.
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I left my brain in San Francisco. It's down there somewhere checking out the butts of cute half naked men at the Folsom Street Fair. Or maybe if it's lucky it's having martinis with Selila or tossing back a Maker's Mark with Jenfu. Either way, it's not here with me, which leaves me kind of blurry and disjointed and largely incapable of maintaining a thought process for more than two or three seconds.
I'm having a love hate relationship with school these days. I love the classroom. I love the kitchen. I love my instructors. Except for the few I actively hate, I love my classmates. All good.
But.
This school has one of the most god awful appalling administrative teams I have ever encountered. Phone calls don't get returned. Some students have had their credit cards charged for the same tuition fee more than once. Materials that have been paid for in full take weeks and constant nagging to arrive. Courseware is riddled with misspellings and typos. Tables of Contents are inaccurate. Student ID's (for which we all dutifully took time to have pictures taken on the third day of classes) still have not arrived. (Week 6 of a 17 week program, and no student ID's yet. Come on.)
Small shit, all of it. In the classroom and in the kitchen, where it really matters, things are great and I have no real complaints.
But. The small shit, it all adds up. It adds up in two real ways for me. I am a professional administrator. And I am good at it. And I am bossy and a perfectionist. Toss those ingredients together with a large splash of being helplessly dependant on a shitty administrative team, and you get a very cranky agitated Sasha. Serve with a side order of snark and plenty of booze to soothe.
Okay. I should just get over that. People are allowed to do a bad job. We are not talking about the cure for cancer. Not everyone is neurotic and uptight about the details. Small shit.
But. Here's how it adds up to something more troublesome for me. I am not good at reconciling conflicting messages. My tiny little brain likes things to be fairly tidy and cohesive. If you say this, then it follows that you will do that. If you say this, and then do something completely different, I get frustrated and agitated and wrapped up in a little emotional snit about how these two messages don't make any sense. And if left unchecked, I can get so wrapped up in my little snit that it colours everything and leaves me emotional and angry and tired. This is a character flaw, a shortcoming, I know. I'm not really sure how to change it, and I don't know how/why I got to be this way. I blame, oh, I don't know, Britney Spears.
So half of my day is spent in a classroom that rightly emphasizes perfection, care, attention to detail. I mean, while one misspelled word does not ruin an entire paragraph, one foul mussel does indeed ruin an entire dish. Cooking well is about doing it right. There is very little room for halfway, and very little room for mistakes. And I love this. This appeals to me. This rigidity and emphasis on perfection, on doing it right aligns itself pretty perfectly with my neurotic little noggin.
But. The other half of my day is spent dealing with mistake after mistake. No emphasis on perfection. No emphasis on care. The little details, they don't matter. One institution, two conflicting messages. Bad pedagogy. Cognitive Dissonance.
And me? I react really badly to conflicting messages. Really badly. Damn Britney Spears.
So, I've left my brain in San Francisco to enjoy naked butts, martinis, and Maker's Mark, and not think about this crap.
I'm going to get over this, or I will end up losing the entire experience because I am too busy stewing about the fucked up details and inconsistent messages. And that won't do me, or the institution, even the tiniest bit of good.
And as soon as I am over it I will send for my brain, and then send out a posse to kick Britney's ass.