I am becoming, I have become, a disaffected, disgruntled civil servant who despises the majority of my colleagues, loathes the people in middle management, and finds the self-importance they possess absolutely farcical. In fact, it would be laughable, seeing these worthless human beings scurrying around their little ant hill that means nothing to anyone else in the entire world, if I wasn't being forced to play an ant myself. We strive for awards given by the organizations that basically run us, consumed all the time with winning awards for our "good practices", our "good working environment", our "quality of service", prepping our students to say the right things to inspectors, getting our teachers to perform all kinds of work completely unrelated to teaching at all... I have spent the majority of this week working on a logo for my department. Seriously. Every department needs a logo now. I have been tasked to tidy up all the artworks in the school, make sure they aren't crooked and torn, the school is in a frenzy because there's an "important" seminar today and there will be "important" guests. Do I honestly care? Am I really supposed to be impressed? I find it hard to hide my incredulity, at how my colleagues can take all these "events" seriously at all; and how about this see-who-stays-the-latest competition, as though the longer you slog at your desk, the more... the more... Christ, I don't even know what we're all slogging for. Work is endless. Go home. This is a job. It has fixed hours. You can go home after lessons, do so. The entire rationale behind having a job is to be able to improve your quality of life, and my quality of life is certainly not improved by working 12 freaking hours a day. I am not a teacher. That word is still in circulation but it's lost its meaning completely. Teachers simply don't exist anymore. I spend more hours doing administrative work and prettifying our school's image than I do teaching. Going to class has become a hobby, something I do when I am not piled under a ton of pointless paperwork. I am in the business of education. I am not a teacher. This makes me sick to the core.