Saying Goodbye AGAIN: The annoying heartbreak of being a teacher that nobody warns you about*

*I was going to title this post Apostrophe to the End of Term (or, Isn’t it Byronic, don’t you think?) but decided it would be way too obscure and nerdy and not even all that clever. The cleverness factor would have been bumped up several notches, however, if only I had still been working at Shanghai Ocean University.  It’s really hard to fit the name ‘Tongji’ into an English allusion.

Anyway.

One of the more difficult aspects of expattery is that everything is fleeting. Hell, you and your life are fleeting. Ephemeral, one might even say.  Every year, I seriously contemplate where to go next, which abrupt change to make, what to discard, what to keep. For two decades, I was the one darting in and out of people’s lives, repeatedly shedding my temporary identities like so many replaceable skins. They did the same but since I was leaving too, I didn’t notice it so much.

 

Like that year in the lise in Kayseri when I thought I was Nasreddin Hoca

 

However, we’ve reached the 3.5 year mark in Shanghai and the 2 year mark on our current flat and I’m almost stubbornly clinging to this thin veneer of stability.  There are people here that I’ve known for 2, 3 and even the full 3.5 years! How novel! How delightfully reeking of continuity and a sense of grounded community!

And a lot of them are leaving. Or have already left. Or intend to leave in the next few months. Or threaten to leave on a regular basis.

And it’s not just friends who leave. No, as a teacher, I also lose the 50-odd kids that I spend every working day with for most of a year a time. Every freaking year. Fifty more kids gone, more or less. Like empty nest syndrome on an industrial scale.

Every freaking year. For over a decade now. Sometimes twice a year or more, when on a semester system.

The heartbreak of academia.

(My under-slept and overworked brain initially wanted to write The Heartbreak of Psoriasis but that was just wrong).

My most recent job out at Tongji University was such a tease. Every September, as a department of one, I was presented with my two classes (poetically named Group One and Group Two), whom I would see every day for several hours each, until the end of the following June.

Being a department of one is a very intense thing. You don’t share. Everything that goes on in the program is your responsibility, your joy, your frustration. There are no colleagues to dilute your interactions with the kids, no one to bitch to, no one to commiserate with. Everything is heightened. It’s insanely exhausting. It’s also insanely invigorating.

After the foundation year is done, the kids move on to Year 2 (which is the business diploma program). Some drop out along the way. Fifty kids become thirty become twenty five. The ones who make it through the accounting and law courses (in English) are then shipped off to Australia to complete their degrees, as planned. You may or may not ever hear from them again.

I was a teacher at Tongji for two years, and affiliated with it for the third year (aka tutoring occasionally). I watched two cohorts of kids pass from my academic prep year to the business diploma year.  I saw a lot less of them in their second year, of course, but they were around. We said hi in the halls. We made small talk. Clusters came to see me when I was tutoring one of them. It was sweet and familiar. I felt a sense of continuity.

I bade my first group of kids goodbye last May, at their going away piss up banquet. Last Friday, I did the same with my last crop of kids.

 

My first round of Tongji kids at their grad banquet last year. They’re in Melbourne now.

 

I wasn’t prepared for it at all.

First of all, I had no idea it was even happening.

I was somewhere in the back alleys behind Nanjing Road East, trying to find the old theatre where the national anthem had first been played, having just trekked for the past seven hours around the city for the last instalment of my walking tour app series. With the construction dust of Hongkou clinging to my sweat (summer is back, yes) and my poor socks in tatters (both heels and toes were worn through from too much walking), I got a text message from Cissy, my lovely ex admin assistant at Tongji.

The grad banquet for my last round of kids was starting at 6pm. There had been a mix up with the invitations: she had thought the class monitor had invited me and he had thought Cissy had done it. It was only when another student had asked both of them if I was coming that they realised that neither had.

Thus, the frenzied invitation at just before 5pm on the day.

I stood there, in front of the National Anthem theatre, amidst a cluster of parked bicycles, cars honking, people staring, trying to figure out how to make it work. The kids were finished their course and most would be heading back to their home towns the next day, then to Australia soon after. This was it. My last chance to say goodbye. I felt gutted at the thought of missing it.

But I already had plans.  Doug and I had dinner reservations. Because of my anti-social work schedule, I’d been busy or away every single weekend since early April (and even that was a brief lull in my travel schedule, as I’d spent most February and March weekends in Hangzhou, Zhengzhou and Nanjing). Dinner together would have been very nice indeed.

So I compromised. I’d stay with the kids until 7pm, then jump into a taxi to meet Doug for a late dinner.

As it was nearly 5pm and the graduation banquet was scheduled for 6pm, I jumped into a taxi to go home for a quick shower and costume change then dashed back out the door, much tidier, minus the holey socks.

It was a very intense hour, but I’m glad I did it. I want to show you who I said goodbye to. I’m going to miss these guys.

*sniffle*

 

She spent two years yelling at the kids to behave. Now Mrs. Tang’s work is done.

