Saturday, April 20, 2013

The Last 2 Weeks, condensed.

Now, I usually don't complain (a lot). If I do complain, then usually about the weather, the GEMA, or other injustices that run rampant on this planet.

But the last 2 weeks are definitely worth to be complained about.

Firstly, my job center decided to put me into a course for the next 6 months, that apparently has the aim to aid me in finding work at some point in the future (yeah, as if...).

I don't mind so much the getting up every morning to go to the course, because the other participants are actually decent people (from whom I've already learned more about life than I probably will learn in the entire 6 months of the course about anything else), but I do mind going there to listen to weird women talking about good food, bad food, eating habits, concentration, meditation and god-knows-what-else! If I want to find my inner peace, I'll bring up YouTube and watch one of the Dalai Lama's speeches!

Furthermore, I totally dislike the way those people treat us there. They do not listen when we say stuff. (But hey, I guess most of us are already used to that, seeing as our job centers never listen to us either!) They complain about our hair, clothes, teeth, weight, skills, education and what-not-all and tell us to change those things if we want to be successful in finding a job.

My response to that was: "I'm an assistant for foreign languages and business studies, I'd prefer work in the field of translation, ideally in some office. I'm not intending to apply as an actress in Hollywood or something."

Although the other people in the course said, I could also settle for that, the way I "act" in the classroom. ;)

A lot of people there already told me, on different occasions, that they think I am over-qualified for both this course and for our job center. (I've got to agree with that!)

Mondays and Wednesdays are our "working" days, where we spend our time in the area of work that we chose. (There were only 3 options, wood working, painting and warehouse, so being the upcoming Picasso that I am, I settled for the painter's workshop - mostly also because all the cool people are there).

If you want a little insight as to what we do there, have a look at those:

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3328/foto0135a.jpg
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3359/bluelj.jpg
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/2285/redzk.jpg

COMING TO A WALL IN YOUR HOUSE SOON!

Anyway, if you think this is already terrible, then try Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. lol

On Tuesdays we have 2 different women "teaching" us about food and health related stuff. Last week we learned that Coca-Cola with sugar is healthier (for the pancreas, atleast) than Coca-Cola with artificial sweeteners. We also learned that Butter is healthier than Margarine, because Margarine is produced synthetically. This week we learned for 2.5 hours that coffee is good, and for the next 2.5 hours we got told by the second woman the reasons why coffee is bad.

Thursdays and Fridays are even worse, those are spent with one and the same woman, who usually does nothing but diss us for the clothes we wear, the way we wear our hair, how overweight we are, and makes us look as if we are all generally "too dumb to live".

So far, I haven't been insulted (yet) by that "teacher" (who, if I may add, totally fails at her job, being as incapable of working with human beings as she is) but one person she likes to pick on is our illiterate person that we have there. (Who is actually a pretty smart guy, always has good ideas, works well in a team, has a driver's license, can write a little bit, can identify numbers enough to tell the teacher that she wrote something wrong on the board, when she wrote numbers like this on there: 1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6).

He also told her that he cannot read and write (well) on Thursday last week (he doesn't like to tell it in front of the entire course, because he's afraid that people laugh about it), but Friday last week she complained that he wasn't writing anything down during lessons...

Last Thursday she sent him outside the classroom, because he was apparently "interrupting" the lessons with his talking, even though he was talking about the topic we were discussing right then and there. I told him that, if she sends him out again like that, I'll just come along. Because I see no use in sitting in a room where a so-called "teacher" doesn't respect her "students".

I wonder if those teachers even know what goes on in the mind of a person who cannot read and write, and how much it hurts them to be insulted as dumb. :(  (And also if they know how much it hurts the self-confidence of an illiterate person).

I can only recommend those teachers to watch the movie "The Pride of Jesse Hallam" to see what problems illiterate people have to deal with every day - and even more so nowadays where computers dominate nearly every work place (the movie has, of course, a happy ending, but that isn't always given in the real world because -a lot of times- the right motivation is missing).