RAGE

I called the golf club in order to confirm my presence for the Sunday’s game. “America United’s Golf Club, may I help you?” said a woman in a very nice tone. “This is Mirsky, I’ve just canceled my next sundays’s game, but I want to schedule it again, I’ll be available.” “hmmmm let me ask my superior…” and the nice voice was changed by a silly song which nobody would like. Then a rude man’s voice took its place in the phone “Hello, this is Michael Smith, I understand you canceled your game and then you want to schedule again” “Yes, I hope there’s still place for me” I tried to look sincerely worried about their difficulty to do their job and reschedule a simple golf game. “We still have a place, you are lucky. However, I want to suggest you be more careful with schedules, it is not easy for us to change appointments. Have a nice day Mr. Mirsky.” Have a nice day… Sure! This was the best day ever. At least I would play.

So I was waiting on the line, seeing how the groceries were passed one by one through the scanner. The cashier didn’t look very intelligent, but at least he was doing his job and soon I would be out of the supermarket. Things were getting better until the unexpected happened, the check-out boy placed the terrible closed sign right in front of the lady before me, she smiled at him and left the line. This was too much for me, I wouldn’t accept it, so I started putting the groceries on the conveyer belt, all those groceries I didn’t think were worthy anymore. I did it as before, ignoring the stupid cashier, but with a renovated rage inside me, I could feel the heat of anger. At least, in the supermarket I was the client, I had the power over this young silly man. Apparently he didn’t notice his lower condition as he reacted quite angrily. “Let’s wait for the manager” I thought. “Sir, can’t you read well? This is my break out time!” yelled the poor boy. “I don’t care if this is your free time, I want to leave this horrible supermarket as soon as posible and you’ll have to work for one last customer” I was trying to be polite, but at a certain point I lost my mind and released my rage with him, I know I used some words I shouldn’t have used, but at that time I couldn’t really think about it. After a few minutes arguing, both very angry, the manager finally came, he arrived in the right moment to hear the cashier insulting me. The cashier was fired immediately “but please, boss, I have a family to support, you know I need this job” “you should have thought about it before insulting this client” I was so happy, I couldn’t believe that finally something good for me was happening, a little bit of justice. I looked at the poor fired cashier and said “Have some dignity and stop begging for this job” He almost ran out of the supermarket. I really felt much better after this.

Mrs. Crenshaw called the office again. I didn’t want to talk to her anymore, but she was the client, I answered very polite. “Mr. Mirsky I’ve changed my mind, I’ve just remembered that my family won’t come on Sunday, but Saturday. Ain’t that funny?... Anyway, these are good news for you, I’ll see you this Sunday.” The tone of her voice was so arrogant, I knew she was one of those people used to have everything they want. I was sick of her, but yet, I tried to be reasonable, I told her I had another appointment, but she wouldn’t listen to me. “Well Mrs. Crenshaw I don’t care if your stupid family is visiting you on Sunday or on Saturday, I don’t really care if the age is making you lose your memory, I won’t be available this Sunday.” Maybe I overreacted. She hung the phone. The situation was bad, I blew it. The boss’s office phone started ringing immediately.

The manager helped me with the groceries. Everything was getting better. Suddenly I felt somebody was looking at me, this wasn’t really surprising considering the scene I had just made. But it was strange I saw out of the corner of my eye a little girl looking at me, I turned my head and saw her. A beautiful blond girl was seeing me with her eyes wide open. There was no doubt, she was my daughter, Emily. Apparently she had seeing the whole scene and she was scared. I guess looking at a parent fighting with someone is not really a pleasant experience. Then I looked at the woman behind her, and yes, as I supposed, she was my wife looking at my with that angry face I knew very well. She was surely thinking that this was one of my multiple rage attacks, and she would argue with me. It was quite predictable. Surprisingly she said nothing, she just took my daughter and left the supermarket. I tried to go behind her, but it was useless. I let her go.

