The PGCE 'I can't do this' moment.

So whilst my blogs are few and far between these days they are definitely something I’ve had every intention of returning to.

A lot has happened since I last wrote as I believe my last bit of inspiration came around the time of my Grandma’s funeral, but I've been so busy ever since.

To update you, I’ve almost finished my first placement, have passed Stage 2 of my PGCE and have joined a dating site which has been the source of a few interesting evenings!

I really didn’t know what to write about tonight, it was a toss up between several things but I picked the PGCE 'I can't do this' moment.

I think everyone gets to a point on the course where they have had absolutely and utterly enough. You have moments every day when you think ‘why am I doing this?!’ but this is next level. You actually write the email to say you’re going to quit and are on the brink of sending it. For me I’d worked 18 hours the day before, had 4 hours sleep and had an unbelievable amount of work to do in just one day in order to meet an important deadline, and I just didn't have time to do everything. I’d been having one meal a day for several weeks and just had no energy to go in and tell children to turn round and face the front, stop swinging on their chairs and shut up.

These are some of the reasons why I reached ‘Black Tuesday’ as I like to call it:

• ·         My lessons are never good enough. There is ALWAYS room for improvement.
• ·         I’m a perfectionist. I can never plan or evaluate in enough detail to satisfy me.
• ·         I miss my old life. I’m not a student anymore. Someone has abducted my social life - taken it from me, and at some points I wanted to ring that person up and give them Liam Neeson’s ‘I will find you…’ line from ‘Taken’, with even more conviction than he showed.
• ·         Some of the kids have literally no respect whatsoever and will treat you like you’re subhuman.
• ·         You get put in a school, you can’t choose where you go on placement. That’s not to say I hate my school, I don’t at all, but it might not be the right place in the long term even if you get fantastic experience there. I did find it hard at points.
• ·         People who just don’t understand telling you that you don’t even know what stress is yet because ‘you’re not even a real teacher with a full timetable yet’. That is not a helpful statement in the least. Have you done this?! Oh you haven't? Then be silent!

However, there are obviously reasons why I haven’t dropped out yet. The golden moments that make it worth it – here are a few:

• ·         ‘Miss, I really enjoyed that lesson’.
• ·         When kids say thanks to me for teaching them.
• ·         Meeting their parents and realising they actually give a shit about their child’s education.
• ·         ‘I’ll be sad when you leave Miss’.
• ·         Whilst a lesson will never be perfect, there are elements of some of my lessons that have come close.
• ·         ‘You have created some fantastic resources’
• ·         When someone tells you they can tell that you genuinely care about what you do.
• ·         ‘Why was John afraid to baptise Jesus?’ ‘He thought Jesus would beat him up?’
• ·         When a teacher comes up and asks if you’re ok and says that if you need anything to just ask.
• ·         Random texts off my Dad to say he’s proud of me and Mum calling to check if I’ve had a good day.
• ·         Getting told I look like Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Alice in Wonderland all in one week by the same child. The first one?!
• ·         When an experienced teacher tells you that they think you will make a good teacher.

So to anyone thinking of doing a PGCE, prepare for your ‘I can’t do this moment’ because it will probably come at some point. But when it does, bear in mind you aren’t the first or the last to feel like you can’t even look at the school logo without wanting to vom! If I can do it, then anyone can!

To all my fellow PGCEers, we made it this far! I’m so proud of us.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

So yeah, this is something I have thinking about a fair bit recently.

How do we judge if someone is acting their age? Should we?

Well for a child there are loads of ways to determine this, mainly through developmental stages that broadly follow the patterns of the levels of their education, emotional capacities and behaviour patterns, but what I’m talking about is adult age.

There comes a time, when we seem to plateau, but in levels and for a very long time. It has only recently hit me that this is the case, really, through just talking to people and looking at photographs of my Grandma and Grandad from their youth.

