The Digital Age of Comics Begins This Week!

From time to time, I’ll blog about something that catches my fancy to provide me with some distraction from the rigors of day-to-day work. You’ll see all such posts marked with the category, “Stuff!” 

DC Comics relaunches this week with all new #1 issues! As a life-long fan of DC Comics, these are extraordinarily exciting times! So with 52 new series to choose from, what do I have in my radar? Now presenting my choices with my favorite accompanying artwork released so far. Will also sum up in a line why I’m sold on each book.

The D.O. Hour 1st Quarter SY 2011/12

Some key take aways from the D.O. Hour –

1. The bag deposit areas are supposed to be just the shelves and not a whole section of the floor. While we work out a solution, let’s remember our rules and work with what we’ve got. Once the shelves are empty, please use your lockers or the shelves by the library. The back lobby bag deposit areas are particularly notorious; the bags encompass almost the entire hallway now and it has become incredibly difficult to pass.

2. Beginning September 1, the COs will begin monitoring for non-compliance. Nonetheless, I am now issuing non-compliance reports. Your teachers will begin too as well. The time for gentle reminders and accommodation is over. Now you know the rules, and I trust your better senses to follow and do your simple part in keeping order in campus.

3. As the Fair Use policy states, listening to music on earphones is the only allowable form of personal entertainment in campus. Playing video games are outright prohibited. Watching videos however, can be a gray area as you may need to watch a documentary or film for class from time to time. For safety, have a teacher vouch for you and file an OPF.

4. The following forms are available online:

• DO2012 Device Registry Form
• DO2012 Incident Report Form
• DO2012 Object Permit Form

5. The detailed paper on The Fair Use Policy follows –

On Life as the DO, a Quarter and a Half Since

If it was tough writing before, it’s become a whole lot tougher now.

I clearly can’t be as candid or as loose as I used to be. I simply can’t babble on about the latest incident or case I handled during the day. And for sure, even my personal life now goes through a rather intense filter, given I’m the discipline officer and all. That’s why I’ve enjoyed microblogging more through Facebook or Tumblr these past months. Less words, less chance for error I guess. But more than that I’ve enjoyed the interaction – both serious and sabaw – that social media can provide at the end of long, grueling day.

A blog entry here on WordPress requires more processing. And often times I neither have the time nor energy to process. But we’re in the middle of a long weekend and I’m just done slugging through making my students’ grades, so let’s see.

So how’s life been like for me since I became DO?

I’ve gotten that question a lot these past weeks but I never really went beyond the cursory, “It’s great!” or “Okay lang…” depending on my mood. Let me offer a little bit more.

1. IT’S BEEN A REAL CHALLENGE TO COMPARTMENTALIZE

I’ve gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing my work these past years. I can juggle being Batch Adviser, AKSIS Adviser, and an SS2 teacher all at the same time without breaking a sweat. I really enjoyed the rush of scheduling meetings, setting agendas, and seeing projects through. I love working with people and watching my students grow as leaders, and that really kept me on despite the sheer quantity of the workload. I miss those days.

I can’t do that as the DO. It’s the kind of work that I have to dedicate my whole being to 24/7. Announcing stuff at the FlagCem and walking around telling students to follow the rules – that’s the easy part. What becomes consuming is when a case comes to my desk. The past weeks have been particularly busy for me; I went to having just one case to five. And for each case, I do my best to look at the big picture and see how each part of the school community can help me resolve it and address similar problems in the future. It’s been fun and I’ve been flexing a whole new set of muscles – those which could’ve made me a lawyer. I’m thankful for the great team surrounding me from my office assistant to the discipline committee. It’s really tough work what we do.

2. I ACTUALLY LIKE WHAT I’M DOING NOW

I actually let the word fun slip past me in the previous paragraph. So there we go.

As a person, I generally love doing new things at work and finding bigger ways to help make a positive contribution to the community I’m in. The first month where I got to do some real concrete things for the school was a great time for me. While I’ve been busy with cases these past weeks, I hope to get back to doing something constructive again. There is still so much we need to do in school and I’m increasingly finding more avenues to help. Part of my philosophy is that a good environment and a clear sensible system can promote and reward good behavior on its own. That’s what I still hope to work towards eventually.

3. I’M BEGINNING TO REALIZE I CAN’T DO EVERYTHING ON MY OWN

I don’t mean this in a team sense. Neither do I mean this in an organizational sense. In both, I know my place, do my best job in it, and extend a helping hand when I can. What I mean by not being able to do everything on my own is emotionally.