It was certainly Mrs. Crenshaw calling the boss, exaggerating everything. The boss went out of the office as he hung the phone. He approached my desk. “You are a fine sales manager Mirsky” Only fine? I’m the best manager he has had, I’ve made the best deals, I’m the one who has brought more money to the company. I’m not only a fine sales manager. “You’ve made a good job, but I’m tired of your eternal bad mood, you’ve been irresponsible… well, I just can’t stand you… Myrsky, take your belongings, you are fired”.

I returned home expecting that my wife would’ve forgotten everything and she wouldn’t perform a scene. But as soon as I arrived I realized she did care about what happened. My sister in law was at home, she was there every single time we had big problems, my wife always called her to take care of Emily. My sister in law took my beautiful daughter to the park, seeing me as if I was a monster, I never liked her. When my wife and I were alone she spoke visibly angry, but surprisingly calmed: “God knows I love you… but I can’t stand this anymore. I don’t want to be with someone who can’t controlled himself, you get angry so easily. I noticed you arrived quite late yesterday and I know about your constant hangovers; I don’t want Emily to grow up with a person like you. I want the divorce”. She said no more, neither did I.

Journal V

This is the last chapter. The stage is the present. I finished the credits of my major, I’m working on my thesis and this has been a great stage. I have a great thesis assessor, and I’ve been learning much more than I had expected.

I’ve done many good and deared friends. I traveled with them to places I thought I’d never be at. My family is very supportive. I’ve accomplished some of my goals and I have many others I still want to get and I know that with effort I can do it.

All the activities I do now are decided for me and I’m not forced to do any of them, I do them for pleasure. It’s a great feelling to know that I’m doing something I really enjoy and this helps me to avoid the obstacles.

This is the stage when I have less free time, but I try to organize myself to do what I like, playing, reading, watching movies and cartoons, etc, and also to have time for my family, my friends and my boyfriend, who, by the way, has helped me to learn many things and enjoy this stage a lot.

Not everything is perfect; there are many blue moments also, problems and conflicts, but when I look backwards I feel I’ve done my best and I have no regrets.

Journal IV

Now is the best time of my life: University. First I’ll start talking about my decision of studying Pedagogy. There were several options I considered for studying: Filosofy, History, Psicology, Biology, sociology, and of course Pedagogy. To tell the truth, I only had a superficial visión of all this majors. All I knew were just several and general information. I read some articles and study plans, but you know what’s your major really about once you are studying it. After some considerations and advice from people I trusted on, I decided Pedagogy.

Then I didn’t know where should I study. I did my exam for UNAM and then I had planned to do it for the Universidad Pedagógica. When I did the exam for UNAM I was really concerned, I thought I had done it all wrong and I was confused. It was a very happy moment when I discovered I was in. Then I decided no to try in other universities.

I was very nervous when I went to the university for the first time. In the first week my concept of Pedagogy changed a lot and I decided that it was what I really wanted to study. I started reading a lot, some books for pleasure and some others for obligation.

My classes were very interesting and I started realizing that studying the education was much harder tan I thought, but at the same time it was like a passion.

I liked studying at Filosofía y Letras. Even tough it was kind of sad to be discriminated for the students of other majors. I understad the critics they made to pedagogues, but it was sometimes hard to talk to them when they had strong prejudges. I have many good friends from other majors of the faculty anyway, I’ve learnt a lot of them, and I think they have learnt with me aswell.

In my free time I still loved to play videogames, read and share time with my family, but I also enjoyed going to parties once in a while. I’ve never been good at dancing, so that has been a problem when I go to parties. But I enjoyed to share funny times with my friends. I also enjoyed going out with boys haha. I think I will always remember these day as some of the funniest and most productive of my life.

Journal III

The next stage is: when I was in highschool. I loved many things of this part of my life, but I didn’t like others. I definetly liked highschool much more tan secondary school. Being adviced for my parents, I agreed to enter to a catholic school, called Yaocalli. It seemed a good idea, because it’s very near my home, and I might be able to learn many things; I thought it had a good academic level, which was very important for me. However, this school had a problem: it was only for girls.

I did learn many things. I made some great friends which are still some of the best friends I’ve ever had. But not being able to share with boys was very difficult.

