I haven't blogged for quite some time. This isn't just due to having as massive a workload as normal, but because Tiscali are w@nk (hilarious that "w+nk" has come up as a hyperlink) and we haven't had broadband now since the 5th of this month. How appalling it is that losing the internet feels so seriously debilitating.

I was scared to check my mail just then, after I emailed the Senior Liaison Tutor (SLT) a complaint about my mentor.

It was very difficult talking about her in objective, diplomat terms, but I think I managed it, but I'm still nervous about the response (his response was "Thanks for this."). She's nothing short of a bully who delights in making me upset and behaves aggressively when I raise any question about the arrangements in place for me.

In brief, she's a bitch! I think she's punishing me because it's probably obvious to her that I think she's a shit teacher. Every lesson of hers that I've observed is heavy on resources downloaded from Teachit, and she can't cope with any remotely difficult kids.

Her whiteboard has many deep indentations which puzzled me for ages, until a teaching assistant told me it was where she slams the marker into the board in her fits of rage. In a Year 11 lesson she shouted so loudly (it was almost a scream) that I winced terribly and had to stop myself from covering my ears. The class just laughed! She's told me before that she can't handle this group at all, and left them with me yesterday while she did some photocopying. They were fine with me, and when she came back we were discussing why the ending of the film version of Of Mice and Men is different from the book. (I also got all the girls in that class paranoid about chewing gum by telling them that they could get a masculine jaw. Very funny.) I think she was hoping that they'd be total shits with me.

I don't know why. I always talk about the classes I'm finding difficult to handle, so it's not like I come across as arrogant about managing pupil behaviour. Mind you, her Year 8 and Year 9 classes that I've taken on seem to be much more engaged with me than they were with her . . .

Everything all at once

Whilst bending down scrutinising the washing machine that isn't working, I realised I could smell wee. Animal wee.

I searched the cupboards and could find no droppings.

Then, this afternoon, I spotted the tiny little poos on the opposite side of the kitchen. I crouched down and was intoxicated by the stench of animal output from under the cupboards.

Why oh why oh why?

The council don't charge for rats, but they do charge for mice (£50). If anyone knows of a cheaper, preferably humane way to rid one's abode of rodents, please share.

snore

The lack of blogging goes to show how very little time I've had, and frankly, it's doing my head in. If I manage to cling on long enough to finish this course, it'll be a miracle. I really feel that teaching is as boring as a sit-down office job. I feel challenged in many ways, but not in any stimulating way . . . It doesn't make me nervous, excited or scared; just bored and very, very tired.

I had the day off today as I needed to have some blood samples taken, and my car went in for a full service and MOT. Because the test centre is much nearer my old house, I took the opportunity to do all the cleaning there, and I think I've finished. I first got a call from the test centre saying a few things were up and it would cost me around £120ish plus VAT. Fine, go ahead, I said. Then another call: "I also found ...." Then after ages, when I was expecting them to have finished: "I've just found something else . . ."

Thus, my car won't be fit for purpose until tomorrow afternoon, which means I somehow have to work out how to get the bus, train and bus to the school in Chesterfield.

What a wonder it would be if I actually got a job somewhere, nearby, in Sheffield.

I'm annoyed.

As per usual.

But at least I'm not as upset as last week, and tomorrow is half-way through. Still, with that kind of day-by-day attitude, I really don't know if I can make it.

Someone, please please please, tell me what to do with my life.

New home

After school tomorrow I have to pick up the keys for our new rented house. I'm really looking forward to reorganising my life into a new place. While it's stressful, I really love moving house. I suppose it's only because the houses I live in aren't places I'd ever buy, and if I did buy a house, I'd invest so much time and money making it perfect that I hopefully wouldn't want to move. In rented accommodation I don't think you ever forget that you don't have free reign to do as you want: the random pieces of horrible furniture and bad kitchen layout are a constant reminder. Hey ho, onwards and upwards, and more cliches to boot.

Ian is illegally downloading new episodes of Lost and so the internet seems painfully slow . . .

I randomly / in an annoyed state of mind typed into Google, "how the fuck do I plan a decent lesson [no question mark]", and a link came up to "Celebrity Atheists" site, which was quite interesting. Who'd have thought that Keanu Reeves was an atheist? I found the section on Douglas Adams (here) thought-provoking, as he described the reasons for calling himself a "radical atheist" rather than simply an atheist, because it carries the meaning of serious, thoughtful atheism. It made me feel quite warm inside, which I know religious people would find quite strange (by religious I only mean people who believe in a god).

If I'm honest though, I find people who describe themselves as "agnostic" harder to understand than anyone of a religious persuasion. Belief is such an absolute: you either have a certain belief or you don't. I don't see that someone can half-believe in a god, though I can see how they may not have thought through the matter enough to have made an opinion.

But this is all by the by. I would never have expected that Douglas Adams and Richard Dawkins were best mates, but then, why not?

On another completely unrelated topic, I have just replaced my horrible (itself a replacement) unofficial Mac keyboard with a brand new OFFICIAL version (only £19), and it's absolutely lovely. I was getting very tired of copying and pasting Xs and not being able to use Caps Lock. Happy days.

I've also realised that I haven't mentioned anything about my visit to Brighton, featuring Rolo Tomassi, and I haven't reviewed Patrick Wolf, who was excellent.

Will there ever be time? Judging by recent weeks, probably not. (At my first placement school I mentioned that I kept a blog, and the head of department asked how I had time. I shrugged off the question, but it's not that I make time to blog; more that I sometimes have to blog. Perhaps she imagined me scribbling a diary-type entry filled with all the day's details. I wish.)

Early February snow and fog

Brighton

I've always loved dereliction and found it strangely beautiful, and the old Brighton pier is like an elegant skeleton, or a crashed UFO. I didn't notice until I viewed the picture large on my computer, but there are waves of flocking birds in the sky too.















Who'd have thought there was a strange Asian fairytale castle in the middle of Brighton? Not me.


















Ed and Linda have two pet terrapins which I found really mesmerising. Look at its horrible evil face. Quite stupidly, I was surprised at how lizard-like they were, and yet they are of course reptiles.

Sock monster

This is the toy I made for my mam. I don't know what his name is, or even what he is, except extremely grumpy, but he looks pretty cool, I think. He has a long tail which means he can perch (here he's on the back of my flower-covered chair, which I don't think I've shown before).

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.