 

Aaaaaaaaw, feeling teary eyed just looking at this.

 

They managed to squeeze in about a half dozen proper ganbeis before I had to go

 

Oh, wait- we need a food porn shot of the spread!

 

Hey look, the cold offal plate is back!

 

Saving myself for dinner with Doug, I allowed myself just a small sampling. Here is cold lotus stuffed with chestnut.

 

Er, maybe ganbei number five?

 

Look at that face! Aaaaw!

 

That’s the lovely Cissy on the right, by the way.

 

I didn’t forget the girls, who were hiding in the room across the hall (again, aaaaw, sweet!)

 

They made their toasts with milk in shot glasses. How cute is that?

 

My last ganbei before ducking out to get a taxi

 

Comments

9 responses to “Saying Goodbye AGAIN: The annoying heartbreak of being a teacher that nobody warns you about*”

  1. Julia Anderson Avatar
    Julia Anderson

    Saying goodbye is the most hardest feeling to handle but life most go on and need to deal with it.. Those food photos looks so yummy, I want to try them soon when I’ll visit china. 🙂

  2. Sandy Avatar
    Sandy

    Good students NEVER forget great teachers.

    Have always found solace in this……and now up to 35 years later, proof of same.

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      I want to believe that I’m remembered. I’m never sure about it though. Sometimes I’m certain that I leave with the memories and they leave with their dreams ahead of them.

  3. Sally Avatar

    Man, I feel you. Saying goodbye is the worst. They had a big going away party for me at my job in Japan before I left and that was so tough because I had been with most of the students two or three years. I was really trying to keep it together, and then one of my students who I had taught my first year there came up to me and said, “I am who I am because of you.” Umm, hello, how is a girl supposed to keep herself together with that kind of talk going on?

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Aaaaaw, I’d be all teary eyed with that one! At least with this one I kind of had a year’s distance to take the immediacy away from the goodbyes– they hadn’t officially been my students since last June. Still felt sad to see them go though.

  4. Megan Avatar

    Oh, that’s a tough one. It was hard to say goodbye to my 8th graders who I’d known for three years. They went from babies to teenagers in that amount of time!

    Also, let’s not forget that goodbyes can be great, too. Like saying goodbye to that student who drove you crazy? SEE YA!

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Oh, I know what you mean about shouting SEE YA! to the ones that drive you nuts… the problem with this particular goodbye was that the kids who drove me nuts had already dropped out of the program and only the awesome, hard working ones were left. Sigh!

      And the bit about seeing them grow up– i had that in Turkey, at the k-12 I worked in. Those 10 year olds who hugged me and kissed me and gave me cookies are now university grads, most having turned out ridiculously gorgeous/glam/handsome. Disconcerting!

  5. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    I feel like i’m going through that right now too. I’ve taught in Chongqing for the past year but I am planning to move to Shanghai. It’s hard to say goodbye to the students. I don’t know how to break it to them.

    On another note it is interesting that you mention Shanghai Ocean University cause that’s where I was thinking of going to teach next. I noticed it was at the south east corner of ShangHai. Is there any reasonable mode of express transport from Ocean U to downtown ShangHai or is it unfeasible?

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      Ah, are you going to AIEN? If so, it’s a great place to work. Lovely people, well organised. I lasted only one semester though, when I first moved to China, as my commute was killing me. It’s way out in Lingang New Town, which is about an hour (and 20rmb) by express bus from LongYang Road metro station (line 2, in Pudong). There’s a school bus (or there was a school bus in 2009) that picks teachers up at 7am near Zhangjiang GaoKe (one stop further east on line 2, used to be the terminus). I originally lived in Century Park, near the line 2 metro station of the same name, which made the commute not too bad- I left the flat around 6:45am to get to Zhangjiang GaoKe by 7am. Got home around 5:45-6pm most evenings (Wednesdays were early finishes so I got in around 3).

      However, my landlord sold my flat out from under me with barely a week’s warning so in May of that year I had to abruptly move in with Doug (my boyfriend), who was living and working in Puxi. His was a much more interesting neighbourhood, much more centrally located (line 1, Shanxi Nan lu)– restaurants, cafes, etc– and a lot more vibrant. I vastly preferred it to the sleepiness of Pudong. Pudong is nice if you like suburban living. Anyway. My 6:45am start to get the 7am bus turned into a 5:45am start to get there (5am wake-up!)…And I didn’t get home til after 6:30 most nights. I was exhausted. Although I really liked the job, I couldn’t handle the commute. I changed jobs after a one semester contract and ended up at Tongji (where I could leave the flat at 6:45am on my 2 or 3 early mornings).

      If you do end up out at Ocean, the best thing to do is to either live in Lingang (many teachers do, but I couldn’t as it was too far from the center for me and the express bus’ restricted schedule would have made seeing my bf really difficult– I think buses stopped at, like, 9pm) or along line 2, somewhere near Longyang lu or Zhangjiang Gaoke.

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