Sunday 1st week

Good evening. It's Sunday of 1st week, term has officially started! A quick recap then:

My stats exam on Friday went ok - there were a few obvious things that I just forgot how to do e.g. find a confidence interval for a proportion, but mostly it was cool, and at least I finished it in time.

I met up with a potential supervisor, which was very exciting. My research proposal has been second drafted and I think it's ok, so it's staying as it is for the Oxford application. Just waiting on references now so that I can give my application in.

Research design essay is printed out and ready to go.

Have realised that this term that for three weeks I will have four reading lists to get through - sociological analysis, social stratification, sociology of education, and qualitative methods! Yikes! For the other weeks I'll still have three reading lists to get through, loooooads of items on each too! Over the term I'll only have to write 13 essays though, which isn't so bad, although I guess there'll be assignments from qualitative methods to do, not to mention attending the intermediate stats lectures. It's going to be a very busy term I suspect.

Am trying to manage my work better by doing some now, hurrah! Also am pleased that most of the SA reading seems to be posted online, which means it'll be easier for me to get hold of. My laptop is now back and working in my room too, which is cool!

What else? So on Friday eve I headed down to London to see X - we went to dinner and saw Twilight, which was very funny, mainly because the acting and script were just SO BAD! We chilled on Saturday, it was really nice! We've found a nest too, from the university, which is really cool - we'll be in there in three weekends time :) Saturday night I was at home with the family, which was good, although some bad family news (a divorce and also a very sick close family friend). But my cousin is getting married in the States in the summer and we get to go, hurrah!

Today I caught up with some TF-ers at a lovely cafe in Fulham called Aziz, very nice food, although I "accidentally" ordered a giant choc meringue, and am still trying to finish it! The amount of sugar in it has got to be dangerous! Was very much fun to catch up with my friends though, who are all doing exciting things, it seems like ages ago when we were teachers, but we can still all chatter about it like it was only yesterday.

So I best get back to my reading for tonight, before some scrabble fun, but would lastly like to note my pleasure that Spurs didn't lose today, we drew, thus we are out of the relegation zone! Let's hope we can stay there!

Minimum effort

Just finished marking my Y8 books. A lovely procrastinated jobbie. My new strategy of getting the kids to mark in class, and me just do the comments in my frees, is working a treat - I almost have some time back in my life. Combined with my 50% effort as a teacher, well, school life is going pretty well. I am just either stamping down on things straight away and being super efficient, or just ignoring them entirely.

It's time to start counting days to half-term. Six more teaching days, plus one training day. Annoyingly I can't go to the HSBC maths day this Friday due to stupid bureaucracy in my school, and the megalomaniac tendencies of the one ultimately in charge, meaning I was led on a silly wild goose chase, and thus my kids have to miss out on the trip. Boo. On the plus side, this means I'll be around for our PGCE student's last day in school, and the maths' department curry in the evening, which will be good fun, despite all the DRAMA of our department (both in and out of school) recently.

What else is new? I'm being a hermit this week, returning to relaxing, which is wonderful. It's good to spend some time by myself, thinking a bit about some things. Not too much thinking, obviously, this will only lead to worrying and then stressing. Some gentle pondering and daydreaming is ok though. I am also addicted to Radio 4 now that we have no TV. It's ace, I feel like I am just accidentally passively absorbing all this stuff on American law while typing this, weird. I started listening simply for a news fix at 6pm, then kept listening for the 6:30pm sitcom, and now I've taken to leaving the radio on.

I had peanut butter on toast for dinner. I'm not sure this counts as a proper dinner, and I can smell chicken and mushrooms downstairs, so I shall go investigate.

Back From The Fun

I am back from the fun of the weekend and about to start marking books. This will be interesting because I haven't got a copy of the questions that I set, only the kids' answers, and surprise surprise, they are all different, so now I don't know what to mark right or wrong. The only good thing about this enterprise is that I get to use my green marking pen.

