First Day Without Pay

I woke up at 6.30am to get some emails sent to the various colleagues on various matters.

I realised it took me an hour just to do that - locate information, make references, decide on who to keep in the loop, what to type.

I guess when you are on the go all the time, as what we do when we are in school, we just do them in a flit without thinking much, not realising that even emailing takes up a substantial amount of time.

Now I know why people list 'reply to email' as part of their jobscope.

As teachers, 'reply to email' is not even considered a jobscope. It's just a peripheral to what we really do. Often, the emails we reply to entail jobs that take hours or days to complete, so replying emails is not considered part of the work.

You'd think I got no work to do already, right?

I have finished setting the paper my boss wanted me to set, but I haven't submitted it to him yet. I had wanted to yesterday, but suddenly, I was gripped by this fear that he might sit me down last evening to do a 'quick vetting' with me, so I decided to pass him the soft copy in a thumbdrive (nevermind that I can't find my thumbdrive now) via a colleague next week when the deadline for the paper was due.

Then I have another task to do: to set individual targets for 77 kids for Science before emailing it to the new teacher for her to key in 'because you know your kids better' (as quoted from you-know-who).

Well, I can only pray that there won't be more work after this.