Living Life in Comic Sans

The last time I wrote was in October. The fact that this posting is so abysmally late and being posted in an entirely different decade is testament to the ability of The PGCE to invade a person’s life. And, if I’m not going to blame this entire vanishing act on something else, also testament to how much I have thrown every cell of my being into my new career path. And to how much I am enjoying it. It was strange how the navel gazing of late August and September melted away as I began to think less about my own professional insecurities, self-deprecating jibes vis-à-vis The Dole and the fun and games that came with being unemployed, and more about the job in hand, the What I Do On A Daily Basis, and the living and enjoying of that which I had talked about for so long. After several weeks of late night lesson planning, powerpoint creating, changing every document/presentation into Comic Sans (because ‘kids learn better with that’), early morning scrabbling for thought-provoking news stories for form-time ‘reflection’ and the drinking of literally gallons of coffee, I finally came to a brief standstill at Christmas and realised that I hadn’t written this blog for a while and that I might in fact be so (dare I say it) content, that I had no need to purge myself of awkward feelings of dissatisfaction through the medium of virtual verbal diarrhoea. Rather a nice revelation after a year in the dole swamp (damn, did it again).

Into 2010, and there have been a whole new set of exciting developments, most significantly, the getting of an actual, salary-paying proper job as a French and Spanish teacher in a lovely school in Liverpool, starting this coming September. The prospect of starting this new job is a world away from the frantic job-hunting, dole-seeking post-journalism time I struggled through. Of course, the usual stresses and strains of life as a single late 20-something remain but, suffice to say, things are coming together pretty nicely. And perhaps most importantly, things have shifted significantly enough from how they were back in November 2008 to warrant a renewed blogging effort. It may be a contradiction to say that I had stopped writing because I was so content and that now I am starting up again for exactly the same reason, but that’s kind of what’s happened. I think it just goes in waves.

But before I move on into this year with renewed vigour, I’d just like to belatedly summarise some of the things I learnt about myself back in cobwebbed 2009…:

1. That I’ve still got it; I’m still able to work till 2am and wake up at 7 for work. Thank you university essay crises and stressful journalistic experience – you have served me well.

2. That I CAN shout. I have surprised myself on two occasions with the power of my own voice. Thank you Year 9 boys who won’t stop talking in my lessons for helping to reveal this talent to me.

3. That I still have a love-hate relationship with competitive situations; whilst fiercely competitive, the thought of filling out a job application or going for an interview still renders me jittery, pale-faced and nauseous.

4. That, after a good ten years of moving around the country/Europe in search of the perfect final settling place, the beautiful land of Liverpool is actually where I’d like to lay my roots. Expensive realisation, that.

5. That my accent is still incomprehensible to many people. So far this year, I’ve been from Yorkshire, The South (the whole south, that is..), and Ireland.

6. That, regardless of having just secured a great job and of facing the prospect of having a car of my own in just less than a month and of being on the look-out for a flat of my own, my personal life continues to baffle and irritate me to the point of now being able to say that I did actually join a dating site at the end of last year. And left a month later.

7. That I hate dating sites and vow never again to join up to that relationship circus…which leaves me with…fate. OK, I admit, I’m going to be single forever. Still, at least I’ve got a car now.

'Always look on the bright side of life...de doo de doo de doo de doo...'

'Welcome to your now apparently once-monthly installment of the journalist-turned-teacher blog! Yes, for your increased suspense, this blog is being brought to you just once every four weeks! To prevent too much of a cold turkey situation from arising, this will continue for some time until being reduced to a mere six-monthly account. This too will carry on for a while until such time as the trainee teacher in question's journey through the quagmire of teaching bureaucracy has led her into the teeth of the greatest beast of all - the giant lever arch file. At this point, all writing will cease for she will have been squashed between its useless sheets of (by then) coffee-stained papers. After which, she will be no more - merely a speck of dust on a lesson planning pro forma. I'd like to take this opportunity on her behalf to say thanks for reading, in case we are faced with such a tragedy.'