Especially in this stage, I would’ve liked to talk with more boys. In my experience is more difficult to be only with girls in a classroom, because for some reasons there are more gossips, envy and the group gets very divided. This problems exist also in groups with girls and boys, but I felt them stronger in this school.

I also shared a lot of time with my family, especially my little brother, who was a baby. I didn’t have much free time, but i believe I used it very well. Playing videogames, reading, going to the cinema, talking. I had many good days.

Journal II

This chapter is dedicated to my teenager stage when I was on secondary school. I didn’t love this part of my life. Every day I used to wake up at 6am and I was at school from 7 to 2pm. I didn’t like to go to this school. For some reason I was very shy in this stage of my life and I had problems making friends; the teachers were always like angry. I only had two teachers that I admired and like to be in their classes; but the other were always complaining. I think I understand them a little better now; it must be quite a challenge to work with teenagers. And my school, especially, had many problems because there were kids from difficult and dangerous neighborhoods.

I learnt many things in this part of my life, but truly, I wouldn’t like to live it again. Now I can say that teenagers pass for many difficult changes. They have hormonal variations which make everything different, there are physical and emotional changes. They realize that their parents have mistakes, and that they have to find their own path in live. I can say many things about this stage, but this words aren’t usefull when you are living all this. Not everything was bad anyway. I had some good friends. Especially one, who is still my friend.

In my free time I used to read a lot, I read many many books. I didn’t used to go out. I didn’t enjoy to party a lot and be outside. It was always more interesting for me to sit down and read a good book. I used to read Emilio Salgari, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Edgar Allan Poe, Ángeles Mastretta, Dostoievsky, among others.

Journal I

I will write about my regular days through the time. This chapter is about my childhood. I’ll write what I remember about one of my regular days when I was seven years old.

I used to wake up at 6:30am, in order to be ready at 7:30 and walk to school. My parents took me to school together every single morning. I was at school until 1pm, then my mom went for me and we walked back home. As soon as I arrived home, I used to eat and then I watched some TV programs, two cartoons, most of the times, and also, if I had enough time, I used to play Nintendo, I remember I always had lots of homework to do, so I started doing my homework early.

Once I had finished it I was allowed to go outside and play with my brothers and neighbors, I really enjoyed playing with them, riding my bicycle, running, playing with toys, It was my favourite part of the day. Then my father arrived and took my brothers and I to some classes we were taking: they used to practice Tae Kown Do and I used to practice gimnastics. It was fun aswell, but I always prefered to stay at home playing.

Then, when I returned home my mom had already checked my homework and if there were any mistakes she made me correct them. I went to sleep at 9 or 9:30pm. I enjoyed a lot this stage of my life, I shared a lot of time with my brothers and my parents.

Dear Amy,

I can't be around dogs. It sounds difficult to believe, but whenever I see a dog I got very scared and I need to escape.
It's hard forme even thinking about going to my boyfriend's home, because he has two big dogs. Sometimes he believes I'm not interested in meeting his family.
I really want to stop being frightened of dogs. It's affecting my life and very few people understand my problem. I hope you can help me.

Story

Claudia was reading the newspaper that morning. She was reading about a man who had died in the hands of a very dangerous killer. The poor man had been tortured and the article was so descriptive that she even felt guilty of reading it. One voice inside her was saying “stop reading it, it’s sick” and another voice (the strongest) ordered her to continue.

She read about cut fingers, burnt extremities, flagellated backs… she read until she felt sick. She couldn’t finish the article because she had to eat her breakfast and go to work. The bus was full. Claudia saw the people on it: the usual faces.

However, there was something different and, for some reason, she couldn’t tell what that was. Then she saw them: two beautiful, big, brown eyes staring at her from the back of the bus. There was something strange in those eyes, something lovely, beautiful, and at the same time so dangerous that she felt intrigued.

“Missy, are you stupid or something? Move! You are on my way” grumbled an old lady. Claudia barely listened to her and approached to the guy with beautiful eyes. She saw that the man was reading the same newspaper she had read that morning.

