163 Days To Go

Back to lectures. From the unconfined joy of the random utterances of little children who cannot tell the difference between an essence and a fictional sci-fi monster (The Nativity, t'was a laugh), I find myself back in lecture theatres and classrooms becoming, once again, the student. I'll be honest, I enjoyed laying in my bed watching endless reruns of Family Guy more. Heck, I enjoyed filling in my PDP more than learning what it means to be an 'Inspirational Teacher, Part 2' (Thinking someone's nicking their titles for their presentations from a certain someone...) but it just felt that we were back and they hadn't quite got why we were back. Like, we were supposed to be these awesome teachers now. And we've got the same sort of thing on Thursday.

Part 2. Clever. Cheats.

I'm about to go to drinks for my friend's 19th. As she was 19 whilst we were on school placement (and when I had money), she pushed it back to here (when we aren't on placement and I am without money). It's my first 'uni' drink in about 4 months. Not gonna lie, I am excited to get with the party atmosphere, but I'm glad I'm going early. Drinking was, but is no longer, my thing. I'm over the stage in my life where I drank because I was unhappy, much rather preferring a sober alternative. Too many bad things happen when drink is in you, not least when I was... nearly taken brutal advantage of. Having those who care around you, especially my BF, makes for the kind of atmosphere that I crave, I yearn for. My BF's concern for my drinking at university makes me really value him.

He doesn't mind that I'm broke though. It was all for a good cause.

177 Days To Go

After the first day of a block placement entangled with pure joy and pure tiredness, I can easily say that I really want to be a primary school teacher with my own classroom, my own class, my own TA and my own wage. This startling conclusion came, not in the classroom setting, but in my own abode. Cleaning my room from an organisational pigsty to something cleaner than the Pope's underwear. My room looked dirtier than a priests' CRB check but after battling the fiendish monster, I feel more organised and prepared than ever to live a life.

And all because I can see the original dead spiders. Ah, bless.

Having rattled out a pretty intense first day on placement (I led some kids in an investigation about science and sat in a 90 minute planning meeting), I came home and went STRAIGHT to Skype. An instant beeline to the laptop to talk with my BF. But... I could only spend 20 minutes with him. For the rest of the time I would be talking to him would then be taken up with dinner, chores, planning, organisation and a private matter. And I truly felt awful, because I vowed to him that I would spend as much time as I could with him, even if it meant putting everything else on hold. I was so glad he was so understanding, but he knows how much I am hurting from not being able to contact him as much today. It got me proper down.

I'll do anything for a job at the end of it, but only one where I can talk to him for a while in between...

I reckon I'll average getting about 4 hours sleep a night for this placement. Whilst I'm still reeling from the fact that I'm going on holiday, my head still isn't fully clear yet. I celebrated 6 months, I turned 19 and I'm teaching my first lesson in under 9 days. With all these big events happening so suddenly, I'm scared of overloading. And with the lack of sleep, I'm really scared that, come weekends... I might not wake up to blog...

It's like a slightly more believable version of 'Saw'. This will be your worst nightmare.