The recontracting date has come and gone, so everyone who's in for another year is really in, and everyone else is really out. No more fence-sitting, Sally, the tea-party's over, it's time to stick it or kick it. This was a source of consternation for many JETs, who wallowed about in a personal hell being forced, as they were, to think about the future for any extended period of time. We were all given the forms two months ago and told to think very hard about them. Naturally I signed my job away that morning, two months ago. I think I was the first JET in the ken to do so.

Now I don't want to give the impression that I'm dying to get out, it's not like that at all, I love my job here, and my supervisor is flat-out awesome, it's just that I knew I was a one-year guy since the beginning.

I've received some flak from other JETs, the most frequent and slightly snooty of which being the whole "you need one year just to get the hang of things" comment. I can't tell you how many times I have heard this doozy over the past month, and you know what? I don't buy it. That's what.

Here, let me give you a breakdown of what I did today at work, which is a very typical slice of life, and then you tell me if it sounds like the kind of thing that I will only "start to get the hang of after one year":

7:30am: Woke up with a headache, popped two asprin, got dressed, grabbed my umbrella and walked to Lawsons for my breakfast.

8:00am: Purchased a donut, a thing of yogurt, a carton of OJ, and a hot coffee. Said hello to the staff. (They know me there. One of them has even taken to putting my usual morning fare on hold for me.)

8:15-8:30: Walked to school. Burned my face with the hot coffee. Again.

8:30-8:45: Sat through the morning assembly. Stared at a wall.

8:45-9:55: Read through the english paper that gets delivered to my desk every morning. (Today had a very interesting article about the birdflu. Apparently, we're all going to die. Also, "Ask Jeeves" is retiring Jeeves and will henceforth be known only as "ask.com." That sort of sucks too, but not as much as birdflu.)

9:55-10:35: Taught one class with Obata in which we returned the tests that over half of them totally failed.

10:35-12:00: Read Namarama by Phillip Jennings.

12:05: Got a drink of water.

12:10-12:40: Watched "Quantum Leap" on my computer. (Why haven't I leaped yet Al? I dunno Sam, I think Ziggy messed up the coordinates...)

12:50-1:15: Drove Obata's car back to the Lawsons to get lunch. Said hi to the staff. Again. Looked really long and hard at all the beer. Did not buy any beer.

1:15-2:00: Ate my lunch while listening to music on my computer.

2:00-3:00: Wrote my book while listening to music on my computer.

3:00-4:00: Taught a series of probing lectures on Hyperbole, Modal verbs, Iambic Pentameter, and Narrative Voice. Just kidding. I actually just watched more "Quantum Leap." In this episode Sam Beckett was trapped in an alternate reality where he was a boxer. Oh Sam, what will happen to you next? I'll probably find out tommorrow.

4:00-4:30: Got a drink and stood by the heater in the staff-room.

4:30: Walked home.


And there you have it. An average workday for Brad Griffith. Sure, every now and then a kooky thing happens, like the other day when I went to take out money for some food at Lawsons and mistakenly withdrew 2000 dollars instead of 200, but that's pretty much it. The weekends are another story, but even those generally revolve around drinking and bowling with the occasional snowboarding day thrown in there every now and again. The point is, there's not much to get. It's all pretty straight-forward, and quite frankly, I love it.

I can tell you with almost complete certainty, however, that if I had the jobs some of my fellow JETs have, I would hate it. I'd be sneaking in precisely crafted solutions of water-diluted vodka so I could maintain a consistent level of drunkeness all day. If I had to mark 15,000 essays like some of them do, especially with my kids, around essay 400 I'd start writing snotty comments like "learn how to write, clown." or "Maybe you should transfer to the kindergarden down the street, horseface." or "Is this an essay, or dog poop? I'm not wearing my glasses today."

As it is, though, I think I have the best job in this ken, precisely because very little of my time is spent doing what they actually hired me for, thank God.