The Big Bong Theory

I have now been teaching at Hohai University for four weeks, which is enough time to make a truly fair assessment of my new job.

I have ninety students this year, whom I teach for 190 minutes a week. All of my kids are pretty great this semester. Since they are all English majors, they are all motivated be active in class (and do homework!) They are still learning how to learn in an American teacher's classroom, but they have been doing pretty well. In fact, the most difficult thing about teaching at Hohai right now is how well they are doing in my class. When I try to teach them new words, they are usually already familiar with the vocabulary and material. However, when it comes to using the vocabulary, they really struggle, and their pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired. When I sneak a peek at the homework they do before class starts, they're learning words like "flummoxed" and "auxiliary" and "crepuscule" (OK, lied about that last one.) But I ask them "How do I get to the bus stop?" and I am met with the scared, blank look of a frightened doe caught in a Jeep's high beams.

Since I am teaching oral English, same as last year, I am basically just adjusting my classes to be double the length and more challenging. I wrote out a syllabus as soon as I arrived, after I surveyed the interests and abilities of my students, which makes lesson planning a breeze. Every week, the students do a presentation on an aspect of popular culture, which has had pretty hysterical results, the most important of which is the realization that I need to start proofreading and fact-checking their presentations before they are shown to the class. I wouldn't call Tony Bennett, Gene Kelly, or Bing Crosby female pop-singers from the past, and "The Big Bong Theory," though an interesting mispronunciation that would make for a hilarious thirty minutes about smarty-pants (smarty-harem pants?) hippy roommates, needs to be adjusted. It would also prevent this scene from being shown (with Chinese subtitles, to ensure that all my students understood the lewd joke) to the whole class while my face burned from embarrassment.

The worst part of this job, by far, is the commute, by far. Pun intended. I teach at Jiangning, the satellite campus of Hohai University. My schedule is such so that every day has a different but totally terrible aspect. Either the class is at 8 AM, so I have to take the 7 AM bus to Jiangning (and my wake up call is 6 AM.) Or my class runs really late and I have to take the bus back to the main campus at 5:30, a commute that should take 35 minutes but actually takes over an hour and a half with rush hour traffic. On Wednesdays, I get to experience BOTH ends of the spectrum, the 8 AM start time and 5:30 PM end time, with a five hour break in between. A five hour break in a suburb where there are almost no restaurants, where I don't have an office, and where the classrooms don't have internet. Wednesdays are more than just hump days for me: they're Mount Everest days. Fortunately, my wacky schedule means that I'm back, in my apartment, by 10:45 AM twice a week and that I don't have to leave for work until 2:50 PM on Thursdays, which gives me time to be tutored in Chinese and do tutoring in English.

Actually, I take back what I said earlier. The worst part of teaching at Hohai is that since my students are all English majors, they have all chosen respectable and sensical English names. While I have a few standout weirdos, they are, for the most part, completely average. My weeks of planning the grand name Olympics, all gone to waste. Damn you Lily, and Jeremy, and Lucy!