On Being late, Being Unprepared and Being Ignorant

Name your top three pet peeves.

We all have pet peeves. I am no exception; however I’m finding that the older I get, the less patient I become about things, particularly my pet peeves. Does this mean I’m becoming crotchety? What follows are my three biggest pet peeves. I’m sure this list is nowhere near comprehensive, if I give it some more thought.

Being Late

As a kid growing up, we were late for everything. I didn’t like doing it as a kid and I hate it even more now as an adult. To me, running late shows that you just don’t care for or have respect for whatever you’re going to do.

When we grow up, there’s some things that we do the same way our parents did -whether we realize it or not. There are other things where we make a conscious decision to do things differently. This is one of those areas where I strive to be better than my parents were.

I get it. Things happen. We all have those days where we’re just running behind for one reason or another other. I also understand that some people have situations that force them to be consistently late. But in general, being late shows you don’t care. I like the military’s philosophy on punctuality: “if you’re supposed to be somewhere at 8 AM, showing up at 8 AM is late”

As a teacher, I feel that running late puts me behind for a good portion of the work day. On an ideal day, I like to be one of the first teachers to arrive to my school. I’ve seen teacher who will walk into their school and unlock their classroom door as students are lined up waiting for their first class to begin. I just cannot bring myself to do that. I need to arrive early to work, get ready and relax. speaking of getting ready…

Being unprepared

As much as I hate being late, I equally hate big unprepared for the same reasons: being unprepared suggests that you don’t care about a situation.

Sometimes walking into a situation ill-equipped or ill-prepared is out of our hands. That’s even worse. Here’s a story:

Yesterday my principal asked us to be sure that our students had an app downloaded to their laptops that they will be using to take the SAT later this year. The instructions we were to give them were for devices running Windows. My students’ laptops are running Google Chrome. Not only did this leave me frustrated, it left my students frustrated with me. At least I perceived them to be

One of the most important skills as a teacher is being able to make adjustments. We walked searched around as a class and found the correct files for their laptops; only to discover that administrative setting on their devices prevent them for downloading new programs. This made our office look stupid; and made me look ever more stupid for following their directives.

In the future, I will ask ONE student to try this to be sure it works; rather than wasting class time.

Being ignorant

Have all the facts about something. If you don’t have all the facts, be willing to admit that you don’t know everything AND be willing to learn.

No one wants to be thought of as dumb; but too many people are too embarrassed that they don’t have all the facts about a situation. I’m looking at you, flat-earthers.

Even worse than this are the people who pick and choose the facts that fit their agenda. This one’s for you, conspiracy-theorists.

As I think about it, I realize that my job demands that I don’t fall into any of these three pet peeves. Maybe that’s why they annoy me so much.

What are the your biggest pet peeves?

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The article “on being late, being unprepared and being ignorant” originally appeared on Rebuilding Rob