Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

Why would they schedule the Beginning Teacher's Conference in Edmonton on the Thursday-Saturday right before the Monday on which progress reports are due?

Was going to post this on facebook but realized there was no way of doing this without sounding like I'm whining and/or emo. But seriously, at this junction, I just want to crawl into a corner and quit.

I thought I posted about this when I first conceived of the idea back in August but I can't find it and have thus concluded that I only posted it on Christian's wall, not on this blog. That being said, I realized, in August, en route to Fort McMurray, what my informal writing project is "about" - a question I hated answering before that I no longer hate answering because I actually have a response now:

It is about the idea - the tragedy - that people can't bring themselves to say the things they want to say, as often as they need.

Funny thing. Since the only cinema in Fort McMurray doesn't have (in my opinion) the greatest taste on what movies to show, I find myself going to see the films that I might think are half-decent. Take my recent screening of "Easy A". If I were in Toronto, I would put 1o to 1 odds that I'd have waited for it come out onto DVD before renting it or illegally downloading it. But no, when I check Landmark Cinemas here and see something that I might actually enjoy, I fly into a panic that this might be the last time that a good film makes it way here and promptly drive down to see it.

For the record, "Easy A" was quite good. Funnier than I expected. Not quite as slick as I expected.

Challenge: how to write something super romantic without sounding super cheesy.

Once again, I feel the need the assert something I've ranted about maybe once or twice before: the fact that something is "indie" does not mean that it's good. In fact, let's something diabolically sneaky about indie elitists that makes them even worse to talk to than people who like Nickleback.

One of the first signs that you're talking to an indie elitist who knows nothing about actual good music is that they will automatically write off anything popular as bad. Katy Perry? Awful. Lady Gaga? Freak of nature. Nelly Furtado? Taylor Swift...? You get the picture. Now, let's not kid ourselves; there's a lot of awful pop music out there. But with the rise of the indie rock movement of the mid 2000s, there's a lot of awful indie music out there too. The difference is that because pop music is widely known (hence the term popular) and often heard, we are in a much better position, as a general body, to make judgments about it. In fact, pop music tends to even itself out over time - the good songs stay and bad songs go - it just takes a little bit more time because it's so in-your-face and catchy.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of good pop music to be found at any given time. So when some indie rock elitist refers to pop music as "garbage," that's the first sign I get that this person probably knows nothing about good music; he just subscribes to the indie elitist creed that if it's popular, it's bad - and because there IS so much bad pop music, and because bad pop music is so in-your-face, no one calls them out on it because an indie elitist only needs to turn on the radio and catch it at a time when it's playing bad music (often) to "prove" his point. This, I think, is a cop-out and is generally the mark of an indie-elitist ignoramus who takes advantage of the fact that the person who likes pop music doesn't KNOW enough about indie music to call him out in return.

That's the diabolical part of it. Indie music, for all its rise in popularity, is still not QUITE popular enough for the general public to be able to discern its qualities, good and bad. I'm willing to bet that most people don't listen to enough indie music to be able to be confident about criticizing it. When someone who listens to pop music challenges an indie-elitist about what songs the latter thinks is good, the indie-elitist just fires off a bunch of obscure British indie-rock artists who have names starting with "The" and chances are, the other person hasn't heard them/doesn't know enough about indie rock to be able to reply, with equal confidence, the truth about lots of indie music: most of those bands use awkward, awful-sounding chord progressions and STILL manage to sound unoriginal because they all sound awkward and awful in the same way.

Again, there is, without question, lots of good indie music. I just think that many indie-elitists don't know how to tell the difference between the good and bad music within their own genre. In fact, they're a lot like people who can't tell the difference between good and bad pop music, except that the only people who know and listen to enough indie music to call them out on it are usually exactly the same!

See, that's the beauty of pop music. EVERYONE knows it - so bad pop music eventually gets its due in the same way that good pop music goes down in history. Though the very thing that works against indie music - its obscurity - limits recognition for good indie music, that same thing also limits our ability to recognize that there are just as many indie-music fans as pop music fans who have astoundingly bad taste. Fans of indie music are just able to get away with "claiming" that they have good taste in music because a. there are less people who have the required knowledge to call them out on it, and b. there is A LOT more indie music than pop music. That's just a qualitative difference in the nature of music - public attention is short so there can only BE about 40 or so songs at any given time that fall into the "pop" music category. But because indie music does not have "popularity" as its inherent quality, there is over 10 times the amount of indie music in circulation as pop music. Like I said, it is an inherent, qualitative difference. There CANNOT be 1000 pop songs that are all considered popular. There CAN, however, be 1000 indie songs that are considered independent. Because of this, indie-elitists can hide behind their own veil of obscurity, relatively free from criticism in the same way that postmodernists hide behind their own language as a defense against those who claim that postmodernists are spewing forth nonsense 80% of the time they speak.

Postmodernists and indie-rock-elitists have pretty much built up their own ideologies in the same manner. There seems to be this claim that "if you don't like our kind, that is due to your own ignorance. If you truly understood us, you'd agree. The fact that you don't agree is a sign of your inability to make a sound judgment". It's a cop-out, in many ways, and one with which I am getting increasingly annoyed, especially since musical genre has NOTHING to do with inherent quality of individual songs. In a nutshell, it goes something like this:

(Jon Wong is listening to popular radio)
Indie-elitist: Ugh, what is this?
Jon Wong: Um... Rihanna?
Indie-elitist: Popular radio, huh? Not really a fan.
Jon Wong: What kind of music do you like?
Indie-elitist: I dunno, I listen to a lot of indie music... stuff like Arctic Monkeys, The Wombats, Vampire Weekend, some British rock band that turns out sounding exactly like one of the above, Josh Johnson, some variant of Josh Johnson.
Jon Wong: Oh, ok.
(A few days later, Jon Wong is listening to Iron & Wine)
Indie-elitist: Wow Jon, you like Iron & Wine?
Jon Wong: Um... yes; they make good music...
Indie-elitist: And here I thought all you listened to was top-40 garbage.
Jon Wong: Ok...

