Posts Tagged ‘day’
I cribbed the title from a worthwhile essay in a similar vein, so credit there where due.
Every day of the Camera Guy’s job is like a new teacher’s first day of school set at a high speed. He meets between 120 and 350 students every day. Unlike a new teacher, he must within two minutes establish a rapport with student, along the way convincing each to stop squirming, to refrain from giggling, to look at the camera and to crack a smile. Half of your student body does their darndest to avoid smiling, and not just because they have braces.
Depending on how far away from a big city your school is, he probably had to wake up before you did. He arrives with the janitors or, if he’s late, the head secretary.
Your gymnasium, multipurpose room and that place where they keep the wrestling mats are rarely pleasant. On any picture day earlier than October, they double as noisy, crowded saunas. Even the library’s air conditioning is little comfort when the exterior doors are open.
The exterior doors are always open; the sun always blazes.
Like teachers, he’ll work long hours, ending the day with physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion, but teachers can avoid most heavy lifting. Camera Guy can’t. Exacerbating matters, it’s against the rules for him to sit down while on company time. He might cheat this rule. He might not.
Though the bell rings in the early afternoon, the lucky Camera Guys leave at about the same time as a lingering teacher. He will get home later than most teachers, much later in case he needs to drop off equipment at the office, or fill out his timesheets, his mileage forms and his TPS reports.
Three years of this earns him a company ring. Most Camera Guys don’t last that long.
As seasonal work paid through wages and timesheets, there’s no chance in hell Camera Guy can feel self-righteous or spiritually fullfilled about school photography the way some feel about their work. In short, his job isn’t any easier and, in the short run, is much less rewarding than yours.
I cribbed the title from a worthwhile essay in a similar vein, so credit there where due.
It’s Picture Day, and you’re a teacher. Chances are, things aren’t going well. All those photographers, and Picture Day is half of an hour behind schedule. As tempting as it may be, don’t get peeved at the camera guy. He’s just doing his job, as best he can.
If his car broke on the way to your school, or his equipment at it, remember that he doesn’t like either any more than you do. To fix his car means that he might not be able to pay the rent this month, and to fix his equipment means 45 minutes of patient explanation to students, staff, faculty and your school’s highest hierarchy. If he had any control over the situation, there wouldn’t be a situation to worry about.
Once he gets there, it’s an even shot that all the plans he knows have been changed. He may or may not find out that Picture Day has been moved to another, smaller room, or that your Picture Day coordinator has some wild ideas she’d like to try out that he can’t at all implement. While his boss and yours play early morning phone tag, he may or may not discover that he has to clear a class set of chairs and tables before he can even start setting up.
Camera Guy makes no real decisions, though he is the face of the company. Camera Guy is merely in charge of the camera, and that is where his authority ends. If your Picture Day is running slower than expected, it more-often-than-not isn’t going to be the fault of Camera Guy.
Just know that if you must complain to his superiors about his efficiency or the clogged lines at his camera, have the courtesy to first inquire with him politely. He’ll be very receptive. For Camera Guy, politeness can be such a novelty.
Allegories are the way to learn Soviet history — Animal Farm, anyone? — in no small part because it creates an relatable framework for a subject that students will find dull despite how interesting it really is. Now that the end of the Cold War is within the scope of the responsible history class, Orwell’s novella has a marvelous counterpoint — Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country.
Bear with me.
Star Trek’s original series was always a thin allegory for the Cold War and American-Soviet relations. The diverse cast of the 1960s exploited fear of the commies by creating a warlike, Soviet-like archenemy in the Klingons while simultaneously catering to the “Let’s be friends” mentality with adding that guy named Chekhov.
I grew up with the even-numbered Star Trek movies by way of library VHS, and my dad’s favorite was the last movie that had the complete Scotty-Spock-Kirk-”Nuclear Wessel” crew. Until I saw it earlier today, I didn’t appreciate how thin a Cold War allegory it really was.
At least three lines in the movie that directly flesh perfectly with some part of Cold War history. Who could forget the complete-with-context old Vulcan proverb: “Only Nixon could go to China“; or “last, best hope for peace”; or “don’t wait for the translation.”
The movie doesn’t just cover Cold War, either — like any cheaply written movie with a dearth of original ideas, it lifts more than a few lines from the Bard. Klingon High Chancellor Gorbachev-wannabe gives the movie its title by making a toast to the undiscovered country: the future. Spock quips:
Hamlet: Act III, Scene i.
Later, Klingon villain Gen. Chang — in the climatic scenes will speak almost entirely in Shakespeare — justifies Klingon expansionism. We need breathing room, Chang says. Kirk quips:
Earth, Hitler: 1938.
Despite those entertaining thematic digressions, in so many ways the last old school Trek movie bookends the close of Soviet history the way Animal Farm bookends the beginning. Because of the way it definitively puts a period at the end of this period, I’d say the last, best Trek movie has more than earned its spot as the last, best day of a world history course.
Best yet, this movie ends with a slow clap. Talk about closure on the last day of class.
