Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2012-09-08 03:44 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-09-08 03:44 pm
[ SECRET POST #2076 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2076 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 5 pages, 108 secrets from Secret Submission Post #297.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 1 2 3 4 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
As a note, I do hope that I have no former students reading this. I coincidentally got a facebook message from one of them right after I posted the first part of it up, so I wonder. They're really smart kids, but it would honestly feel a little weird if they stumbled on this.
__________
The next few days are tense, but life goes on. Hyunjae does what everyone expects her to do, and like some demented feral cat, tries to finish off the “fight” she started with me. Again, this plays in with her delusions that she's fighting some glorious battle for goodness and she's some paragon of virtue, and she has to bring people accountable.
This is extremely problematic, as you can imagine, because Hyunjae blows everything way out of proportion for one thing. For another, she has no actual grasp of what constitute a wrong being done to her; in her mind, everyone is out to get her, from her bosses to the students to her coworkers.
I'm walking out of my office, when I hear my name being called. I know the voice, and automatically tense up and turn. It's Hyunjae, of course.
As a bit of backstory-- after my initial confrontation with Hyunjae, I texted my Mom and asked for advice on what to do if she should try something like that again. My Mom's response was quick. “Punch her in the face. And then yell at her like you would a heifer.” (We're farmers, and heifers are basically teenaged cows, so basically they're hormonal assholes that weigh 800 lbs.)
I'm shaking. I don't want to be, but I'm shaking because I have no idea what she's going to do.
She walks over to me, and starts with her trademarked, “You can't just walk away from someone when they're trying to talk to you. Just because you don't like what someone is saying doesn't mean you get to run away. You need to face life.”
This crazy bitch is lecturing me. For not staying there and letting her pick a fight with me, for not letting her put her hands on me. For not letting her get her way.
Oh no. Oh hell no.
At first I just say, “Listen, just leave me alone, okay?” She doesn't care, and continues with, “No, you have to face your problems.”
I take in a breath, and start shouting. “LEAVE ME ALONE.” My voice is too loud, and it bangs around the high walls. A student passing us whips her head over, then looks away and hurries by.
I go on, “GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE.” I probably said more, but I can't remember it.
Unfortunately, Hyunjae is not phased by shouting. She blinks at me, and then starts, “Listen to you, shouting. You should be ashamed, loosing your temper.” In Korea, it is a HUGE faux pas to lose face in front of people, especially your “superiors”. Technically, because Hyunjae has 15+ years on me, she's my superior.
I start to walk away again. She follow, blithering on about not running from my problems. I'm headed for the stairwell, and I have the realization that she would literally follow me around the school, and we would probably have a repeat performance of last time. I don't want this.
It's at this point I abruptly reverse directions and say, “You know what, I bet there's someone who would love to talk with you.” I start back toward Hyunjae's big office, where about half a dozen other teachers also have their desks, including our boss, Aeja.
I walk I, Hyunjae tailing me, and beeline for Aeja's desk. My wods are calm, but my voice is shaking when I say, “Aeja do you have a minute?”
She must have heard me shouting outside, because she says, “Of course, Khronos, what is it?”
I can't summon any words to summarize. So I just say, “Hyunjae wants to speak with you.”
Hyunjae has folded herself meekly in her chair, staring at her desktop.
Aeja immediately starts talking to Hyunjae. I get the feeling she's scolding Hyunjae, even though her voice is soft and even. Her hand has found mine, and she's holding it to comfort me. My hand is shaking so hard, Aeja's hand is trembling.
Hyunjae breaks in every once in a while to try to incriminate me or defend herself. “She hasn't been replying to my emails! I have documented evidence!” she cries, and I can see her gesturing to her computer out of the corner of my eye. I'm relieved, because the day after Hyunjae had physically confronted me, I emailed Aeja to say that I had cut off any contact with Hyunjae, and would not be responding to her emails.
Aeja rode over the top of Hyunjae to keep talking.
“But you heard her!” Hyunjae says, “Shouting like that! She was the one who was angry. I was just trying to tell her she can't run away...”
Aeja only continues. Hyunjae falls silent and takes her well-mannered drubbing.
When she's doe, Aeja stands, and leads me out of the office, and down the hall, to Aaron's office. He's in there, and Aeja says, “We need to have a talk.”
Aaron is pretty canny. “Oh God. This is about Hyunjae isn't it.”
Aeja hums, and sits me down in one of Aaron's chairs. He comes around, and says, “Okay, what's this about.”
I spill it to him. When I tell him about her grabbing me, his eyes pop. “She assaulted you?” he asks in incredulity. At that point, I hadn't thought about it like that, but she really had. “Yeah. All of my office mates saw it happen...”
I tell him about her accusations of students “plagiarizing”, and her threats to torpedo their grades for it. This is a massive, massive problem, because this is an elite school, and most if not all of the seniors are aiming to get into top ranking Korean colleges, or foreign colleges. Having a dent in grades like that would most likely prevent them from getting in.
He calls in Harriet, the girl who broke the story about Hyunjae's insanity to me earlier. She agrees with my summation, and tells her story. She physically recoils when she hears about Hyujae grabbing me. “She attacked you? Oh my God.”Later on, I would get a lot of apologies from students for that.
When all is said and done, Aaron says to Aeja, “You're going to tell the principle about that, aren't you.”
Aeja asks, “What's that?”
“Her grabbing Khronos?”
A beat of silence. “Yeah, sure sure.”
It turns out that she doesn't. Not for that week anyway. I'm asked to provide an updated shitlist of stuff that Hyunjae has pulled, and give it to Aeja.
Next up: making exams and proctoring
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
I was worried earlier about Hyunjae knowing about where I lived, because she had absolutely no compunctions about visiting teachers near her, or calling them up at ungodly times.
