the confrontation though.

[ SECRET POST #2074 ]

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