checking papers

last night, i volunteered in helping my friend in checking her paper loads, which was consist of her students' class paper reviews. she allowed me to do it. but just for the typographical errors and grammars. why?
basically she came up with this evil plot of subtracting the number of errors to her student's actual paper's score (0.25 per mistake), to teach her too stubborn students to reread and edit their papers before submitting it. well, it really takes one to know one, huh?!the load was unimaginable. there were piles and piles sitting next to each another on her table. i was already wondering if my friend will be able to check all of these and return it back on time. nonetheless, being the-ever-helpful-friend that i am, the picture of it didn't stop me.
while i was checking from one paper to another, i felt a part of me was fulfilled. i always wanted to be a teacher. aside from the fact that it runs in the family (both of my grandparents, aunts and an uncle are teachers), it really more of a persoanl passion.i remember before, my friends and i would actually play teacher-teacheran inside an unoccupied townhouse along our street. and i can't remember a time that i didn't become the teacher. it is the rule of the thumb whenever we play it: i should always be the teacher. in addition, since i am a foot bigger than the rest of my friends, the word bullying has always been a positive word for me to which no one dares to contest.

i never thought that checking papers was this time-consuming. it has been 5 hours already. but i haven't finish a quarter of the entire load yet. it was indeed exhausting. more exhausting than my work, if i may say. not to mention the fact that it is only a part of the entire job. but despite of this, i can say that i really enjoyed it a lot and realized time flies quickly. indeed, such happens when you love what you do. but as of now, as much as i want to become a teacher, i still can't ...yet. but i know someday, i'll get my share.

talking about the parts of the job, i think another thing a wanna-be teacher has to prepare is to get dismayed, not only with the salary that one will get. but also with the performance of your students.

i was really laughing hard in the entire period of checking their papers. i know i am mean. but it was ridiculously hilarious that it actually came to a point that i felt alarmingly sad, worried and frustrated to most of these students. primarily because i was a student of the same university as well. although in a different campus. for me the logic is: the content of the paper reflects its writer and the writers or students reflect their university. thus, the realization bounces back to me. ofcourse, there a lot of things to be considered: their teachers, curriculums and even their own social and personal contexts. but these are (only) acceptable if they are freshmen. unfortunately, these students are not. they vary from sophomores to seniors. so can anyone stop me if i ask," what happened?"

i always tell my friends who keep on ranting that the school is no longer the same as before, that it is generation to cherish. we already had ours and its up to the next what to do with their share. and probably i going to keep it that way. i chose not to dwell into the details of their papers anymore and will just focus on atleast their writing skills: that is in filipino.

what i like about my alma mater is the fact that it gave us all the freedom as a student or atleast from the last time i have checked and mind you it was not that long ago either. there freedom was overflowing that we are allowed to think, say and do whatever we want for the benefit of free flowing ideas, as long as it would not cross the boundary of respect and other people's rights.

in our campus, we are even allowed to speak/recite in whatever language we want, as long as the majority of the class and the professor can understand it. no wonder it was so easy for me to know in law school whether the guy reciting came from the same university that i do with all the uhms and the buckles. go figure!

anyhow, its just frustrating to know that most of these students are actually having a hard time writing a simple essay regarding a film and song review in filipino. even if you put the content aside, there sentence structure is untolerable. but i do understand them. the same problems go with me when it comes to writing in english. i rarely use periods. i tend to make 5 sentences into just one. my tenses are not consistent with my sentences and most of all i tend to use hard core jargons. but on the other hand, i realized that this is filiino, our native language for crying out loud. i even asked my friend if her students are phil-ams or what have you. but when she showed me their picture, they were undeniablly filipinos. then i realized that probably DECS and CHED should not only check on our students english proficiency. but also more with regard to filipino. just imagine, filipinos who don't know how to write filipino: that is more disturbing than a filipino who doesn't know how to write english.