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Oh, the jobs i had...

i did some jobs, you may call disgusting: cleaning in a cafeteria, milking cows.

i cleaned after animals in a zoo, and shoved dirty sheets into industrial laundry machines.

disgusting is doeable.

i did some jobs that are mind-numbingly boring, like quality testing tin cans.

i had a few nice jobs, helping people with their houseplants, and installing windows in apartment buildings.

but the most dead, depressing, hopeless sink of a job was teaching English to university kids.

Don't get me wrong, i understand that what i do is not exactly holding civilization from collapse, nor do i hold a pulsing heart in my hand. my job never amounted to much at all in any rational perspective. and i understand the mind of youths: of all the things to stumble across in life, my courses in advanced conversational English, and English for the service industry, is about as important as watching rocks grow. i get it.

and yet...

well let me tell you about a college i worked in here, in wuhan. the place is a semi-private institution which means it draws grants and subsidies from the government but is without a doubt created to turn a profit. it is also loosely affiliated with a more substantial, recognized university, so the enrollees can claim they went to that university and studied in the....college. its a clever trick of omission, which will not pan out if someone, say, an HR rep checked the diploma. but more about the students later.

this was one of the first gigs i had here in Wuhan. i did not know, what it's going to be like. ....

god forgive us....

the place as i explained is a for profit institution. and as such, the policies that were taken were to both exact tuition and govt. support and spend as little as possible on everything.there was this heavy air of apathy that started whenever you set foot inside. everything was neglected. The halls were filthy, the food sucked, the computers only worked on Saturday, and you had to get a mouse for the screen, cause it was a touch screen in name only. the restrooms were kept at a state, of being mopped, but only once and only with water, so as to just give the whole floor a nice, uniform cover of piss. and piss there was plenty, because the urinals were hooked to the wall but not to the sewer. you had to get a mouse for the screen, cause it was a touch screen in name only. the restrooms were kept at a state, of being mopped, but only once and only with water, so as to just give the whole floor a nice, uniform cover of piss. and piss there was plenty, because the urinals were hooked to the wall but not to the sewer.

nsequently , there was this heavy air of apathy that started whenever you set foot inside. everything was neglected. The halls were filthy, the food sucked, the computers only worked on Saturday, and you had to get a mouse for the screen, cause it was a touch screen in name only. the restrooms were kept at a state, of being mopped, but only once and only with water, so as to just give the whole floor a nice, uniform cover of piss. and piss there was plenty, because the urinals were hooked to the wall but not to the sewer. nsequently , there was this heavy air of apathy that started whenever you set foot inside. everything was neglected. The halls were filthy, the food sucked, the computers only worked on Saturday, and you had to get a mouse for the screen, cause it was a touch screen in name only. the restrooms were kept at a state, of being mopped, but only once and only with water, so as to just give the whole floor a nice, uniform cover of piss. and piss there was plenty, because the urinals were hooked to the wall but not to the sewer.

the fake marble sheets that covered the first and third floor (but not the second) , tended to just fall off the wall, as that whatever was holding them up was not....holding them up the result would be that occasionally you would hear a loud bang, which would later turn out to be the smashed tile on the floor.

as for chalk, there was plenty. all you needed to do is go downstairs, and around the corner, where you'll find it in a mass if boxes, all white, resting uncovered upon a wooden pallet, the seranwrap pealed away in sadness. the chalk would range from brittle to soggy, depending on the humidity.

the kids that went there, for the most part, internlized the gloomy atmosphere, and held on to no hope at all, as graduation day encroached. they delved in nothing energetic, but curricular or otherwise. none of them got laid. the little convenient stores all around the campus sold many things, yet the condoms had a coat of dust on them, as they sat on the shelves and expired.

teaching under these conditions was very much an act of throwing eggs on a rock and hoping the rock will break. it is not that the kids lacked intelligence. the spread seemed to be normal enough. it was just that going to a place like that meant you are DOOMED, and have no hope whatsoever of amounting to anything. so better just play cellphone games for four years, and cheat on every assignment or exam. even the more active students, and there was occasional hints of that, would not eschew this methodology. i remember once getting a full 2-page article for an MA program that i was asked to seriously review, that was just an article from the Guardian that i read a few days before. oh and the citation was about a totally different subject.

staff was mostly nice, yet there was this same "abandon all hope, all ye enter" look on their faces.

at some point some enterpeizing individual opened a 'pink room' just in front of the school gate. I suppose for comfort of use for the young gallants. I never went inside, but for a time i had sone hope that here, the professional ministrations would raise the collective spirit. even an establishment such as that soon closed shop.

this air of sexlessness, soul-sucking, depression inducing locality was unbearable! it was a struggle to ride out the contract, before i snapped.

and this was my worst job. i have had other university gigs, and taught students in all kind of venues some incompetent, some absurdly mismanaged. but i have never experienced such an abysmall existence as teaching in that place.