by So often in the past few months I’ve bristled at people’s anti-vax stance, and today I just lost it. If you’re an anti-vaxer, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Your actions are lethal, end of story. You are killing other people. The pro-vax and anti-vax positions do not have equal legitimacy. (She even mentioned her refusal to vaccinate her son, which is disgustingly irresponsible.) And that’s what I told my student in my tenth and last lesson with her today. I won’t go into any more details but it was an hour-long train wreck that I could (maybe) have avoided. Mercifully, it was only an hour. I was amazed when she pointed to a comment I’d made in a previous lesson about Romanians sometimes using English words in conversation because they want to sound sophisticated. She’d been offended by that. Like, how? If you get offended by that, I’m going to have a really hard time saying anything without piercing your tissue-paper-like skin. So that was it. I’m better off without her. I’ve also had lessons with her son, and they’ve always gone well. He has an impressive command of the language. I don’t know if we’ll continue. Pity the boy though. His parents have split up, and his mother seems a bit of an arsehole.
The anti-vax “debate” illustrates why we’d all be better off without social media. The evidence is crystal clear – just imagine where we’d be without mass polio vaccination. But so many people get all their “news” from Facebook that confirms what they want to hear.
It’s been a shitty day all round, really. This guy has been contacting me to help cheat on his English test in real time, and now he wants me to do his homework for him, as part of his stupid, nonsensical English course that won’t help him learn any English, not that he’s in the least bit interested in that. He just wants to pass. This morning I told him, this is not my job, but he insisted. I find him extremely aggravating.
My next lesson is in an hour. It’s with a guy I get on well with. Can’t wait. And Andreescu and Zidansek are at 7-6, 6-7, 7-7 in the first round of the French Open.