I have decided to have a half-term style week this week. No planning of lessons or real marking of books. The former will be dramatic and entertaining and slightly panicky. The latter will be easy to accomplish since being a genius I didn't set any homework last week apart from for Y10 and Y12, thus giving me back HOURS of my life. What shall I do with these hours? Well, I have lots of other stuff to sort out, but I think instead I will ignore it all and get into bed at 9pm every day. Oooh only 90 mins away, I can't wait.

On Friday I had that TF education sector training day - a big info day about staying on in school. It was really good and interesting, although my inability to sit and listen to people talking was disturbing, particularly because some of the speakers were actually quite good. Spent all weekend in Oxford - the first proper weekend without doing any work/productive things for aaages. Was awesome, even though I didn't get to play footy, was lovely to see everyone and just be back in Oxford and mess about like a student. All the frivolity was good for my soul, despite me trying to be a grown-up and stay out of trouble. Only minor dramas really, I can fix them, it was definitely a good weekend. Reality hit me hard today - I have a cold and something that feels like a hangover. Many caffeinated drinks and opportunities to shout at children didn't help - in fact, I have almost lost my voice, useful.

So 9 days of school to go, and I shall try really hard to get through them, even if we have to sit through boring assemblies (how can someone manage to make Chinese New Year into a boring assembly?!) and rude kids e.g. A from my tutor group who has been off-sick all last week (yay!) but when I asked her how she felt this morning she said really ill, but that that was ok because she hoped I would catch it from her and then have to stay at home. Bless.

Marking Done! For Today

I am writing in orange because it describes me now I think.

Woo, I've finished marking two sets of Y9 homework. It only took me almost three hours. My brain is half fried, and half super hyper because now I feel free and I can celebrate. Obviously I can't celebrate in the way that I want to, but still, maybe I will indulge in a little dance or something.

In others news, two of my friends from different worlds met each other today, and quite patently fancy each other, but one is taken, so despite my instinct to matchmake (and the fact that this time both parties actually seem to want me to get involved), it can't be done. What a shame. I don't want to be a relationship destroyer, but what if these two are meant to be? Hmmm....

All this scheming, surprising stuff, since I could barely string a sentence together in the last few books. Aaaah I'm escaping my desk now, yippee!!

A good and bad day

I am meant to be marking. Again. Aaargh, sooo much marking!

Today after school we were in the staffroom. I had already missed one phone meeting due to a drama with crazy "H". By "we" I mean lots of the young teachers. And we were all complaining about why things are so tough and bad at our school. We concluded that it was because we were all over-worked and stretched too thinly to get things done properly. On the one hand we have a lovely £30m new building. On the other hand, we have so few staff to cope with everything that we are all continuously just trying to keep our heads above water.

I regularly work a 50+ hour week. Get into school at 7:45am, don't leave till 5pm, do a couple of hours of marking on an evening, work Sat morning/Sun night. Yes, I could probably manage time better, and yes I am still new to teaching so I am still learning, but surely that is a bit nuts? I'm not even a massive perfectionist. Yes I put in effort when I plan lessons and make resources - I want my lessons to be good, so perhaps this takes more time. But I guess the key thing is that once I am in school, that's pretty much it, I'm running around all day. Today I had 10 minutes spare for lunch, and one free lesson in which I was filled in loads of forms and chased up various tutor things, but the rest of the time was spent doing stuff. I don't understand, how do people get things done so that they are not working, or thinking about work, AAAALLL the time?!

On the plus side I hit the gym this morning, was ace. On the minus side, this was because I didn't sleep last night, and when I did I had nightmares, so humph. On the plus side all my lessons were awesome today, genuinely good with no trouble (perhaps because some of my naughty Y10s were stoned in the afternoon, or so I suspect...). On the down side there was loads of drama with various kids and fights and exclusions etc.

