More than a Hobby

[lordbrooks]

40k has been great for the social interactions, we transitioned from mostly boardgaming with some Necromunda (the gateway drug) into a ~10 strong weekly crafting/playing group. It's a good reason to get out with friends and praise each other's work. The sense of accomplishment from crafting is incredible and trading bits and tips keeps it fun.
For me, a big part of it is the looseness of the rules and the endless permutations of armies and possibilities. Getting schooled badly when someone works out a new uber-list is an excuse to figure out the new uber-list yourself. It's a sport where nobody gets to be the best for long (cross my fingers the CSM keep their 10-0-0 streak going).
Hell, it's better than football.

[ElectricPaladin]

As a middle school teacher serving extremely at-risk kids, I frequently find myself running up against actually impossible odds. I mean, how, the hell am I going to teach science to kids who are traumatized and impoverished using inadequate equipment... and that's the easiest kids. Don't get me started on the kids who have actually been abused or neglected or born with drugs in their systems... and that isn't bothering to think about the years of racism, classicism, and sexism that I'm struggling against here.

In other words, it's a really rough job.

The thing is that every night I get to go home and paint my tiny plastic men. Some of them are good guys, and I get to make them brightly colored and noble. Some of them are bad guys, and I get to make them gaunt and horrible and covered in blood. I have a project that I can actually finish, rather than an endless battle that I can never really win.

And once a week, I get to go down to the FLGS and take out my monsters and fight the good fight (or, you know, the bad fight) and either win or lose and then it's over. And I get to hang out with adults and curse up a ******* storm. Believe me - nothing exorcises stress like smashing a bunch of Orks into the ground.

So yeah, it's more than a hobby for me, too. It's an important form of self-care.

[The Last Lamenter]

[QUOTE=ElectricPaladin;366585]As a middle school teacher serving extremely at-risk kids, I frequently find myself running up against actually impossible odds. I mean, how, the hell am I going to teach science to kids who are traumatized and impoverished using inadequate equipment... and that's the easiest kids. Don't get me started on the kids who have actually been abused or neglected or born with drugs in their systems... and that isn't bothering to think about the years of racism, classicism, and sexism that I'm struggling against here.

In other words, it's a really rough job.

Friend, fellow teacher, common core sufferer: I too teach at a poor title I school over here in cleveland, TN, I understand so much where you're coming from. I feel like a fish swimming against the current sometimes, I never know if its going to come together at all, but I know it's worth it because it has it has to be else I wouldn't do it. I teach literature, and when I'm lecturing on Homer or the Bard, and teaching from my toes, you know what I mean, I feel like it's nothing but a waste when I'm speaking from the heart when the rest of profession has moved towards this sanitized, politically correct, fantasy-world all the while kids are fighting each other and screwing each other and burning themselves out on the hedonism our bankrupt culture is peddling. Keep the faith, focus on the one, not the many. Respect to you, glad you've found some respite from the trenches in 40k. Fortunately for me, I've found a couple of my students who are bigger lore geeks than me. We ***** and argue at each other over the nature of the emp's divinity and the general canon issues, and then I have to write them passes to their next classes, because we ***** and argue too long sometimes. Maybe you'll find some lore geeks at the middle school level you can't wise up. Anyway, respect to you, from the Southeast, -A fellow teacher, cleveland high school-