Chris, her other coteacher, at one time lived in the apartment building next to hers. After school, she would show up on Chris' doorstep and ask to come in. She would stay for hours, and would not take hints from Chris to get the fuck out. This was repeated just about every school night until she moved to another building.*
Another foreign teacher in the school told me the story that he had had a project collaborating with Hyunjae. He had to make some material for this project, and he was basically left up to his own devices. They had about a week or two to prepare for everything. The NIGHT before the whole thing was supposed to happen, at something like 1AM, Hyunjae calls this foreign teacher up wanting to “talk about the project”. She wants to force him to change something to her specification, like move his table somewhere. She had an entire week to talk to him, and she didn't have any kind of extraordinary duties preventing her from doing so.
He blows her off, and goes back to sleep.
*This was another weird thing about Hyunjae. Since her move to Seoul to take this temporary job, she had switched apartment buildings about three times, each time citing some kind of problem with her room or the building. Keep in mind, that she had been living in Seoul for less than a year total, because her contract was only a year long as a substitute teacher for the English classes. All I can say was that in retrospect, it was very bizarre. No other teacher moved as much as her.
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
(Anonymous) 2012-09-09 12:34 am (UTC)(link)Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
(Anonymous) 2012-09-09 12:48 am (UTC)(link)Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
The only other thing I could have done was call my landlord, and while he would have shown up, it would have been such a bad idea. :( That guy was so damn intrusive.
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
______
After my one-sided shouting match in the halls, I don't see Hyunjae at all, but I do still have to collaborate with her about the questions for the midterm. Fuckshitballs.
Since we don't share material at all in the midterm, it's no problem. All I have to do is type them up, and get a copy to her. I hear from somewhere that Hyunjae is actually under stricter probation as a teacher now, and she has to submit her final to the principal and vice principal for review before it can be administered to the kids.
I type up my questions, and go to find Hyunjae. I have some vision in my head of throwing the flash drive at her heading and just running away.
She's not in her office. Okay fine, whatever. I'll wait.
Later, still not in her office. It gets to be pretty late, and I still can't find her.
Finally, I run into her by chance in the hallway. She's wild-eyed and skulking, looking like some animal about to be caught. I feel a stab of pity for her, somewhere under my alarm.
She comes up to me, and to her credit, she's actually normal to me. Or a normal as she can get. “Khronos, hi. Do you have the questions done for the midterm?”
“Yeah, I can give them to you right now.”
“Oh no, it's okay! I'll be in the library, you can give them to me then.”
It turns out, that to escape the pressure from the top, she fled to the library, to a little side room that only staff could enter. The librarian, a girl only a few years older than me, rather liked Hyunjae, and let her use the room.
I go into the library, a little weirded out, and ask the librarian, “Uh, Hyunjae...”
She points in the direction. I find my coteacher back there huddled in front of a computer. I hand her the USB drive with my questions on it, and try to keep it as short as possible. I get to leave without another fight. Hooray!
But my victory is short lived. Aeja comes up to me, later, and says that I should be there in the test room when it's being given to help proctor. Keep in mind, that for the most part, only the Korean teachers proctor during midterms. But because of Hyunjae's underhandedness about her test, they want me in there so she doesn't pull anything.
When I say underhandedness, Hyunjae was pulling more domination tactics. She was trying to assign the majority of points and questions about her material. Literature. In a public speaking class. Basically, she got slapped down a bunch of times until she changed it.
I'm not happy about having to proctor with her. The less time I have to spend with her, the better, as far as I'm concerned. But I don't have a choice, so I go.
The morning of the test, I show up and head to the gymnasium, where they have loads of pupil desks lined up. Basically exactly how my highschool did finals, too, actually. It struck a sense of nostalgia with me, and eased my nervousness.
Hyunaje attempts to whisper directions to me about how I should handle proctoring, while a few Korean teachers read instructions for the test. I can barely hear her, so all I say are terse “uh huh”s. She leaves me alone.
I tried to make my material for the students as simple as possible. It's basically just questions about the lectures that, if they reread the lectures, they should be very familiar with it.
After not too long, students' hands go up, requesting help. It's a big damn room with only two teachers, so we split sides. I go to one of them. Of course, it's questions about Hyunjae's material.
In fact, all of the students' questions are about Hyunjae's material. It turns out that her questions are as poorly phrased and nonsensical as her initial material in their class. They're all just reworded from worksheets she handed out. Even as a native English speaker, I'm having trouble deciphering her bullshit.
As I leave one student's side, Hyunjae starts tailing after me, hissing. “You can't help them with material, it's against the rules.”
At this point, I know that Hyunjae would pretty much try any tactic to assert her dominance. Plus, I just don't care. “Right.”
She's not satisfied, and tries to beat it into my head. When I stop responding to her, and just watch the students take the test, she hufs off.
As soon as the test is over, I leave. That was the last time I saw Hyunjae.
Next up: Epilogue and supplementary materials. Also, Q&A-- haave anything you want clarified? Ask me!
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
(Anonymous) 2012-09-09 12:47 am (UTC)(link)Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
While it was fairly apparent even to my Korean teachers she was not well, no one was pushing her to get help.
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
(Anonymous) 2012-09-09 12:56 am (UTC)(link)Q! Did the students end up going on to the schools they wanted? Or at the least, did their marks not suffer too much?
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
Yes! Thankfully the school intervened in her crusade to punish the students, and while they did get a hit in their grades, it wasn't enough to stop them from getting their top school choices. I was super proud of them, they were all great kids.
Re: Crazy people: Hyunjae edition
(Anonymous) 2012-09-09 03:13 am (UTC)(link)