I think the worst thing today was speaking with J, my form co-tutor. She's an NQT like me, but she's one of those people who's really amazing at her job, always on the ball, always giving that little bit extra, always doing good things, loved by all the kids etc. But today was the first time I've seen her seem to be under the same stress and pressure as everyone else. She said she had an awful day and she was upset about it and about all the horrible things that happen in our school. I am sad about this because I feel like she's been broken down too. I hope not though, all we can do is bounce back each day and try again. But it's frustrating when no-one seems to fix anything, there's just too much to sort out for anything to actually be sorted.

Woo, one more day of school before a training day, oh yeah! Oh wait, the marking.

Quick Round-Up + Rambles

I have just marked two sets of class books. Phew. So hard-core has my marking been that I actually have those finger dents, which I don't remember having since finals. Phew again.

I still have my Y12 essays to mark, plus that long-forgotten risk assessment for the Cambridge trip to complete. Boo. I don't want to work any more tonight, I'm tired. I've already had a 20 minute disco nap, and that was actually super-useful since my marking was twice as fast afterwards, but I fear that if I put my head down now, that'll be it.

So what's been going on? Busy weekend, went to a housewarming, a 21st and spent 7 hours in the pub yesterday. Did my lesson planning on Saturday morning, a real impact session, I felt I owed it to the work. Plus I had a smile on my face. The housewarming was lovely, loads of booze, but managed to keep it reasonable. The house was in Kennington, but it was on a square and really nicely laid out, so I was jealous. The 21st was a family thing, and miles away, and I was totally falling asleep by 11pm. Crashed out in bed by half one, but somehow woke up at half eight on Sunday morning so hit the gym, yay! Made it ok to feast in the pub later. No comment regarding the Spurs defeat. Or the rubbish regarding buying Woodgate - what an error, they might as well just as buy me, except I would be better.

What else is new? Today taught some good lessons, I love my Y12s, they make me laugh so much. Y10 were good lesson 1, and so were my lower-ability 7s. Am worried about my top set Y8, I think I'm being too casual with them, and as a result we're not doing as much work as we need to. We had an assembly on the Holocaust - kids in my tutor group were talking and laughing through it so I shouted at them and kept them back afterwards. I can't remember being so disrespectful over something so important, particularly since if you consider the kids, well, if the Nazis had had their way around the world, only about three of my tutor group would still be around. And I wouldn't be. I guess they just need to mature.

After school we had a meeting with "K" and "S" and their English teacher and the 2nd in charge of English. The girls have been kicked out of English after some really dramatic conflict between the teacher and the kids. It's a nightmare, but today we seem to have made some progress on the reconciliation front. The girls were mature and gave some good ideas, and I think the English teacher is trying to give them a second chance too. I hope it works out - these are bright girls, they have a lot of potential, but I'm worried they're getting in too much trouble. They already have over 50 incident reports between them.

That said, crazy H had already picked up 50 plus two temporary exclusions before Christmas. He is going to be permanently excluded, he just can't behave. Today he lost the plot - 3 incident reports out of 5 lessons, plus he lost his red report, plus he was messing about in assembly. Sometimes he's just like that. It's such a shame, what's he going to do?

In other news, my horoscope:

You’re probably still reeling from the amazing offers of January’s last half, which were so good that you’re carefully evaluating them before committing. While they’re undoubtedly just that good, with your ruler, Mercury, retrograde from Monday until February 19, problems are bound to surface. Actually, the minor errors this cycle triggers should be helpful — you’ll want to slow the pace and will have numerous questions you want answered. These aren’t urgent, however, while situations involving those closest are. Make lending them support your priority and your kindness will be returned many times over.

I don't like the way it has "errors" in it. Also I lost a Scrabble game to X this weekend. Devastating. I genuinely thought I'd never lose. Humph. On the plus side, I've learned a new word - panpharmacon - a medicine for all ills. In seven letters, panacea.

Last thoughts of the day

Almost time for bed :) I am sleepy.

I've moved into my little brother's room because a) the bed is bigger so I can happily starfish b) the room is darker so I can happily oversleep c) the room is quieter so hopefully I won't be woken up by my parents when they get back. Thus now I have a bedroom and study, like my other brother. Yay!

