How my day began:
One person turned in front of me. Their light was red. Mine was green. I was cruising the speed limit of 50 km/hr. This driver proceeds to drive 30 km/hr. Out of necessity, I jammed my brakes on to avoid a collision. The next light turned red and caught me. Whew. Maybe this goofy driver would manage to get through the entire string of lights down town. Get moving again and change lanes. Finally get through down town, some goofball is doing 40 km/hr in a 50 zone. Mirror check, shoulder check, gun it a little -- mostly because I like the sound of my Hemi when I do that! Slow driver steps on it. Just enough I can't change lanes back to where I need to be. Really? Vehicle turns in front of me so I sped up to get by this imbecile who was intent on causing an accident. What does she do? Speed up. I was seriously wishing for a bumper car. Bitch would still be crawling out of the woods if I had one, spitting out every damned one of her chicklets. Not sure why this person thought it was appropriate to play such a childish and dangerous game, but she did.
Next, on my bad day list: dealing with the high school. The good ol' automated phone call came through last night to inform me there was an orientation at the high school for all grade 9 and 10 students. Cool. Except the message was rattled off too quickly to grab a pen and write it down. No warning the message contained information requiring a pen and paper. Just a computer voice. My absolute pet peeve. NOBODY EVER WANTS TO TALK TO A COMPUTER!!! So I called to request the information, plus what their actual first day of school was, due to conflicting information, and clarification if there would be a simpler, easier to follow schedule for students.
Unfortunately, I spoke to a vice principal. Not sure which one. Mentioned their message should have some kind of warning that critical information would be in it -- or better yet, have real people call. Well, they can't POSSIBLY call everyone personally because there are far too many students!! What did they do before computers??? Maybe they should use their summers to call parents with this type of information. Or maybe they should simply include it in the package, along with a well explained schedule. Next, my request for a more understandable schedule was completely scoffed at.
I'll explain what the schedule looked like. Every subject for an entire year. Side descriptions of S1, S2 and Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. Header of B1, B2, B3, B4. No explanation as to what these short-hand terms meant. Hmmm. A little stumped. A friend gave me a hand: S1 = semester 1, etc. Q1 - quarter 1, etc. Okay. Makes sense. I'd almost reached that conclusion on my own. B1, etc., I had figured as the blocks/periods. Again, okay. What time do the blocks start and finish? Well, let's see.... Flip through other pages in the package, come up with the block times. But, wait a minute. There's day one and day two. So my kid has to carry around two papers, along with her books and binders, just to figure out where she's supposed to be and at what time of the day she's supposed to be there???? Oh, and don't forget there are no bells in high school!! Very good. Are the people who make these decisions up sniffing glue or crack? What ever it is, they should give it up and simplify absolutely everything.
Anyway, back to my conversation regarding the schedules: I asked if there would be an easier to understand schedule distributed to the students. No, there wouldn't. Why? It's far too difficult to change them now. All right. Will it continue to be so poorly constructed next year or are there plans to make it more understandable? No, probably not since this decision is up to "central" -- whoever that is. How many times have you been questioned about its lack of simplicity? Quite a few. So, let me get this straight. You've had complaints and concerns about students being able to understand this schedule style. You are a vice principal, in a position to recommend sensible changes, BUT you aren't going to recommend anything for next year???? No, she had no intention of doing so. My reply? No problem. I'll create one for my daughter and email you the template so it can be implemented next year. I hung up without so much as a good bye. After all, there's only so much stupid a person can handle in one day.
It should be made legal to numb stupid with a 2 x 4 or muffle the sound of it with duct tape, at the very least. Seriously.
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