I mean, the plateau starts when we get to roughly 21 and this is when we’re expected to be pretty much responsible for ourselves, for example, be in a job, possibly running a car, paying our own way, doing our own laundry etc. 

Between 25-30, parents may start to hint that you should be thinking about settling down, because ‘Amy’s a lovely girl’, or dumping Martin for ‘that nice boy over the road, because Martin is not good enough for you’. You’ve heard it all before.

Then, you might decide to have kids. Of course, this may have happened in a different order, sometimes surprises happen! Sometimes, the surprise is that none of this happens at all.

Then, after the husband and kids, comes the process of keeping the whole thing stuck together, not fucking it up, and being happy until the end of your days. 

For some people, this picture perfect scene is a reality, but for many, the pattern doesn't ring true.

With all this in mind, its no wonder that we lose sight of who we really are and what we were meant to do in the first place. In my opinion, the only thing we can really do with life, is live. Given that, we might as well just get on with it. Don't worry about other's expectations, concern yourself with your own.

 Instead of thinking about what we should be doing at our age, we should just let things happen, obviously applying a level of responsibility, such as don't just leave the iron on forever, just in case. If you get married at 21, then good for you. Personally, I would rather die than marry someone now, because I don’t feel ready and to be honest I don’t know when that will be. I might be 25, I might be 35, but when the time is right then its all gravy, and hopefully there’ll be some roast potatoes to join the party if I’ve learned to cook better by then.

I know so many people who are hung up on what they should be doing for their age. To be honest, I can be just as bad. I started out on my course thinking I was too young, but who says? Just because I’m the youngest in the staffroom doesn’t mean I’m any less ready to be there, or any less willing to do the job properly. Age is really just a number (says the 21 year old who hasn't really lived yet I know, I know - contradiction right there! Case in point).

We’re all born, and we’ll all die. What we do between these times should happen when we feel ready, not when we should be. You can never predict when something is going to happen or feel that you have let yourself down if Plan A doesn’t work, because the more you worry about it, the less likely Plan B, the better plan, is to succeed.

So for anyone who is curious: how old would I be if I didn’t know my age?

To be honest, I just don’t know. Some days I feel 5 because I’m hyper and silly and do weird voices, other days 15 because I have a giant spot on my chin, no one fancies me and my life is OVER etc, and other days I feel 25 although I’m not even that old yet, because I’ve moved out, have a car, manage my finances and plan on teaching kids for a living. Sometimes, I feel 70, because I'm in bed watching repeats of Coronation Street on a Saturday night, with some cheese and biscuits. Too cool.

But really, I’m 21, and concerning myself because I’m 22 in a month and that’s OLD right?

 It isn’t at all, but things are expected of us at certain ages, 22 is now seen as an age where we should have some sort of idea what our 5 year plan is. 

When the fuck did someone come up with this notion? 

I’m sure it didn’t exist back in the 1950s. I don’t have a 5 year plan really. Although if I set myself targets the top five would be:

1.       Be alive

2.       Be a teacher

3.       Have been on several more ridiculously wonderful nights out that I will never forget

4.       Have taken Mum and Dad out for a meal and paid, just to be nice

5.       To stop blinking when fireworks go off, or at loud noises in general

I think that’s an ok list to be getting on with!

Happy Monday everyone!

Custard Creams and Car Boyfriends

Today. Is it today? I’ve come to a realisation of a few things. Truth be told I feel on the cusp of being old and young. (Cos Liv hasn’t blogged about THAT before…) But seriously this time I’ve thought of actually why – a bit. More..?

Old because I’m no teenager, young because I’m far from being seen as ‘established’ as an adult. Established adults seem to have their shit together.

In the staffroom at school I feel so young and so naïve, and so overwhelmed at talking to any other teacher that I wonder if I’m in the right place at all. They seem so busy, bustling around from lesson to lesson, discussing things I have no idea about, and laughing at things I don’t understand, vaguely aware of my existence over their cups of tea and custard creams someone brought in I haven’t met yet. And they all look 50 and bring their own sandwiches, sometimes hummous. That makes me want hummous. The spicy ones are my personal favourites.