In other news, I found out today that I have to bring in my NQT folder. This will be difficult, given that it doesn't exist. But I'm not gonna stress about it.

And finally, I wonder what the protocol is with regards to adding family members on FB? Cousins and siblings are cool I think, but what about uncles and aunties? I have loads of them on there, but am starting to reconsider whether that's actually a good idea.

Have a good week!

Busy Weekend of Birthdays

I am feeling pretty good. This is despite going back to bed at 11am with a 6/10 hangover. Two days in a row of going back to bed before midday is surely a sign that I'm still a student.

So why do I feel good? Because I did my lesson planning yesterday, excellent! Lesson planning Sundays is a thing of a past, I am going to try and do it on Saturday, or even in the week itself, so that I feel like I have an actual day off. That's how I feel today, and it's good. Don't get me wrong, my To Do list has 16 things on it, but whatever. I have to mark my Y12 essays and make a profile template for my tutor group, so obviously I am messing about online instead.

I am not repeating last night again. I tried (and kinda succeeded) in attending three birthdays, but it was such a stress and drama, all that moving around and rushing and being late and downing drinks, that in future it would probably be better just to put in a proper appearance at one. I feel the worst about the first birthday because I got lost and was almost 45 minutes late, then grabbed some starters and had to run. I think I will call her to make up for a "snatch and grab". The other two were more chilled, in that by that time I had gotten used to being late and stressed, so I just got over it and enjoyed them. Was good to see some school people, some TFers, and most definitely my buddies from university. The third birthday, where I spent the most time, was just awesome, a proper reunion of maybe forty people, was great! I loved chattering to them all, and in fact doing some quite good banter on the one hand, and some serious deep chatter with a few in particular on the other hand.

But then the downside. I had a shocking amount to drink. Luckily mostly it was white wine (a bottle and a half over the night) but also some pear cider, and here's the real killer, about four shots of Jack Daniel's. Hence at 1am when I decided I should head home, I was half-cut and confident that I would make it home, despite having a minimum understanding of where I was and how I was getting there. I lost someone along the way, and then decided to get on a random night bus, which I got off when I realised I was in Leyton, thinking it'd be easy to get home from there. Errr. No. Luckily I have a credit card, so I just hailed a black cab and paid a lot to make it back. So a tiny bit of sense in me. But a kinda waste of money since if I'd been organised (and not so drunk) then my trusty night bus coulda got me back. Worse than the money though, I think I am more cross with my cavalier attitude, which is just dangerous. Being like that and wandering around at night is just silly, I need to be more responsible.

What else? I can't remember if I mentioned the birthday on Friday night, which was lovely and far more sensible. It was another TFer's drinks, which was super funny in that she is the most cynical and critical person I know, thus making me over-the-top optimistic just to wind her up. Met her ex-boyfriend for the first time, and he is a banter-king, with the kind of silly tangential banter that I really like. That said, generally across the weekend I found that it was nice to be able to chatter away to boys without any hidden agenda. One of my friends was complaining about how girls just lead him on when they have no intention of getting anywhere with him, which I'm probably guilty of, but this weekend I'd like to think I didn't do that, even with my ridiculous top!

Here's my horoscope, you can find yours by clicking here and then typing in your star sign into the search box.

Your problem isn’t recognising that you must review arrangements; it is striking a balance between delving into these enough to find out what is likely to work in the future and obsessing about details. Obviously, you’ll want to do what you can to preserve the plans and relationships you’ve worked hard to create. But, between now and the month’s close, changes around you turn some of these into burdens. Your instincts are already telling you which they are. Now you need the courage to unload them.

I have no instincts about these burdens. Except drinking. Hmm.

And finally, a good article about bipolar, and a good article on a sleep exhibition in London. SO going there soon!

Smiley versus Panic

My gosh, there's SO much to do for school next week, picnic panic!

