They never believe me until it’s too late. Then they act as if it’s the first time they’ve ever heard it.

Part of the problem of not having a regular textbook for the second grade high school classes at the school where I work is that the students tend to not take the worksheets they get seriously. Although we emphasize that these sheets are, in fact, their textbook and that the final exam will consist of grammar and vocabulary from those sheets, many students act as if there is no exam and that there are no consequences for their not keeping the worksheets.

That changes this week.

Today I had several students react with surprise that they were supposed to have kept the worksheets. I pointed out the rules–which, oddly, they had kept–and they continued to act surprised. They then asked me for another copy of the worksheet and I pointed out the line in the rules that says they only get one copy.

Every now and then one of them gets angry and 1) acts as if this all this is my fault–which, technically, as their teacher it is; and 2) acts as if I care–which I don’t.

I do offer some advice: make a copy of a worksheet filled in by one of your classmates. Just make sure you pick a classmate who’s smarter than you.

More than once in my career as a K-12 student, I witnessed the warping of time as the minute before the end-of-school bell stretched to an hour.

There are scientific reasons for this involving near-light speed, Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the gravity of large objects warping space time, physics and, yeah, well, look it up.

In my professional career this warping of space and time manifests as a lengthening of the month of June. This is partly because the Japanese government has seen fit to 1) have classes in June when God intended there to be no classes and 2) have no national holidays in June. This year the government even trolled us by creating a new national holiday–F@#king Mountain Day–in August.

The last week June, and therefore the term, seems especially long as there are complicating factors involving making exams, recording listening sections, editing listening sections, burning CDs, burning them again correctly, and proofreading exams. We are also dealing with stragglers hurrying to finish final projects.

Oddly, June has actually seemed to go pretty quickly this year. This means the coming week is going to last forever.

As a rule, about a week before the end of the term at the school where I work, I give my students the details of the final exam. This often ends badly.

One of the quirky things we do for junior high school students is tell them what the long writing/essay will be and give them a chance to practice. This means we are giving them, for free, twenty to thirty percent of the exam.

Also as a rule, if students aren’t listening–i.e. several are speaking when I’m attempting to explain the exam–I stop explaining and wish them the best. This has resulted in students suddenly discovering the concept of “professionalism” and accusing me of not having it. I wished them luck again and erased the information on the board.

The problem is, as I’ve explained before, we (the foreign staff) teach a class that’s an elective that everyone has to take. Because it’s an elective, it has different rules than regular classes. For the past few years our classes have been a percentage of the regular English class mark, but that’s been a mixed blessing. This is a huge improvement over the old system, where we had a grade system where the lowest grade possible was a “C”.

On the one hand the new system makes us more legit than we used to be because we are part of their official English mark; on the other hand, we are still a class that, to the students, is not real English because we don’t give grades. On the third hand (no, really, count them) students, whatever they do or don’t do, are not going to fail. The worst that can happen is they don’t get automatic acceptance into the high school.

Some students worry though, and they’re the ones being punished by me wishing them good luck instead of explaining the exam.

The good news was they were much improved; the bad news is they have to do it all again because it was even shorter than the first time.

It is a general rule of public speaking that, if you are given a minimum time to meet, you should make your speech at least 30 seconds longer than necessary, or perhaps even a minute longer. A speech that must be at least two minutes long should actually be at least two minutes and thirty seconds long, but preferably three minutes. I remember at least one occasion in school when I’d practiced a speech that came up too short. I tried to explain how it had been perfect at home and the teacher was like “Yeah, how about that? Too bad you’re not at home.” (Something like that.)

The problem is that, even if you’ve practiced at home and have the speech measured to the exact second, when you get in front of people adrenaline takes over and you speak a lot faster. Your two minute speech becomes barely a minute and a half and your teacher is glaring and you whilst removing several points from your final score.

In the case of today’s students, their first attempt at a TV commercial (long story) came in at one minute and twenty seconds and I sent them back for a rewrite.

Then, today, when they attempted their second chance they made the second mistake: they made the script longer but then practiced it so much they were much smoother but spoke too fast. Their new speech came in at barely seventy seconds. I suggested a couple ways to make it longer and sent them on their way.

Unfortunately for them, the record is four do-overs. In two of those, the presentation got shorter and shorter. This means I may be seeing these guys a lot in the next few days.