“It’s a horrible article, don’t you think?” Said Claudia pointing at the title. “Yes, it’s too dramatic, the author never mentioned the motivation of the so called killer…” and he explained a series of ideas that could lead a person to kill, she was so intrigued by his reasons that decided not going to work and kept on talking with him. “… There are people whose lives are lonely, dramatic, depressed, they think about dying, but they don’t have the courage to kill themselves. A very good person can do it for them, it’s the best favor someone can do” “But why torture them?” “Torture can be healing, it purifies the soul”.

After nearly 5 hours of being talking with him, she felt surprisingly convinced by his reasons. By the time he told her that he was the author of the crime she had read about, she wasn’t even surprised. They saw each other every single day; eventually, she was fired, and she didn’t care, all she wanted was to talk with her mysterious man.

After a few months something very unexpected happened: she helped her beloved man to kill a person, it felt logical, at this point she believed everything he said. She helped him to clean the scene, they cleaned the blood, erased fingerprints.

They went outside the city and started a fire. They took the personal documents of the victim’s body and Claudia wrote his name and other personal information in a special notebook (dedicated to “saved” people). This victim was the first of many. After this, they burnt the body; then they threw the documents into the fire. Now no one would ever know their secret.



My grade: 15

PROFILE

My name is Claudia Escobar, I’m 22 years old and I studied Pedagogy at UNAM. Now I’m working on my thesis, as soon as I finish it I’ll start working. Being a Pedagogue is not easy, at least not for me, there are no specific rules to follow like in other disciplines and it is always hard to work with humans, it’s a big challenge, but I really like it. I’ve had the opportunity to work in several institutions before; I worked in an orphanage and in an Ecological park, and both of them were hard experiences, but I learned a lot about them.

Another aspect of my profesional life is that I’m studying English and Portuguese. I like studying languages because learning about other ways to speak and think is very interesting for me. Being able to speak with people from different countries is something that motivates me, as well.

Now, I’d like to talk about my personal life. I live with my parents and three brothers, I’m the eldest. I love my family. Besides the house, we share experiences, our problems, our achievements, and we try to help each other. This doesn’t mean that we are like a perfect family, of course, there are conflicts and misunderstandings sometimes, but we try to deal with them.
Apart from my family, I have other important people for me, my friends and my boyfriend. I love hanging out with them, going to the movies and museums, traveling with them. I also enjoy playing videogames, watching TV, I like cartoons, I think most of them are very funny. I love Reading, I especially like novels and books related with Pedagogy.

There are other aspects about me, of course, but I think I’ve written the most important.

MY EXPECTATIONS

I expect to learn and practice my English skills in this course, that’s obvious, but I felt I needed to start with my general objective of studying at CELE.

Now, the expectations I have about this course in particular are several. I want to be able to communicate my ideas in a written way, and to practice my spelling. I want to learn about punctuation rules in English. This course will help me to develop my creativity, which is very important for me.

I also have some expectations in a personal way: I expect I’ll be very interested in this course and in my learning, and I’ll do my best to achieve my goal. I would like to express my ideas and I know there’s only one way to do it: practicing and taking this course very seriously.

LETTER TO A CANADIAN

Dear Canadian friend,

I hope you are enjoying your visit to Mexico. The main objective of this letter is to help you and give you some advice about the places that you should visit here at Mexico City.
First of all, if you are interested in our culture, history and traditions, you should visit the downtown, we call it Centro Histórico, and there you’ll find El Zócalo, La Catedral, Palacio Nacional, El Templo Mayor, these places are very important if you want to understand a bit more of our prehispanic origins and our colonial past, and also about our present. I recommend you to see the buildings, pay attention to the people, the streets, I think you would enjoy it.

On the other hand, if you are looking forward to having fun and know about our night life, there are many places where you can go. You should go to Insurgentes, in this huge avenue you’ll be able to find restaurants, bars, discos, theatres.

As other cities in the world, we have some problems, you have to be very careful, avoid dangerous places, try to be with your group all the time when you are outside and remember don’t speak with strangers.

I will be very happy to help you with anything I can.
Take care,
Claudia