People, Please: Fill Out Your Forms

So, something not a whole heck of a lot of you might know is that I moonlight as a Kaplan teacher. It's not a particularly glamorous job, but it puts a few extra bucks in my pocket and it keeps me out of trouble on weekends. Sort of like midnight basketball, except that I'm so old that midnight is way past my bedtime.

True story: Before I took this job, I considered graveyard shifting at a local Motel 6 to make some extra scratch. I dutifully filled out an application and was turned down - why, I do not know, but I'm gonna guess it's because I asked for more than minimum wage. To the owners of Motel 6: If you would spend less money on a "famous" voice talent for your radio ads, and more money on night-shift desk clerks, your chain would suck significantly less. Just a hint.

Anyway, one of the good things about this job is the fact that I get to actually hang out with dedicated people. I often allow myself to get beaten down by my own perception of other people - coworkers, friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, Kevin Bacon, whatever. And I often say, "Well, x person doesn't try hard, so I don't have to, either." The end result is that I end up slacking off for basically weeks, and not enough gets done.

This isn't fair, or right, or even intellectually honest of me. But when I get in front of these kids - they're a legitimate inspiration to me.

Case in point: one of my students in this particular class confessed to me that she felt she didn't really remember any of her high school math. She says she guessed on a lot of the questions. She says she's really worried, and I could see on her face that she might have actually been understating her fears.

But she still scored a 13 on the math section of the ACT. Now, admittedly, a 13 out of 36 isn't great - it's in the bottom 30 percentile. But for someone who claims not to remember any of it? It's a great score. And it's consistent with what her other section scores were - which means that she either remembers more than she thinks, or that she guessed really well, or it means that she doesn't remember anything from any subject (I consider this the least likely possibility).

The only problem is that so many of these kids need constant reminders to do their homework (required for the guarantee of a better score), or to focus their studying, or whatever. These reminders come from me - but the only way I can check their progress is on the Kaplan intranet, which records their activities on the Kaplan website. But if they don't fill out their online agreement, they can't go online, which means they can't make progress, which means I can't track it. End result? They don't qualify for the guarantee, and I can't make them better test-takers. And it's not like it's hard - it is, in point of fact, a checkbox and an "Ok" button. No need to even read the agreement - it's not like anyone reads the truly absurd EULAs out there, so why read this one?

Just kidding. Kids, read your contracts.

But if that's the only headache I have, I can cope. Now if only I could earn 50 grand a year teaching pre-college tests. I would do that in a heartbeat. Especially if the worst I have to deal with is a 30th-percentile student who's obviously smarter than she thinks.