More than things to do are the things to know. I don't know where anything is, or what any of the rules or routines are. Plus I have to spend 3 hours with my tutor group on Monday teaching them all this new stuff that I don't know. Aaargh!

I haven't planned any lessons or made any seating plans yet. I am not yet in teacher mode. Hmm, I really should put my head on properly.

Yesterday I failed at my drinking resolution, but it was so worth it. I've decided to adapt it so that I only drink on Fridays and Saturdays, and not in a crazy extreme way, excellent. We had an old school reunion, was so much fun, everyone was totally grown-up and stuff, ace. It was great to see what people were up to and reminisce about funny times at school. I'd forgotten a lot of the silly things we'd got up to, particularly the boys, and also all the gossip and scandal. I think the best thing about old friends is that it's really easy to get straight back into the banter, and also the intimacy. I had a real deep and meaningful on the way home with an old flame, and on one level it was like we were still 18, and on the other hand it was cool to be where we are now.

What else? Today I have decided to be a smiley smiley person. Actually, not decided, it's just happening. As a result, lots of people are smiling back at me and giving me lots of banter and generally making me feel good. Aaah, back to the good days, it's almost as if it's not worth worrying about school at all.

Four weeks to go!

Plus plus plus next week I'm on second school placement, so not really school, and Y11 are obvy not coming back, and Y10 are on work experience for two weeks, so things should get better!

I sneaked home early on Monday after my last lesson of the day (end of period 3 - 12:10pm) justifying it to myself by claiming that it's just silly to expect someone to stay for 3 more hours just to cover a 20 minute tutor time. Sure there were probably useful things I coulda done in that time (marking, planning, WA4, the dreaded P word....PORTFOLIO!!!!) But no, decided I'd had enough and did a runner.

School is going ok, am a bit la-la land about it all really. Y8s went a bit mad today, one even stormed out of break-time detention. Called their parents etc. but the kids for the after school detention skived it, so have slapped them into the SLT detention on Friday. Had a department meeting, wasn't that interesting really. I still find that I hardly understand what they are talking about or why, but have hope that maybe one day I will.

Been covering 7E while their tutor gets over the shingles. 7E and I are not the best of friends, but I think we are making small improvements. The class has lots of weirdos in it and they are hard to control, but I think I am going to try and up my game with them a little bit. This afternoon's idea of talking about tips for the new Year 6 crashed like a lead balloon, but they soon got back on side when I let the well-behaved kids leave 5 minutes early. This is probably an unprofessional strategy, sending out all kinds of bad signals, but whatever.

Am more concerned about the camera I bought on ebay still not arriving - am convinced my postman nicks all my fun things, grrrr. Also have my first meeting with my careers coach tomorrow night, so need to think of some things that I want to achieve....hmmm....well top of the list is surely getting through the next four weeks!

PS Suggestions for the stress head include: counseling, happy pills, an extended leave of absence from work...essentially all kinds of things that I'm not interested in doing thank you very much. So will just have to get my head back in the game - can't be that hard.

Venice - Part I, Castelfranco

I have submitted my WA3, woo hoo!

I am now meant to be creating my unit of work on Multicultural Maths. However, I can't be bothered to do that yet. Please understand, I really am very excited about this unit of work, but what with the bloody foxes screeching all night, the crazy man next door holding long distance phone calls at 1am in his back garden (annoyingly close to my bedroom window), and the builders starting their relentless drilling (and singing!) at 8am, well, I am pretty tired today. Except when it comes to using bold in my writing.

Ok, ranting over. Before I bring you part I of the Venice trip, some points of note. In list form for Bertie.

1. Jade, p244 of Captain Corelli's Mandolin: "I am the breve, Carlo here is the semibreve, he is the crotchet". A mere 6 pages later: "he could sit with unnerving patience watching Pelagia's hands doing the formal dance of the crochet." So that's how you spell them. Really, what are the chances?
2. RIP the Facebook man. Those of you who have met my littlest brother know that he is almost the splitting image of the facebook man, so this is a sad day for us indeed. Initially I was annoyed by the FB changes, but now I am starting to appreciate their true potential stalker powers.

