A life overwhelming even in English

September 26, 2006 - 3:21 PM by Sarah

overwhelmed
Being a teacher is incredibly demanding. Being an immigrant is incredibly frustrating. Put them together, and poor Yael just had a very. bad. day.:

KERSLAM. This is a new word and I don’t think you will find it in any dictionary, hebrew or otherwise. It is a Yael word. It perfectly describes . . . . how you feel when you attend a 3 hour meeting held all in hebrew and you can’t make heads or tails of what is being said. But not necessarily because your hebrew is bad, which of course in my case it is. No it is more because they keep throwing words around like “deskim” –sounds a bit like the english word desk right? YES! It is the english word desk made into the Israeli desk plural. But what the heck does that mean?! What do they mean when they are asking will each student group have a single desk or will there be deskim? I mean, we are sitting in the room the kids are going to be taught in and there are very obviously tons of deskim …as I found out later it has something to do with the newsroom (they call the sports department one desk, the political department another desk and so forth here…who knew?). The whole meeting went that way. I don’t know what these people do, I study the Internet darnit, and it has nothing to do with deskim, or equipment in tv studios or anything like that.

Kerslam also quite accurately describes how you feel when you find out that the latest decision about the number of classes you are going to teach within this multi-teacher course has been changed but no one appraised you about it. That is only a minor kerslam, however. A major KERSLAM occurs when the person running the meeting asks you a question after an extremely long lead-up so that you are not entirely sure that there was a question in there. That is still a minor kerslam. But when it is combined with the fact that you are pretty sure you understood the hebrew (though not betting any large sums on it) but are now trying to figure out has she not been brought up to speed or have more things changed (again) and you have not been brought up to speed (again) and that thus all of your lectures you’ve been putting together on happy little powerpoints are useless drivel, you definitely feel kerslamed. You find that your head is bobbing up and down (yes, I think I did understand the hebrew) and you are gaping like a fish (what the hell is going on given that I understand the hebrew? But do I really? Holy cow…) That feeling gets heightened when this person looks at you and says they’d like answer. Now. 12 other people are staring at you.

You decide that you did not fully understand the hebrew because this person is running the meeting and so must be up to speed and thus cannot possibly be asking what your 4 (4, what happened to 5?) lectures will cover because it sure sounded like she is asking what your take is on the 4 most important points of this syllabus of other people’s lectures you’ve only just seen for the first time 10 minutes ago (you know, 8 pages of hebrew filled with words like “deskim.”). On the other hand it also sure sounded like she was talking about both of these things at the same time which would mean that she is not up to speed…Or it means they changed it again and I am not up to speed…? You begin formulating an answer that sounds like drivel even to yourself. It would sound bad in english, it sounds worse in hebrew. Thankfully, the person who is uber in charge steps in and cuts you off, answering for you. It becomes obvious that aha, she was not brought up to speed. And yet, you have just been made to feel and look like a complete idiot in front of 12 other people you’ve never laid eyes on before today but will see quite a bit of quite soon. KERSLAM.

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