It's Not Easy Being Green, Like A Tortoise Not A Frog

This morning began well. Actually, the evening prior went well. I had an inkling of things unwell last week with a few of the kids from Jesus Loves You Society (the family centre I volunteer at) at the end of the night, but didn't do anything about it. So last night I had a, "Here we go God," moment before going in. Things did continue, but thankfully I was able to talk to the two kids. I saw a bit of a miracle. It is very difficult to talk to kids who do not want to talk. Kids not wanting to talk when you want them to talk is very common (and vice verse of course). No, instead, they opened up, and I could empathize with their frustrations. But what do you do with your frustrations? The first kid actually answered very quickly, "Calm down." It wasn't a question. He wasn't feeding me the right answer. He wasn't dodging the issue. I was so impressed. But wait, then I asked the how question. He said that whipping a ball at the wall for a few minutes is a good way for him to calm down. The floor hockey ball. And it's alright if I get you to do that off to the side when I can see you're frustrated? Yes.

I like him. Not because of this, as impressive as his response was. I think he's talented, energetic, and beyond positive attributes, I think he's good, at the core, in some strange in-obvious way.

I talked to the other kid and had to explain a few things about making comments that point out others' (deemed) faults while they're frustrated - that's never helpful, leave that decision up to the leaders, instead, look for ways to encourage other kids. He too was game. Anyways, it felt resolved, or at least resolved for the night, and a step in the right direction.

Then a friend from house church called and it was good to be called (and invited out for a show) and to catch up. And I loved hanging out with other friends and seeing the Moms and eating delicious chicken curry. Good times.

Back to today. I woke up earlier to make sure I had enough time with the weather to get to school on time. I listened to really cool music on 88.1 AVR3 FM. This week is practical shop exam week. We build desks that get graded by the apprenticeship board people as opposed to our instructors. We have to get 70%+ on the desks to get our tickets. The test is time-limited. I'm not very good at being time-limited. On almost every project I've worked on in Shop at SAIT, it's taken me longer. Some people have really good skills, and whip perfect projects off in no time. Other people don't care about quality and are only concerned with whipping projects off in no time. Then there are other people who may not have background skills, but work their way through in the allotted time, and produce a pretty good product. I am almost in that category, except that I'm the slowest, and don't often fulfill the allotted time part of that scenario. So on our largest project where we get two weeks' worth of shop time in one week, every day I get further and further and further behind.

Tomorrow I will hit the deadline, and then every 30 minutes I will be penalized to a maximum penalty of 3 hours. I was doing some estimating, and it will likely take me all 3 of those hours to finish. Which means I should stay all day and fix up any small errors I can so as to prevent losing marks to make up for the penalty lost marks. My instructor says that we can stay until 5, but after that, we should find a new trade...

It's the story of my SAIT education. We have clocked quotas we must fulfill of time at school which adds up to 265 hours per term. I usually rack up an extra 100 each time. That's like doing 11 weeks instead of 8 of school.

Knowing you're quite far behind means that in the midst of the pressured production, mistakes are very frustrating. But like the kids, what are my options? I'm not sure, but my habitual routine has become to angrily curse the subject of my mistake, apologize to God, and gain lots of extra experience by doing so many things twice, or discover interesting ways of repairing things. Today in my stress I started singing songs to myself, which helped - I think. I didn't actually sing Kermit's song. Now I must go study some more - exams are coming exams are coming.