I still feel like one of the kids, but teaching is a pipe dream I’ve had for a while now. I just want my life to cohesively just - work as a unit, rather than be stuck in a strange place between study and work, waiting for lots of things, for my career to slot into place, discovering who I am and where I fit in to the whole thing along the way.

I also want to be liked, as in some silly way I feel this verifies me as a person which I know many people will find ridiculous, but not me, because I live in my head all the time. I have no idea why I’m so preoccupied with being liked because I know I’m liked, loved even by people that matter. Its not something I spend my whole life worrying about by any means, I just want to get things right with people. That makes me sound a bit pathetic, but I don’t really care because I think everyone secretly feels this way, just we all hate talking about it. Its hardly a conversation you have at the bus stop is it?

I go out at the weekend but also get my work done and that makes me a well-rounded individual right? A little fucked up perhaps but who isn’t? Not fucked up in a bad way, I mean just a bit imperfect. I’ll also (when the time is right) find a man who can appreciate all my subtleties, dispel my fears and protect me from all the hurt I could imagine. I like this general plan. I might have to cook the odd tea for him though, and suffer his annoying little ways, but he will be like my car – rough round the edges, smells interesting sometimes, yet is reliable, adorable and understanding of the things I get wrong. That sounds great to me!

So this is what was floating around my head over the last 5 hours, although most of it I deleted.  

Life as a Graduate

I know I tend to write a lot less often these days partly as I'm so busy, but today I'm going to talk about life as a graduate.

A graduate. What does that make you think of? Before uni it made me think of a really clever, 'mature person', someone who had a decent income, and knew what they wanted to do with their degree. It made me think of gowns, scrolls and mortar boards. But actually, being a graduate is nothing like that.

For me, as someone who returned to 'study'( - well is it studying? It feels more like training, but of course its that as well) I have a clear idea of what I want to do, but a decent income is yet to come. As for the image of gowns, scrolls and mortar boards, the gown was on for 5 hours, and the latter two were in my contact for all of 2 minutes while my picture was taken, and were placed and positioned on me by someone I didn't know. I may have a piece of (very sexy) paper to say I'm very clever but the gaps in my subject knowledge that have become apparent don't make me feel it yet. As for mature, well what does that even mean? We still go out most weekends and mess about in the kitchen together, do ridiculous accents and wind each other up with threats of death/general abuse and other equally amusing activities. I also have no intention of changing for a long time to come!

For others, it isn't so easy. They don't know what they want to do after graduating, and even if they did, that job probably wouldn't exist in a year after 'the funding got cut', if they even got the job which they probably wouldn't because at least 300 other people would have applied too. You see my point? Coupled with the fact that uni was so amazing and you get filled with promise in a future that may not deliver, life after uni can be a massive comedown, especially after moving back in with your parents in your twenties.

I'm counting myself lucky that I hopefully have a future in a career that will last (unless Gove decides he's going to redirect all the funding for education into a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, which would actually be a better use of his time, at least if he did that then on his day off someone could accidentally shred his plans to fuck up the education system). Anyway, all I can say to my friends that haven't been so lucky is that even if you've left uni, there are still people beyond your family who care about how you're doing. The job thing is soul destroying at times but keep going with it, we've got a reputation to keep going guys!

When all else fails, and your mum starts to nag, hand her the graduation picture and say 'does this mean you aren't proud of me anymore? Look how clever and mature I am..'.

So, PGCE, what's that like?

Ok so I haven’t done any teaching yet, that happens in a few months.

Its been really good so far though, I’ve certainly been kept on my toes with very full days and lots of work to do at home. I’ve really enjoyed my first week, the people on my course are lovely as well as the other PGCE and SCITT students from other subjects I’ve met. The tutors are also great, really engaging and great at reassuring us.

