21 Mar 10

Day Four of IAG Senior (18-21 March) coaching. 21 March

6.45am. I'm freakin pissed with my paternal grandmother. When I sat down at the dining table with my fried egg sandwich for breakfast, she asked me (translated from Chinese): "Why you go and fight?"

Can you say HUH???

I was like what the f***??? I've been coaching for at least 15 hours everyday, putting in my 100%, and she thinks I've been fighting??? What a way to start the day. Thanks alot, I'm now pissed. I just ignored her after that. As I wa leaving she asked me: "Where are you going?" I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel that's kind of a stupid question. I mean, I've been gone "fighting" for the past 3 days and you still ask me? I said I didn't know, an she didn't press the matter. Tonight or tomorrow if she asks me where I went, I'm gonna tell her I went fighting. See if that shuts her up. Don't give me flimsy excuses like she's old and forgetting things, that she doesn't realise what she's saying. Hello, I've been LIVING with her for the past 8-9 months. I know her. She is not insane, or stupid. She can banter with us and understand our jokes, even cracking some herself so don't give me these shit excuses. Even if I WAS fighting (which I'm not), whymust she bring it up first thing in the f***ing early morning???

Okay, that's it. Enough. I'm not gonna let her thoughtless comments ruin my day. No, what she says is a distraction, and what do you do with distractions? You ignore them or remove them. So that's what I shall do, I will ignore her for a few days, and remove her from mind.

4.23pm. Finally! A break! I'm so effing tired now. For the past 2 hours, I've been like, duh... And blur. I'm also a bit upset because one of my participants was not able to do the speed reading properly and one of my fellow coaches (I'm not gonna mention names) kept shouting at him, targeting him specifically, because my participant wasn't following the speed reading techniques. I can understand what the coach did. We as coaches are supposed to push the participants to their limits by pressurising them, shouting encouraging things like, "put in your 100%!!!", "go faster, push yourself!!!", "well done!!! Keep going!!!", "read in chunks!!! Pen pacing!!! Circle keywords and key ideas!!!", and "finished reading? Read again!!" That coach was shouting all those things, until my participant cried, becuase I think he (the participant) felt too pressured, too targeted. I didn't know how o handle that at the time, because I'm still just an assistant coach, and I didn't know the reason behind what the coach did. So I just left it, accepting the coach's experience, and trusting that what he was doing was necessary and okay. But I still felt a little angry and upset. Angry because I felt, maybe tha coach pushed too hard, and upset because I couldn't handle to situation the way I wanted it to be. I felt useless because I had no control.