The absolute worst thing about some indie-elitists is that they won't shut up about this kind of stuff. Look, I'm not saying that my taste in music is the definitive standard by which all other music should be judged. However, I am aware of the fact that music taste is a very subjective matter and it is rude and insulting to deliberately let someone know that you consider their music to be trash. When someone plays Nickelback, I do not jump in and tell them how bad I think Nickelback is. Indie-elitists need to learn this form of tact. I'm sure that you think your bland, indie-rock music is the greatest thing to come along since The Beatles, but can't you keep that kind of opinion to yourself? When I get defensive about your attacks on pop music, it's not because I am an ignorant fool who can't recognize the merits of indie music, it's because I think YOU are an ignorant fool who isn't enough polite enough to recognize how rude and disrespectful you are when you not only tell me that my favorite music is bad, but you venture to assert it in such a way that makes this opinion of yours sound like fact when it is not.

Being a first-year teacher is far too soul-lacerating of a job to not have a place to go home to at the end of the day.

This is interesting. I remember posting about this phrase and about how it made no sense to me. After 2 and a half years, I have finally progressed enough on an intellectual level to understand it with little effort:

"The ‘I’ who results from the process of self-ing, then, acquires an awareness of itself as itself, at the same time that the self gains an awareness of the self as other, as the object of its own regard"
-- Sociology paper


What that's saying (though I forget the context) is that there's this process called "self-ing" where you create or come to recognize the "self" as an entity. For example, if Jon Wong is the subject in question, he understands "Jon Wong" or "me" as the person who is doing the understanding. At the same time, he can also remove himself from the situation and appreciate "Jon Wong" from an objective standpoint.

I've even progressed to the point where I understand that that theory has a modernist flavor to it because it presupposes that the self is a fixed identity that can be recognized as long as we develop the capacity to do so.

Proof that I haven't been stagnating. Unless I'm wrong (Christian?) in which case ignore everything I've written.

So... here, read this.

I enjoy being right about things as much as the next person but this was one of those cases where I was hoping I was wrong. And maybe I am still wrong. Certainly, though, I have not seen evidence of this (based on all of 2 weeks of gainful employment).

You see, a few days ago, I was lying in bed trying to sleep when this horrifying thought occurred to me: "From the moment I woke up this morning until now, as I am trying to sleep, I have not ONCE stopped thinking about stuff related to teaching."

This terrified me because I realized that as a full-time teacher, this has simply become a truth about my life... and I don't like it. I have never been (nor will I ever be) one of those teachers who wants or enjoys having the teaching profession as the center of their life. I have met teachers who are like this. I know a teacher at my school now who is like this. There are some people who are simply born to be teachers - they are able to derive happiness from being a teacher. I am not one of them. I can derive satisfaction from being a teacher (if you read the referring post, you know how I distinguish between the two), and I also know that I am born with (or have developed) the skills to be a good teacher...

But there is a difference between being born to be a teacher and being born with the skills necessary to be successful at the profession. See, no one would (or "should" is perhaps the operative term) be able to tell that Jon Wong and Teaching aren't exactly a natural fit. Why? Because of this particular combination:

1. I possess (or think I possess) all the skills necessary to be a good teacher.
2. I have an instinctive inclination against being half-assessed about anything.

In basic terms, you could plunk me down in front of practically ANY job and I'd probably do said job to the best of my abilities. I don't really make half-assed attempts. As an indolent sloth, I usually get around this by not doing things at all. I believe in the phase "if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well," I just don't consider very many things worth doing. But I digress...

So if you take that part of the equation, patch it together with the fact that admittedly, many of my strengths are applicable to the teaching profession (empathy, interest in youth culture, ability to speak clearly and in an interesting fashion, etc...), well then naturally, one might conclude that Jon Wong and Teaching are a match made in heaven!

Except there's a difference between being great at something and liking it. It's just not the most common situation you could encounter because most people aren't good at things they don't like to do. Most of us aren't even good at things we DO like to do. And don't get me wrong, I don't DISLIKE teaching. I just don't like it enough to be ok with the fact that I spend all of my free time thinking about it. I like teaching to the extent that going to work does not fill me with dread. But I do have other interests that I am having a hard time pursuing because teaching eats up my life even when I'm not in school.

By the way, none of this caught me by surprise. It's a well known fact that teaching (especially in your first two years) eats up your life. I'm simply pointing out that so far, my fears from the post I made in December have been justified. When you have to think about paying rent and putting food on the table, you can't just decide to stop working because it's not the perfect job for you. You trucker on because that's how real life works.

I'm going to leave this post for now. I'll have a better idea of whether or not I believe myself a few months down the line. After all, I haven't really given this profession a chance to grow on me. Come to think of it, though, maybe we should make this exposure to harsh reality part of our education programs. Then nobody but the truly dedicated would really want to be teachers, you say? Well, it would solve our surplus teacher problems, at least.