Marigate

After months and months of negotiations, video classes are happening. In fact, we’re shooting the first eight lessons next Sunday. The whole idea of doing this is just crazy to me. I’ve seen myself writing scripts for the last two months, and I’m still in process of writing the last one, and it’s gotta be finished by tomorrow. I think that’s the reason why I didn’t write anything here in two months, all the energy went to these bloody scripts.

My colleagues and I produced this demo class to show the company what the lesson would look like. We did it with absolutely no school resources; the only thing we used was the premisses. The camera, teleprompter, the editing; all us. The company really liked the final result, so did the school’s owners.

Last week, Mari and I took the Friday afternoon to work on the scripts and the presentation. She will be the teacher on screen and needed to know the material, so we did a little rehearsal. After reading six scripts in a row, she was absolutely exhausted, and we started thinking about the actual shooting. She’ll be the presenter, so it’s all on her. As she has groups on Monday all day, I suggested she asked for the morning off, because this job will definitely be brutal. This was Saturday and I wouldn’t be back to work until Wednesday. She talked to the school’s OP about it, and he proceeded to ask our boss about it. Well, at this point things took a turn for the worse weird.

I was in Recife, extremely tired from a long flight, and after going for a brief walk, I decided to check my emails just in case. I see my mailbox with this long thread of emails saying that Mari shouldn’t be part of the project anymore, that she had no consideration for her groups, that if she insisted on having the day off, she would be out of the video class project and I would be the one presenting it! Yeah, right…

I honestly did not see this one coming… I would never have thought that her ASKING for the morning off would escalate to Marigate!!! And being away just made the whole situation worse. So, I had to step in and say that I was the one to blame, that apparently my suggestion had not been the smartest one and it wasn’t her fault at all!

What’s really strange, though, is the reaction we got from the bosses. Why so angry? If it’s not possible, just say so; but creating a storm in a teacup is not exactly the response we were expecting. Things are weird at the school now. People are acting weird. And I don’t like it one bit…