Personality test: the results

I did one of those tests and this is what it said:

Stability results were medium which suggests you are moderately relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were medium which suggests you are moderately organized, hard working, and reliable while still remaining flexible, efficient, and fun.

Extraversion results were high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

trait snapshot:
expressive, open, self revealing, loves large parties, loud, social, outgoing, does not like social isolation, assertive, social chameleon, positive, always busy, likes to fit in, likes to stand out, enjoys leadership, brutally honest, trusting, optimistic, desires attention, dominant, aggressive, attachment prone, wants to be understood, realistic

Oh, what a paradox I am: I want to be understand (how true) and yet I'm confrontational. The social chameleon bit is plain absurd, however. While I sometimes like chitchatting with random people, I think if anything, I don't alter my personality or approach enough! I'm not loud, but I will express my opinion (even if unasked) . . . brutally honest, perhaps.... optimistic? I doubt many people would say that, though I'm more hopeful privately and perhaps more pragmatic than many would think.

I'm pretty paranoid though, and always assume people make swift and negative judgements about me, and a lot of the time, this turns out to not be the case. Particularly with females. I always find making friends with girls difficult because I convince myself that they dislike me. Is this a late effect of being a Tom Boy as a kid and perpetually following my older brother around?

Horrible day

Crying seems to be a part of daily life, recently.

Today, a failed job interview. It wasn't the not getting it that upset me (the guy who did get it is a really ace person and a great teacher - he's on my course), but the feedback I received. It was the head who phoned me, and he told me that my interview had been very good and there were lots of points that he thought made me a very good candidate. However, the two women who had watched my 20-minute lesson thought that I was too nervous and that this had made me hesitant. Therefore I couldn't progress any further.

During the day I said to my fellow candidates that there is little point in thinking about how your lesson went, because they always end up telling you something you hadn't even considered. This is a case in point.

For a start, though I was a bit nervous (which is a desirable in an interview situation, surely? Else you'd look like you didn't care), this had no impact on the lesson at all. What did impact it was the fact that there wasn't a pen for the interactive whiteboard and that they didn't fetch me in time to set up my powerpoint etc etc

At a time when I'm not feeling confident about my planning or teaching abilities at all, this really knocked the stuffing out of me.

Then I found out from another unsuccessful candidate (also on my course) that they'd told her that she'd been too nervous and not done the lesson as they'd have liked. THEN I found out of the successful guy that they'd said both me and my other coursemate had been really strong and had given him tough competition.

Is it really a load of bollocks? Can anything be learned from these ghastly situations? Or does it just depend on who you are and whether you're in the right place?

Interviews . . .

Yesterday I went for an interview at a school in Rotherham, and from the outset I felt uneasy. I walked into a room where two of my PGCE mates were sat, and two PGCE students from Shef Uni. Then came our scheduled "welcome". The head of English and an assortment of ass(istant)-heads and deputy heads sat there opposite us, while the headteacher bored us to death with his philosophies. He boasted that his school added 10% if not more to the value of the houses in the area, and that their value-added score was second only to a Sheffield school in the region: a fact which apparently irritates him beyond belief. He believed that teaching was a vocation, and that even after a full school day, teachers should go home and "still be thinking about the kids when you're watching Coronation Street."

Before I had time to dwell on this I was whisked off to prepare for my 50-minute lesson, 10 minutes of which was wasted while the class teacher and the deputy head fannied about. The lesson was ok, although I had to move one kid, and I was generally under the impression that the kids were snotty and arrogant. It made me long for normal city kids who have interesting personalities . . .

I then had a tour of the school conducted by two Year 8s, but was unfortunately accompanied by a complete burk (sp?) named Andrew. I can't begin to describe how annoying he was, but even his mate from university found him impossible, as do all of their coursemates apparently.

By this time I was filled with doubt, and couldn't imagine myself working there at all. This was cemented when we had an informal Q&A session with three members of the department. They were nice enough, though not my type of people, but I got the impression that everything is intensely target-driven, and that if your kids don't get the grades they should, you'll have the whole department breathing down your neck. This is not as it should be. It also became clear that no one in the department had been there longer than 6/7 years, which reminded me of my high school: the new head arrived, and all the older members of staff were driven out by insane new measures, requirements and pressures. Of 14 full time members of staff in the department, only one was not female, and only two were over thirty. Everywhere we looked were young women, and the head also boasted that the Head of History was 27. His motto: "if you're good enough, you're old enough."

So I went into the formal interview after lunch and told them I wasn't a firm candidate. No one asked me why, which I found bewildering. I've put it down to arrogance on their part. The head merely said, "Well that was a short interview!" and looked at me epecting me to leave. I stayed put with my glass of water, smiled sweetly and asked, "Could I have some feedback on my lesson?" So the head went off to fetch the net candidate while the head of department rummaged through the notes that she didn't make, and even though there was plenty written she told me only, "you could focus on what the students learn rather than what they will do" (which is quite useful) and, from the class teacher's notes, "it would have been useful to let the students know what they have to do to achieve a level 5 or a level 6". And I thought, "For fuck's sake! I've definitely made the right decision."

After I'd gone, two girls were offered jobs, and the aforementioned Andrew contested the decision, demanded to see the deputy head and stormed off! A hilarious and fitting end, I think.

Emotional see-saw

... thinking back to what I wrote last night, and how shit I now feel. I wrote the following on the student discussion board for English PGCE:

"Perhaps it's because I got used to having James to feed back to (read, "whinge") at Meden, but I'm feeling completely out of my depth at this school and I'm totally miserable.

