UE 139 - Sticking To Your Guns

Uncensored English

Wooowee! This one was last minute! Today we talk about an idiom that you can use to communicate that you're keeping your word, even against resistance. We also talk about building confidence versus trying to get ahead.

*** TraNSCRIPT***

Hey everyone, how's it going? It is Wednesday, February 1, 2017. That's right, ladies and gentleman, we have made it to the second month of 2017. That's right, the world has not ended yet. We have a few more days to go. No, seriously guys, I hope you're having a great week so far. A little announcement before I get on with the podcast. The Uncensored English Café is going to be postponed this Sunday due to technical difficulties. Did you notice them? Did you notice them on Monday's podcast that I didn't have the intro in there, I didn't have the intro music as I usually do?

I had a few problems on my side of the world. I had a few technical difficulties with the computer I usually use to record the podcast, so I did not have that. But it's been solved. But, I am very overwhelmed this week. I'm just going to scrap the Uncensored English Café this weekend. It will be back the following weekend, as well as we will have the Storytelling Challenge the following weekend. Big week next week, exciting.

Enough about me, how are you? How was your week guys? What did you do? I made a vow to a few of my students not to talk about the topics that I've been talking about recently, because they're popping up all over the place, so I'm going to stick to that. Actually, I just got back from a dinner. I went out with my wife and my daughter to a restaurant in our neck of the woods, not too far from my house. We were having dinner, and I was floating around in my mind for a few seconds there, while my wife was in the bathroom with my daughter.

I thought, you know what, tonight I didn't really have a topic planned for the podcast, I was just going to spew whatever thoughts were in my mind out into the soundscape of the podcast. Then I remembered I sent out a newsletter today, and I did commit myself to a few topics. I'm going to stick to my guns. I'm going to do what I said I was going to do. I'm going to keep my word. That is the idiom stick to your guns, is when you do what you say you're going to do, you keep your word, often against some protest.

This is tough, because I was really going to depend on that idiot who we've been hearing a lot about recently to talk about this topic. I hate when I call him an idiot because I don't know him personally. I'm not going to do that, so I'm sticking to my guns. I'm going to still talk about what I planned to talk about, which is my daughter and her skating lessons.

On Saturday's podcast I talked briefly about this. I talked about how my daughter is doing her second session of skating lessons. The first class I really was not happy, and not comfortable with what went on. I felt she was in the wrong level. It's not a problem that she's the weakest student in the class, but to me the problem was that the teacher wasn't attentive. Part of it is a factor of it being a group class, and part of it is a factor of the teacher just not being the right type of teacher for young kids.

I know this for a fact because I taught swimming lessons for about seven to eight years. No matter which pool you go to, I promise you this, I promise you there's always one or two instructors in that pool, who are fan-fucking-tastic instructors, and then there's a handful of them who are average, some weeks are better than other weeks, some weeks they don't really care, some weeks they're great. Then there's just a few instructors who just don't really want to do it. They're just 17, 18 and this is their first job, and they don't even realize that they don't like kids yet. It's not their fault, they're not bad people, but they're just vacant, they have no energy in the class, they don't connect with kids, and this was the type of instructor my daughter had.

I knew it when I left the session with my daughter, I walked by the instructor and I looked her in the eyes. She just had that vacant energy to her. I was like, no she's not the instructor for my kid. I went in there and I talked to the supervisor. We exchanged thoughts. We bounced around some ideas. I'm really happy because we went to the session on Sunday and my daughter was changed to another class, and the two instructors in this class are just so high energy. They're really warm and friendly, and my daughter responds to them. There was an amazing difference. At the end of the first session, my daughter came off the ice saying, "I don't like this. I don't want to do it again." At the end of the second class, my daughter came off the ice saying, "I love this. It was so much fun."

I'm 70, 80 percent sure it was the instructors. At the same time, I did take [Keiro 05:34] on Saturday night, because I wanted to just get her a little more practice to boost her confidence up. It all comes back to that, the more that you practice the more confident you become. The more confident you become, the more challenges you're willing to take. The more you challenge yourself, the more you grow. With that being said, I hope if you're listening to this podcast, and you ever feel that you're with the wrong tutor, it's not a personal thing. Don't think that they've got something against you, or that they're bad. Maybe it's just you're with the wrong tutor. Switch it up. Go to someone new. Go to someone you connect with, because it'll be way more motivating. Chances are, you'll make progress a lot quicker.

That's what I had to talk about today. Actually, I had another thing that I wanted to talk about. I've been doing classes on my Talk Life for about three months in French. At the beginning of January, I started a new program for myself where I do about four classes a week. I took a lot of classes with a lot of different tutors. I chose one woman, who has been fantastic. She's not a highly priced tutor. My previous tutor was very highly priced. She was about 40 Canadian dollars, it was about 30 US dollars when I took her. My tutor that I chose recently, her price is very low, but I kind of gave her a little bit of training.

She is very open minded. She takes my goals very seriously. I bought a 20 package session with her. Just recently I just noticed that her energy kind of got flat. I was just like, oh no, do I got to change tutors. I don't want to get all excited about my class. Every once in awhile you have a class and when it comes around you're like, I don't know if I really want to do it, because you had so many other things that day. You force yourself to go. You force yourself to go, and then class starts and the tutor just seems like they're in the same mood. That's a huge buzz kill and a downer.

It should not be the student's responsibility to carry the energy in the class. It's never the student's responsibility. I know this because I do this every day. I did nine hours today, and ten hours on Monday. I'm proud of the fact that my classes happen and there's no lulls. There's always a down point, but there's no deep lulls where people are like "Ugh, well, uh, you know, I just, uh, this is awkward, what are we doing here, like uh, are you the teacher? Are you going to do something?" That fucking weird point where you feel like maybe the person you're paying to do their job, should do their job?

All right guys, I think that's the end of the podcast tonight. Yeah, I had an announcements, but I did it at the beginning. There's going to be a transcript for this one. It might be late, but stay tuned for the Storytelling Challenge. That is coming up in one week.