Burndog's Burnblog: I'm cool with deskwarming...
Hello Burnfans!
I’ve noticed a LOT of hate lately about deskwarming…A LOT. Especially on Facebook. People love to post some sort of bitter Facebook status update about how difficult their life is because they are forced to deskwarm. First off…for those of you who read this in far flung…
I agree with the BurnDog here, but make a couple qualifications. What, ahem, burns me about deskwarming is that I would rather be doing pretty much anything. It feels like an insult to be here and not be utilized. I felt this way especially during the semester when I had to desk warm. It’s not that everyone who comes over here are lazy bums who just wanna sit at home. It’s that we’re mainly young, curious, somewhat intellectual people who need some sort of stimulation. And Tumblr, FB, Skype calls and bomb games only satisfy that for so long. As grateful as I am for the job, and think it’s cool to not have to “work” sometimes, when I had 3 weeks of deskwarming this past semester I became mentally exhausted. Teaching, working on something productive towards a goal… I did all you mentioned and more. I mean, you can only write so many burnposts about doing nothing, right?
I also think it’s downright cruel to send people to school when they’re the only ones there. Creepy or not, it’s just a reinforcement of us being different.
Maybe I’m just terrible at being productive outside of my specific duties.
I understand where you’re coming from…but at the same time…it’s not that WE are different…it’s that our CONTRACTS are different. We’re not on the same contracts as most of the Korean teachers. I’m on the same contract as YouYou…and she has to deskwarm just as much as I do. The other teachers are on completely different contracts, and whilst I am jealous of the fact that most of them have huge amounts of vacation time…I would NEVER want to do as much paperwork, training or mandatory meeting time as they have to do. I think that if all is going well…then deskwarming is a breeze…but if it hits you at a bad time…it can be a real pain in the arse. I don’t love it…but…with a Kindle, an iPad, the entire intewebs AND three new bombgames that I want to make…I fel busy rather than bored. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
And one more note to clarify…. Burn is right that we are our own worst enemies on this issue. Because what happened to him is what has happened across the board.
Foreign teachers used to have the reins far looser during vacation time, and it was more the norm for them to be allowed to just stay home, so long as there were no camps scheduled. But what happened was that every school has different camp needs and schedules. Some schools have sixty kids who want to do an English camp, and some have six. So. The foreign teachers get talking amongst themselves, find out that they may have three weeks of camp, whereas another has a six week vacation, and the complaints start piling up. So what are the Korean teachers and administrators supposed to do? They have to level the playing field somehow, to try to make the complaining stop. So they say, fine. All foreign teachers in the office for normal hours minus contracted vacation hours, whether they have camps or not.
Bam. Deskwarming is born. We did it (and continue to do it) to ourselves.