I did two lessons and a starter today, and the one lesson that I thought went okay and which the students enjoyed got subtley panned by my mentor who hinted that the students like "planned activities rather than discussion". The discussions were completely planned! Thankfully, the Year 10 students who wouldn't listen to my starter weren't any better behaved for their usual teacher so I didn't feel quite so crap about that, but in retrospect it was still a rubbish activity. How come I never realise that beforehand when it's so bleedin' obvious afterwards??

I'm lucky enough to have two interviews coming up (on Friday and on Tuesday), but they're only making me feel more stressed, and my planning abilities are so awful that I feel I don't deserve a job anyway.

Perhaps my crap marks from placement one were deserved after all . . .

Hope everyone else is buzzing off their amazing lessons! If you have any planning tips for turning your long-term plans into medium-terms ones, give me a shout. Please please please. I'm drowning in my chaos of ideas and papers and student information not unlike the gas attack victim in Dulce et Decorum Est. Well, sort of.

On a positive note, it's Shrove Tuesday and I will stuff myself with fat and sugar tonight."

Tiredness and/or mentally unstable? I'm not coping, that's for sure.

A good ol' bath always makes me feel better. Things are slightly more in perspective and I remember to ask myself, "Is anything worth making yourself ill over?"

So the main teaching block begins tomorrow: may the weight loss commence (I lost half a stone last placement: there's no time to snack and you're always moving).

We also just gave our last rent cheques to the current landlord, and Ian rightly describes the limbo state of almost moving: you feel like you should start packing, but there's still weeks to go; you want to begin a new project, but you feel like you should put it off; blah blah blah. I shall take a picture of my little study room to put on the wall when I move into the new place, just to remind myself of the cramped, back-ache inducing conditions.

I accidentally wrote "bach-ache inducing" there, which would be a much more interesting ailment.

Aargh (and commas)

It's amazing how stress effects you (well, one). I feel physically ill this evening due to ecessiveplanning workload. I wasd already stressed out about this, and then I got a phonecall from another school inviting me to an interview on Friday. I also have an interview on Tuesday and the preparation I have to do is frightening me. This is without my worries about assignments and keeping on top of my "evidence" file that I need to complete to meet Qualified Teacher Training standards.

So yet again, I'm going to have a bath. I seem to have baths all the time now: they're losing their soothing, mind-relieving properties.

What did cheer me up was reading Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves, looking for instances of confusing comma use. The following make me laugh out loud:

Go get him, surgeons!

What is this thing called, love?

Leonora walked on her head, a little higher than usual.

I will write about my recent trip to Brighton featuring Rolo Tomassi when I can, hopefully soon. At the moment I'm stressing about creating four schemes of work, so, as usual, I'm off to bury my head in the sand and watch the Kurt Cobain thing on BBC2. Just to depress myself, you know.

Valentines . . .

I'm not into this stuff, but as I was in receipt of some flowers, I reciprocated by melding two creme eggs into a more-or-less heart shape and recovered it in foil. Stupid, fun and tasty.

You can kind of tell it's a fox

Hopefully, we have found a place to live as of early March. Unfortunately, we are facing the logistical challenge of buying a double bed. Despite this though, I'm really looking forward to it. (God, you can really tell I did a starter activity on connectives the other week.)

The problem is that I'm not sure that the tons of spring bulbs we've planted will flower, and I really want to dig them up and take them with us . . . In all likelihood the daffodils and crocuses will come up over the next week, but I'm worried . . . and the landlord doesn't deserve to have an array of tulips in his garden.

One bulb had flowered though: a single snowdrop. I'll have to take a picture.

I also have to upload some murky and blurry pictures I took in the dark last week. It had been snowing and perhaps still was, and I looked out of my window and was surprised that something at the bottom of the garden wasn't covered in snow. It was past dusk, and the something moved, so I thought it must be a cat, but as it moved a bit more I realised it was a large fox! It came right up the garden (by which time I'd dashed downstairs to get a better look out of the kitchen window) and it had a limp. It climbed onto Ian's sarcophagus (aka wooden planter) and started rummaging about.

I don't know why I was so excited, but I was.

Brrrrr

Snow is predicted for the next few days, along with temperatures around 1 to 2 degrees. This means I have to get up 5 minutes earlier to scrape and defrost my car. Oh joy.

Miscellaneous

I was very surprised to find a letter yesterday inviting me to an interview. I was sure that my letter of application had been put on a "definitely not" pile as soon as it was picked up, but using nice paper and banging on about my creativity seems to have worked in my favour. Now I have a few weeks to worry about what I'll do for a 20 minute poetry lesson . . .

I went to see As You Like It last night. It was only a £10 preview, so you can't expect perfection, but I didn't think it was great. One of the people I was there with was insistent that Orlando looked like Bruno Brooks! He lost his lines once, and Jacques didn't deliver the "All the world's a stage" speech very well: it seemed to stick out of the scene like a proverbial thumb. Rosalind was good, and the evil Duke was played like a Gestapo agent which was effective and amusing. But on the whole it didn't seem to gel, and many scenes and evem characters seemed completely redundant. Whether this was because of the performance or the original script, I don't know, though apparently Dr Johnson dismissed it as a "crowd-pleaser".

Still, it was nice to get to know another Shakespeare play. On the bus home I started thinking about how few of his plays I'm actually familiar with, and it was quite shocking.

Must read/see more Shakespeare.

Thou fobbing pottle-deep eunuch

On "12 books that changed the world", the last work covered by Melvyn Bragg was the First Folio, and I found myself becoming quite emotional.