I’ve become pretty independent when it comes to my feelings. I’ve come to a point where neither criticism nor praise can affect me personally, and I can reduce emotions into an intellectual argument which I can then process, absorb, and ultimately eliminate. This may sound cold and harsh, but this is what helps me work the way I do. Now I’m realizing that there’s a limit to that armor. Without going into too much detail, a key insight I had this past week was this: I need to just hang out again more.

4. MY WORK HAS INSPIRED ME TO WORK EVEN HARDER

I began the year with a very hopeful, idealistic tone. It is cliché that idealism is often worn out as reality sets in, but that has never been my attitude. Dreams have always meant hard work. And that if you have a vision of a world you want to create, you work at it. It doesn’t come without effort.

This is why, despite the rush of cases these past two weeks, I still see my work positively. Now I see what needs to be done. And just like what I used to do before, I bring people together to help me solve it, I set a time frame for us to accomplish our goals, and I see everyone through until the job is done. I have no illusions about the size of the task before us, whether it be putting an end to bullying and peer pressure, or teaching our students to believe in themselves and their capacity for good.

A colleague told me at the beginning of all this that I’m about to map uncharted territory. At that time, I was an eager adventurer with a hunger for surprise. Now I’m starting to see the lay of the land, its environs and creatures, and I’m not about to head back to more familiar ground. I’m all in. I’ve always believed that our students need their teachers to go all the way for them and I’m not about to change that now.

Some Housekeeping

As my PSHS work gets centralized more around Facebook — DO through Pisay Direct and SS2 through a dedicated group and my Slideshare account — I find that there is less need for me to make this blog a ‘central hub’ for my school work as I originally thought it would be. I hope that frees me up to write again. Let’s see.

So as you may notice, everything looks cleaner and simpler this time around. Let’s see what kind of stuff I put on here eventually.

George R.R. Martin, the first of his name

I’ve never been much of a fantasy reader. Sword and sorcery never really appealed to me despite stumbling into it every now and then. I have at least read Tolkien, and I know the broad strokes of the world Rowling has made. When my mind wanders into fiction it craves for the sort of fantasy that is set in galaxies far, far away or for the graphic world of capes and super villains. A while back I was ensnared by the King in the world of Roland Deschain, but I have yet to be held hostage by another world and its inhabitants since Lost.

Then I woke up yesterday.

For the past two months, I’ve lived a double life. By day, I worked at my job or rather, I jobbed at my work. I was never late despite time being measured not so much by hours, but by the months that counted down to the coming of winter. They’ve always said that reading fantasy was all about escapism, but after having read George R. R. Martin, it feels more like being finally reborn.

For two months, I felt snow crunching beneath my feet. I felt the clanging of steel as I parried sword with sword. I felt the ambient heat as the air burned in the presence of dragons. I felt it all: whether it be the solace atop the Wall, the anxiety in King’s Landing, or the mystery in the lands of the Dothraki — I felt it all. In the past I’ve read about places such as Coruscant, Mid-World, and Middle Earth. But I haven’t been to those places such as I’ve been to Westeros. This I owe to a king as masterful as George R. R. Martin, the first of his name.

The books are by no means perfect, of course.

What I consider its greatest strength — a deep-penetrating realism that runs against the instincts of the genre — is what others consider as its greatest failing. Every now and then I too tire of the treachery and plot-twists. Nonetheless, Martin has written his story in such a way that you won’t trust straightforward narration either and that magic, when it appears, is incredibly frightful.

I do love the realism. Having read a lot of historical fiction, I can easily create the world of A Song of Ice and Fire in my head. The HBO series helped immensely; without it I would have never even picked up the books. The show provided me with enough visual cues to invest myself in the world to read books two through five. And throughout the novels, shifting the point-of-view character in every chapter utilizes the narrative discipline I’ve developed as a fan of Lost. I really felt right at home.

I am doing my best to avoid discussing specifics about character and plot. We can have those discussions in person or in the appropriate fora. Suffice to say, that big death in book one really shook me to my core as I tend to stand by characters who are selfless, noble, and answer to a higher duty. But it gave me this sense that this writer is playing for keeps. How this singular event literally ignited the rest of the series is something to be respected, even when the frequency in which the writer does this can be frightening (though at times bordering on the non-sensical) as well.

We are now five books down, two more to go. A Dance with Dragons leaves us in a place that feels like the beginning of book two. I’m getting quite nervous about the complex plot Martin has left to juggle as he clinches the series, but not quite as nervous as whether he’ll actually have time to do so. I now join that increasingly large chorus of fans who wish him well.