Pissy Matches
Just about everybody in the department at school is in a pissy mood these days. This is my third year here, and I've been through "ends of semesters" and stress times and "crunch times" but I've never seen anything like this. The tension is palpable. At least it is to me, but maybe I'm just imagining it. Maybe it's because we're doing Medea, which is not exactly a laugh riot.
It just seems like so many people are having problems either with people outside of the department or people inside the department. I'm getting used to doors opening and rooms ejecting one or two students stomping off on the verge of tears. And, of course, some of them are talking to me about things.
I tell you, whoever put out that women are all about communication, clearly didn't spend time around a lot of them. If I go through one more time when one of my students says to me that so-and-so hasn't done this or is doing that or said that in this particular tone and this student has set thoughts as to why she doesn't deserve such treatment and I say, "Did you tell so-and-so that?" and student says, "Pfft. No. It wouldn't matter if I did.", I'm going to scream.
Okay, I'm going to soapbox here for a moment.
We spend so much time in this culture promoting and celebrating battle and combat in some form or another. I think we'd be well served from some attention on conflict resolution. It just pains me to see these women stepping into common relationship problems, where they are able to be hurt, able to argue, able to vocalize (at least to me) their position and sometimes even able to stand up for themselves, but where they are ill-equipped to confront and resolve their conflicts. And apparently we, their elders, are not helping much.
I referred someone in the show who's having problems with a show-mate to the director, my boss. So this person went to her. Later, I asked what steps the director, my boss, was taking. She informed me that my boss wasn't taking steps, but that she had told this person to pretend that the comments she was getting were actually compliments.
Really?
Yep.
Wow.
It just seems like so many people are having problems either with people outside of the department or people inside the department. I'm getting used to doors opening and rooms ejecting one or two students stomping off on the verge of tears. And, of course, some of them are talking to me about things.
I tell you, whoever put out that women are all about communication, clearly didn't spend time around a lot of them. If I go through one more time when one of my students says to me that so-and-so hasn't done this or is doing that or said that in this particular tone and this student has set thoughts as to why she doesn't deserve such treatment and I say, "Did you tell so-and-so that?" and student says, "Pfft. No. It wouldn't matter if I did.", I'm going to scream.
Okay, I'm going to soapbox here for a moment.
We spend so much time in this culture promoting and celebrating battle and combat in some form or another. I think we'd be well served from some attention on conflict resolution. It just pains me to see these women stepping into common relationship problems, where they are able to be hurt, able to argue, able to vocalize (at least to me) their position and sometimes even able to stand up for themselves, but where they are ill-equipped to confront and resolve their conflicts. And apparently we, their elders, are not helping much.
I referred someone in the show who's having problems with a show-mate to the director, my boss. So this person went to her. Later, I asked what steps the director, my boss, was taking. She informed me that my boss wasn't taking steps, but that she had told this person to pretend that the comments she was getting were actually compliments.
Really?
Yep.
Wow.
posted by - caj at 11:53 PM
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