Venice Part I
So we went here, the Veneto region in the northeast of Italy:


Map's not great, but Bertie lives in that place just south of the 5 - Castelfranco. Very exciting place - it seems Berts has found himself an Aylesbury in Italy. Some people would have thought this was impossible, but where there's a will there's a way.

Our holiday began with a little trip on the train. Both transport and drama were to feature strongly in the week (alongside ice cream, strong coffee, and spritz - more on this delight later). Bertie met us at Treviso station and we got on the train to Castelfranco. Strangely none of the stations had any signs on them, and despite purporting to know his way around, we completely missed our stop and ended up in Venice proper (aka Venezia aka the old swampy bit with the canals etc.) Our tickets weren't valid for this journey but luckily some random Australian Italians in our carriage were having a huge long kick-off with the ticket conductors about their tickets, so they didn't catch us. Excellent.

Anyway, to cut a loooong story short, eventually we made it to Castelfranco (learning lots of useful Italian along the way, particularly colours, mmmm gello treno.) Lots of people stared at us, I'd like to think it was because we were stunning rather than because were brown-skinned. Important note: there are about 4 brown people in the whole of Italy, 2 of whom were Dina (Sparrow) and I (I guess Jade counts as half ethnic, congrats Jade!).

Once in Castelfranco we spent a delightful two days wandering around and eating things. Highlights here include (once again in list form):

1. Bertie's lovely flatmate Francesca, who gave up her room for us, and spent many a happy evening chortling away in front of her computer (much like me, heehee)
   
2. Pushing two beds together and then sleeping sideways on them with Sparrow and Jade, and then slowly falling into the growing gap between the beds during the night
3. The electricity cutting out just in our apartment after a crazy loud storm with thunder and lightening and everything. We all hid in the bed and had a lovely nap and then chatted away.
   
4. Being trialled in an informal court by "Grandma Pink" and "Carmela" held in front of Bertie's building - this was particularly dramatastic because people kept popping their heads out of their windows and chucking their two pence in. Basically "Grandma Pink" bumped into us leaving Bertie's place on Tuesday morning and told him it was against the rules to have guests in Castelfranco unless they were registered with the carabinieri (aka Italian military police aka the Sardinies). Castelfranco apparently is a hot bed for illegal immigrants (where were they all, I didn't see any!) and so they were worried Bertie was setting up some kinda immigration racket (obviously, duh, I mean why else would he know any brown people?). "Carmela" joined in the fun and thus it was decided we couldn't stay there any more. However, later they softened and touched our faces and chatted with us etc. and then decided we could stay after all. Very strange procedures indeed.
5. Drinking numerous spritzes while wandering around Castelfranco for hours (strange it took us this long, it's not actually that big). I think this was Bertie's elaborate plan to stop us getting on trains all over Italy - sabotage, *sigh*. Anyway from Wiki: Spritz, an alcoholic beverage has its origins in the Veneto Region, Italy. Spritz is a bitter, summery pre-dinner aperitif made of either Aperol or Campari and mixed with White Wine or Prosecco and Sparkling Mineral Water. It is usually served in a lowball glass with ice, a slice of orange, and sometimes an olive. Particularly like the bit where they say it's a pre-dinner aperitif - one day we started drinking it at about 11am in Beppe's bar, and there was already a bloke in there drinking before us! Sure the Italians don't binge drink - they just drink all day instead.
6. Sparrow getting proposed to by the Internet cafe owner (ok, this didn't really happen, but it could have).
7. Teaching them to play 304 - an old school Jaffna card game, quite complicated, made more so by having to play with a local Trentine card deck, which is rather different to our standard Americo-French deck.

Can't really remember much more, and that all sounds rather droll, but really, it was a laugh a minute! Particularly trying to speak Italian - gosh we were awful! Tales from Verona tomorrow.