My average day is spent working at the school. That is to say, doing my work at the school, not working for the school. During the summer they have classes in the morning, from 8 to 10, and in the evening from 5.30 to 8, so I have the place to myself most of the time. This is all well and good and I’m grateful to D for allowing me to use the place, trying to work at home is just a non-starter. However, there is a terrible temptation to get involved in the school rather than settling down to actual work. D is usually rushing about the place being managerial and simply cannot resist the temptation to pop his head around the door every half an hour to make statements such as ‘let’s open a school in Kiev,’ or ‘I think it would be a good idea if we moved all the furniture from this classroom into that classroom.’ Of course I’m being unfair. There was a massive shakeup of the layout of the classrooms in the first week, partly to make it possible for me to work there, and I’m happy to help out in any way I can. Part of moving all the rooms around meant changing the main entrance from one set of doors to another and I couldn’t help but turn my mind to the problem of how to prevent students from using the old door, which now opens into a classroom, and getting them to smoothly transfer to using the new door, which had never opened in the past. Of course the old door would be locked, but this wouldn’t prevent people perpetually trying the handle or whimpering pathetically to be let in, both of which would be rather annoying for the teacher and the class on the other side of the door. The solution was simple – a free standing signpost in front of the old door that would physically prevent people from reaching for the handle and, at the same time, direct them to the new entrance. I made a nice graphic redirection arrow and a little graphic to go on the new door that subtly indicated it’s new openable status. Not a big deal, but it works great and it’s remarkable how satisfying solving little practical problems like that is. Of course, that was just the start.
Among D’s many and varied talents an eye for good graphic design is notably absent. My old Diagram buddy T came up with the logo for the school and later suffered palpitations when I showed him the mangled uses to which it had been put on posters, banners, leaflets and such like. He went quite white and quivery for a while, a reaction with which I sympathized. Again, to be fair, D didn’t have time to sit around while delicate arty-type people came up with a polished corporate identity for the school. He simply handed the logo and a bunch of information about courses over to a local printshop and asked them to churn out some posters. The results were, as I think I’ve made clear, truly horrendous. D of course would disagree with this assessment and insists on pasting these things on every square inch of wall space. All of my subtle attempts to casually rip them down, spill coffee on them, or otherwise render them unusable have been futile – he just gets another one out from some hidden stash. He has them locked up somewhere in a tamper-proof strongbox with ‘beware of the adder’ signs pasted all over it. The retinal assault eventually became so painful that I hatched a plan to do away with them once and for all by coming up with an alternative. I hit upon the idea of using communist era propaganda images with silly captions. It’s a great wheeze that allows for any number of variations. In the future I want to develop some that have captions along the lines of “It’s a revolution: courses only xxx” or “Join us for our autumn offensive.”
Some of my poster efforts (click for bigger)
Sorry, you are probably not going to have a look at this delayed comment anyway, but I have just seen the website of the Anglosfera and … well, could you suggest to the head of the school that there is no “ilość godzin” in the Polish language(there can be ilość mięsa – amount of meat but not amount of hours). That “ilość” everywhere one looks is like a some kind of plague these days; we are supposed to educate people, aren’t we?
J.
Jolanta: Your incisive comments are always welcome, late or otherwise. I will certainly point this out to D at once and the person responsible for creating the text will be taken outside and shot – or at least publicly taunted for poor grammar
By the way, what should it be?
Please, do not shoot that poor person, she or he is probably just following the grammar-deprived herd.
It should be “liczba” (number) because, as far as I remember, the word “godziny” (hours) is still in the countable nouns category. Or maybe something has recently changed and we no longer count the hours but let them flow unnoticed (they do seem to flow, don’t they?).
Regards
J.
Jolanta: Well ok, we may not actually shoot her. Anyway, bullets are expensive these days.
The hours certainly do flow, oh how they flow.
I’m in the office tomorrow and I’m sure we will have this discussion.