u/Nihongo-ohno

I just want to say, thanks to everyone over the last decade who constantly posted about what a dogshit show Falling Skies is and how it's so terrible.

You lowered my expectations so much that I genuinely enjoyed it. I watched it all the way through.

Was it full of old, tired TV tropes? Yep.

Was the acting sub par in many scenes? Yep.

Were the special effects cheap and dated? Yep.

Did the plot go off on weird tangents that made little sense? Yep.

Was the ending a bit of a disappointment? Yep.

Did they leave some massive, massive loose ends? Yep.

But, did I enjoy watching it? Yep.

I think Reddit, in general, is biased towards negative posts/stories for organic reasons (you're less likely to make a thread when things are going well, more likely to complain about things, it's just human). This sub is no exception.

I came to Japan due to life circumstances. I did not come to Japan because I wanted to be in Japan. I had an, at best, neutral opinion of the country before coming here.

When I got here, I looked at my options (not many), and decided to try working at an eikaiwa. I had never taught before and never worked with kids before. I discovered that I really enjoy both teaching and working with children. I would have never known that had I never come here and tried it.

Now, a year later, I'm a direct hire ALT and loving that, and I'm still doing some eikaiwa work as a side gig.

If I want to make a career of this, I've got a lot of work to do, and that's another topic entirely, but I just wanted to say that, although I'm working harder than I've ever worked before, I'm loving it. I really enjoy what I do. It's funny to think that doing this would have never occurred to me had I not come to Japan.

Being a positive role model for and encouraging children and youth in their growth and development is such an amazing experience and I'm so glad I get to do it. Even if I end up doing something else in the future, I will always cherish these memories.

Long story short, I've had severe undiagnosted ADHD my whole life up until a year ago. I got diagnosed, got medicated, and, for the first time in my life, I've actually been excelling in my career and earned a promotion.

I've actually had a phenomenal amount of career success in the last year, my work has been praised and recognized and people keep throwing more responsibility at me (and, to be fair, more money).

This is nice, but I've been basically working nonstop. I feel like I'm in over my head and I spend my days off doing work at home and prepping for work. I spent the entire weekend last weekend working.

It won't be like this forever. Eventually I will gain experience in my new role and feel more comfortable and get faster and more efficient with it and not need to be working every waking moment of my life - but holy shit I don't know if I can survive until I get to that point.

I'm starting to lose my shit. It's been months now of this brutal transition period and I'm losing my marbles. I smashed my keyboard yesterday because I was trying to type and my hands just couldn't type - my fingers were too jittery, probably from the fatigue and caffeine.

I don't really have the option of taking a break now. I will get a big summer break (I'm a teacher) in August but I need to keep pushing until then.

My diagnosis and meds have helped me be more productive than ever before, but I'm running into my emotional limit. My mood and mental health are at a consistent low these days.

Any advice? I'm really terrible at regulating my mood. I wake up feeling irritated and everything throughout the day just pisses me off. Ironically, I'm happy at work. I love teaching and I love being with my students. It's my days off that make me want to break things. I spend my days off prepping lessons and cleaning and doing chores and just generally being miserable and angry at the world.

I have a Oneplus 7T running Android 12.

Everything was working fine until I had to make a phone call today and my phone cannot make calls.

Wifi works. Mobile data works. SMS works. Cannot make or receive calls.

Took my phone to my carrier, they don't know what's wrong. I tried my SIM card in another phone, it works fine - it makes and receives calls in another phone, but not in mine.

In the sim card screen, underneath my SIM and the mobile data toggle, "calling" is greyed out.

I didn't make any changes to my phone recently.

I have one year of experience teaching English to kindergarten and elementary students at an eikaiwa.

A job was basically thrown in my lap. A private junior high school has a direct hire ALT position that was basically given to me (after an interview, of course), due to some connections I made. I'm incredibly grateful and realize how insanely lucky I am. Now I want to do the best job possible.

Once I begin, I will have a curriculum and textbooks to guide my lesson plans, but right now I need to design my lessons for my first day. I'm teaching all 3 JHS grades. My lessons will be 50 minutes each.

I have zero experience in Japanese public schools and zero experience with this age range. Please let me know if my current lesson idea is good and give me any feedback/tips:

For my very first lesson with these students, I plan to make it basically an introduction where they get to know me and I can gauge their English fluency and engagement/willingness to participate.

I plan on making the first part of the lesson an interactive slideshow. I will tell them who I am, where I'm from, my hometown, and certain things about me (fav sports, fav food, pets, etc). During this, I can ask them questions so that they aren't just sitting there watching me give a ~15 min presentation. For example, I used to play baseball, and I have pictures of me playing baseball. I can ask them if they like baseball, their favorite team, who their fav player is, etc (I only know Ohtani, heh).

After this, my plan is to have the students answer questions about themselves. I will model the question and answer first, and then begin asking students questions.

Ultimately, I want them to form groups and ask each other questions. Then, I'd like them to give mini presentations.

The class will have 35 students, though, so I'm not even sure I can realistically go around the room asking them questions one by one.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how fluent they are in English. If they can handle it, I'd love to have them work out a simple presentation to give as a group, such as giving me a recommendation for sight seeing. If they can't handle that, though, a simple presentation where they say their name, hometown, favorite food/sport would be more appropriate.

How can I best form a lesson plan while lacking this information? Would you basically create a branching plan where you have two different paths to take depending on student performance?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I'm going to be the T1

Edit: I haven't started the job yet, have not met my colleagues, and do not have their contact info, which is why I can't just "ask them".