Teacher, Teacher

I am now a teacher.

...Yeah, big laugh track here. I didn't see that coming either.

Since i've run my account to it's maximum low and am now officially out of cash, I decided to get a pick-up job that will provide me with some cash to last me a few months while I work my ass off making money for my movie.

I was thinking of being a barista for Starbucks or even just plain old waitressing, but at the last moment a friend of mine roped me into teaching english to Koreans...

And though I never really thought about of becoming a teacher, the job is rewarding and frustrating at the same time. Most times I feel like a fake teacher, since I don't have any education or english units, but it feels great to be able to sit down and just struggle with these people.

Since my school provides mostly for one on one education, I only work with five people for the whole eight hours, though I should be getting the full eight people when December rolls in.

The pay is dirt cheap, but since I'm flat broke I took advantage of it while working and waiting for my other checks to clear.

So far, all four of my students are adults, save for one, Kim, whose twelve. Sweet little kid, except he's still a bit nervous around me and doesn't really feel like trying all that much. There are times when I feel like reaching over and just throttling him, but I think that has to do with the fact that he usually slacks off when I feel really bumfuck tired. He's kind of like a baby that way, reacting to the energies of the adults around him.

He likes animals and wants to be a veterinarian, so I'm finding out ways on how to teach him. The remaining three's ages range from 22 to 30, but i'm lucky that they're all pretty much in the intermediate to semi-advanced levels. They're pretty good, so we're not like two idiots who are trying to guess each other's words.

I like my students. :)

They think i'm cool for whipping their asses into working. One of them actually studied until 2am. But they like me, which is nice.

It's a nice fun...hobby, I guess. I always wondered what it would be like to be a teacher, but here I am!

My grandparents were teachers (and my dad moonlights as a terror professor at a local business school so he doesn't count) so I always wondered why they worked this kind of life for such little pay...

I guess it's because of the instant gratification that you get when you're students discover a new word or watch them get better and better...

Or it could be that when I'm teaching them, I feel totally in control and mondo adored!

Is This a Joke?

I'm addicted to imdb. I swear. I have to use it for my job, to play six degrees of Kevin Bacon, or just to find out if that blonde in sitcom A was the same girl from that drama b that I saw during the 1980's.

So i'm always there. I zone out there. The facts of the stars relaxes me...

Out of bored and dumb curiousity, I decided to check on Jessica Simpson and found this:

Though she plays a dumb blonde on her hit TV show, according to the August issue of Vanity Fair, her I.Q is in the 160s. That would place her in the "genius" area and she could apply for a membership to the brainiac club Mensa.

Wow Jessica, if that is true, where did all those points go? Your hair? Do you bust a few when you sing high octaves?

Or could it be--gasp!--that all that crap in the Newlyweds is just for show? That she's really just pretending to be a dumb blonde (Oh God, I can't look)

My mom--who is fond of her "antics"--defends her by saying she spent most of her life working and not really focused on studying. Kind of like leaving a kid in the wild, eating nothing but berries and being raised by apes.

You have your average American youth left to the mercy of pop culture...so this is what happens? Shit, and here I was expecting something like Nell.

She went to high school, she must have absorbed something there. I mean, with a 160 IQ, you would have at least figured out that if you take a hansom cab in New York, it will stop at a red light, and it does so when a driving pulls on these leather straps called reigns.

I'm baffled, I truly am. I mean, I don't expect to do cure cancer, invent a theorem or even write a critical play. I just want to see her speak Enlgish or figuring out that a pedicure, manicure, and a full body massage takes more than an hour. Or that dry cooking mushrooms need to be...well, cooked.

Maybe she's good friends with the writer...maybe she's got one hell of a publicist...

Or maybe it's her plan.

To make everyone including her husband think that she's dumb. To sing cover songs while caressing herself just to get you to buy them. Then actually acting dumb on TV shows and Movies, then getting a nice MTV contract to convince even more people that you're a moron.

Then, when we're all convince, when we least expect it...she'll drop the bomb and actually say she's smart.

Like, really smart. Like, she's built a bomb. Like, a nuclear bomb. Like, to kill us with. Like, to rule the world.

Preproduction

It's funny how some things just...happen.

Laarni and I are meeting some deadlines for this week, then officialy beginning pre-production by January of next year. We'll probably be spending most of December streamlining the idea before we finally put them on nice, shiny, expensive paper.

....

Sometimes i'm amazed that Laarni and I get along so well. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of things in common, have exact to similar ideas, but there's still that one outstanding thing that somehow keeps the two of us from being total pals.

But I am happy to say that I can totally see myself rooming with her.

Pretty good, considering that we are going to room together when we do our documentary. It's a planned three month immersion/working vacation.

Of course, our parents will probably think we're nuts and people will try and stop but who the f cares?

We're at this point in our lives where were sick of people patting our heads and discounting our ideas just because we're young. Or insulting our intelligence just because they've lived longer.

It's annoying...

Well, one things for sure. We're tired of working for other people. We've had some shitty bosses (boy, have we had some shitty bosses) and what we went through is enough to last me a decade.

If I have to work a nine to fiver under some chump who thinks they're god or with gossipy geriatricts who have nothing better to do with their lives...they can just shove it.

My mom says it's worse in other offices since my office was pretty small, but I think all that shit was excacerbated because we lived in a fish bowl.

So i'd rather bust my ass being my own boss, and hang by a nail and hope I make it, than be a pee-on for the rest of my life.

...

Good grief, i'm pissed again. Must learn to forget about those people.

Making A Movie

Yesterday I made my first move to being a filmmaker: I made a successful solicitation.

Granted, it was to my uncle, and he only gave me a hundred dollars to start me off.

But a hundred dollars converted goes a long way, and for a ten minute film and a filmmaker who still can't figure out where she's going to come up with the rest of the $1,400.00 to buy a nice semi-pro camera...a hundred dollars is a good thing. A hundred is a hundred less of the big pic.

He's also buying me books that I need, and is thinking of helping me out with the camera.

My other uncle is willing to lend me a hand and teach me some lighting techniques, while the rest are considering shelling out some cash--though probably not as big as a hundred dollars.

I know they're all family, but I can't help but feel a bit proud that they actually listened to me pitch and bought the idea, even if only one of my uncles pulled out his wallet.

Laarni and I (who's the other half of this enterprise) were pretty happy to get some money in our "film fund" that we didn't earn. As it is, what we're making right now is going to go to equipment and production costs for our documentary.

I'm looking for other possible jobs to make more money to fund this thing, but of course, i'm going to have to find more sponsorships.

I don't know whether my family was moved by my passion or stumped by my sheer stupidity to learn everything along the way.

Either way, we made our first hundred, and which brings me a step closer to realizing my dreams. It may seem small, but for a girl who did't really expect anything big, it's more of a giant leap.