 I found out THE BIG ONE today, my placement school. It’s a Catholic one just on the other side of Leeds. I can’t wait to go on my first visit and see what its like! I think I’ll find it weird teaching in a Catholic school as it is no secret I’m lapsed (but retesting the waters with the whole religion thing) but I’m still looking forward to it and keeping my options open is something I’ve been preparing for for a while.

I also joined 3 teaching unions today, the NASUWT, NUT and ATL (teachers seem to love their acronyms) with loads of freebies like teaching planners, wall calendar, pens and highlighters etc, and one of those keyring things that has a fake pound coin for the trolley on it.

Another thing me and Em have been doing is takng in our own lunch, and saved a fortune in the process. £5 for a whole week of dinners? Can’t complain really.

All in all its been a tiring, crazy week but I’m loving it so far. I can really see how easy it is to fall behind though, so I’ve been over-compensating by becoming some kind of organisation goddess this week, I just hope the novelty doesn’t wear off!!

Cheers for reading, much lurve!

What's Liv doing with her life...?

...apart from trying and failing to think of some interesting blog topics?

I got back off holiday, worked LOADS (I am ready to burn that shirt), lost my iPod (cue devastation), had my work leaving do (cue singing, drinking and dancing), went out for my friend's 21st, was shocked some of us in our year aren't 21 yet which made me feel too old, went out for Mum and Dad's wedding anniversary, redyed my hair so now its sexy again, and tried to be good but failed a little.. :P Spent too much dollar, again!

Its been a pretty busy time! Housemates are moving in and out left right and centre, so I'm looking forward to having a normal house again once it all settles down, but going to fucking miss everyone SO much.

I'm more than aware of the fact that it is 2 weeks to Doomsday aka 'PGCE start date' which I'm anticipating 40% and dreading 60%. Student Finance is about to give birth to a year of madness, and hand over the monster child without an instruction manual, and Liz McGuire is the midwife that pops in to check I've not killed it yet. Bit melodramatic, but well done Liv, I'm sure that's healthy! Yeah I'm totally ready for someone to make a banana milkshake of my life as I know it. Once I've bought some Post-its. Oh and some pens. Also, new teacher clothes. Ah hello comfort zone. Shopping, wonderful.

Its going to be just fine.

Wales

So, I'm in Wales.

I've got to be honest with you I never thought I'd go on holiday with my parents again for a long long time, probably because I don't actually live with them and I'm in my twenties and it is severely uncool to partake in such activities. I thought it would never happen again after the Northern Ireland boredom video fiasco.

There've been times while I've been here that I've thought oh my God why did I come, but equally there've been some classic moments, such as these:

1. After hearing an English woman direct us for years on the satnav, to hear Yoda tell us we arrived at our destination in German as a one off was a bit of a surprise.
2. Discovering that Dad's 'go to' holiday DVDs are Enchanted and Alice in Wonderland.
3. Hearing Mum say 'that's the joy of natural coloured shorts' - ?!?
4. Waiting for Dad outside the cottage for 45 minutes after he was adamant he knew a quicker way back and getting lost in a field with the only key. We knew he'd be back soon after hearing the dogs up the road.
5. Realising that we are that far out in the sticks that it is literally quicker to walk to England than the nearest pub.

At 21, I definitely think I've outgrown holidays with my parents but this one has been totally different because they're treating me like an adult too. I mean I've said 'crap' several times now, and Mum just isn't rising to it like she used to. Probably Sophie's fault - after saying 'its not my fault we were brought up on "fucking hellfire"' I think Mum reassessed the offensiveness of 'crap'. That's what's great about having a sibling, let them annoy your parents so that your less shocking behaviour appears glorious, works every time.  However, I haven't spoken to anyone under 45 in 4 days now and I will be glad to be home, although I'm having a good time with Mum and Dad :)

See you all at home - PS St Ann's Avenue enjoy your postcard!!