Thursday 11 September 2008

Subterfuge

One of the jobs I have this semester is working in a self paced class. The interpreting I am doing in this class is in shorts bursts and so I have to be ready to interpret at a moment's notice and I have to always have one eye on the student to know if they need me. I like to use the eye I have in the back of my head for that job.

I have found that if I sit with the student at their table then I just become a distraction to them. They get sick of doing their work and then they want to chat. Two days ago I got bombarded with personal questions like "Are you married?" "Why not?" "Do you have a partner?" "Why not?" "Don't you want someone in your life?" "Don't you want to have children?" "Don't you have any responsibilities?" "Why do you always wear black?" "What's wrong with you?"

I avoided answered these questions and tried to guide the student back to their work. The moment there was a pause in the interrogation, I excused myself to the washroom and when I came back I sat down at the computers and then when I made my way back over to the table I claimed that it was too crowded and that I would sit at the next table over.

Subterfuge has just become a part of my job description.

In other news, I got an email from the publishing company about the missing Cooptown books and they are on their way! They shipped the batch in 2 boxes - so one of the boxes arrived and the other is taking a totally different journey to get to me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's really rude to ask those kind of questions. I'm glad my parents taught me not to ask personal questions like that.

I mean, there's people I know at work that I'm curious about their personal lives for whatever reason, but I just know not to ask.

If they want to reveal something they will. But you don't just ask those kind of things.

Oh well, I'd smack them for you but that might not help things ;) :)