What’s the worst that could happen?
Teaching August 1st. 2008, 10:00pmI ran into a meme that I thought was interesting. What is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen at your job if you mess up? For some jobs, a single mistake could mean getting yourself, a coworker, or a client killed. However, what is the worst that could happen if I messed up on my job?
The worst things I could think of would be modeling a speaking pattern incorrectly, which somehow hinders a student learning English to the best of their ability. This ingrained memory somehow is permanently scarred into their brain and never corrected in the future. When they go to take their Korean College Entrance Examinations, they’ll recall the incorrect answer that I taught, causing them to miss a question, fail their test, and ultimately end up in a shitty, soul crushingly awful job for the rest of their life.
This was an activity I had to do when I got punished by my mother. She would make me sit down and write exactly what I had done wrong, then make up a ridiculous list of 25 things that could have happened if I had done the same thing and things had gone worse.
It was a punishment, a creative writing assignment, and a HUGE guilt trip all at the same time. For example, if I punched my brother, I would have made him fall down. He would hit his head. It would give him brain damage or could possibly kill him. That would have counted as “one”.
Now, think of twenty five more scenarios that result from hitting someone, or whatever else the punishement might be for that occasion. (I got punished a LOT.) By the end, you are worried that anything you might ever do is going to cause someone to die because you are grasping at straws to fill in the last few lines.
One Response to “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
[...] I got older, and they were working longer hours, they moved to using a written punishment that really sucked when I was grounded. Back when I was still able to be grounded, they would write [...]