OK, it's a little dramatic, but I thought I should start with a public service announcement of sorts to get you in the mood. I'm four weeks in to my first school placement or, to acquaint you with the new jargon that is pouring into my life, I have completed four of the 'F' weeks. That F stands for 'first', as in 'first school placement'. Keep up. The school I was supposed to get in North Liverpool fell through at the last minute (and by that I mean two days before I was due to start) so I was bundled off to another all boys Catholic school, this time in South Liverpool and along with another of my PGCE colleagues. I cannot seem to glean much information about The Other School, only that it was "rougher than this one" so I guess it worked out for the best. And, with this new school, I get a lift in to work everyday rather than having to make the hour-long train journey so, yes, I guess I've done pretty well out of the change. Geographical location aside, the admirable enthusiasm and resolve with which I embarked on this more practical phase of the PGCE has very quickly transmogrified into a sort of gloopy mixture of soured enthusiasm, stress, weariness and an ominous sense of urgency which has reawakened my imaginary dormant stomach ulcer. The latter seems to be very common on this course; it is the sense that, even after the mound of work you have already completed, there is still something pressing to be done - is it a form? A signature to be obtained? A person to be spoken to? Something to be photocopied..? What IS it?! All of this is, as you can imagine, a little unsettling.

We have been resident trainee teachers at our school for four weeks and are now more familiar with the geography of the place and are beginning to recognise faces and almost remember names (that goes for colleagues and pupils). I am still navigating the jungle of school colleague etiquette, having riskily not understood from the outset that there is no worse crime than to deign to make a cup of tea on virgin school ground; it seems that, as the new person, even if you go out and buy your own coffee, tea, milk and even mug, it is still a travesty to stand in the kitchenette area of the staffroom and take up valuable tea-making space when there are only fifteen minutes in which every teacher must load themselves up on caffeine. And if you do splash a splosh of a colleague's milk into your mug, the risk you are taking on is on a par with considering breaking into the Tower of London and stealing the crown jewels. That does not of course stop a veteran teacher from taking YOUR milk or drinking out of YOUR mug. That's just how it is. The staffroom doesn't go in for Communism. We're unmistakably 'new' and, until we've put in a good five year's worth of graft, have dug our heels into the job and worn down our keen-eyed appearance, we will continue to be 'new'. It is a strange sensation. In any other job I have had, it has taken a week for the new-person formalities to be flicked out of the way like an irritation and then it has been seen as beneficial to all for me to be thrown in among the lions to 'get on with it'. Teacher trainers appear to revel in prolonging this initiation for as long as you can bear. Your status as 'trainee' is stretched out over an entire year with no let-up; there will be observations - and many of them at regular intervals - just so that, during that time, you never ever come close to the sensation of settling into your new profession. And of course, to leap forward, the Newly Qualified Teacher year follows, which signals another year of observations and meeting more so-called 'Standards' (...the 33 professional standards are the currency of this training programme. They are the holy boxes that need to be ticked in order that you may be deemed worthy of 'teacher' status).

It is against this backdrop that I have been working through my first few weeks and my first few 'tasks' - activities set for us by the university in order to 'focus' our time. Rather than fall asleep at the back of the class along with the pupils, we were given a series of things to look out for as we observed lessons. Now, this put us into a further quandary re: school etiquette for we would daily put teachers on edge as we assumed our position at the back of the classroom and spent an hour taking notes on his/her teaching methods. We knew we were in no position to judge but we were obeying our course tutors and "they told us to take notes on this and ask you questions about that..." so that is what we did - to which the teachers would crack a mildly patronising smile, as if being inside a Real School was about to open our eyes to the folly of teacher training college. We quoted a barrage of classroom and teaching theories at our unfortunate new colleagues from lesson plans to schemes of work and on to the use of textbooks and the TL (Target Language. Keep up I said). In short, we had learned that we were to use less of the textbook and great lashings of the TL in our first six weeks at uni. However, most of what we had absorbed was quickly brushed off with that same knowing half-smile. We would learn that the reality was very different, they seemed to sneer.

Bemused and unsettled, we carried on in our mission to answer the reams of pointless questions about the behaviour we were observing, the vocabulary teaching we had noted and how the teacher made 'transitions' from one part of the lesson to the next ("Well he, erm, tells them..what they're going to do next..?" No, that can't be right, too simple - back to the drawing board.) Once over this awkward hurdle, we set about imposing ourselves on the classes we had been observing. That was enlightening. Up until that point, I had been the cool, helpful teacher who had loitered at the back of the classroom, on hand to indulge the naughty kids in a question and answer session seemingly on the topic of the work but really cooked up by them so that they could stop working for a few minutes. Suddenly placed at the front of the classroom, I was Schoolboy Enemy Number One. One of my tasks was to conduct a listening exercise in Spanish with a class of fidgety 13-year-olds. I may have thought nothing much of this prior to the PGCE, but now a fully fledged member of the PGCE Paranoia Society, I viewed this task with the kind of terror only really acceptable in the lead up to a bungee jump. Maybe I was deluded before. Maybe that's it. Either way, I quivered as I pressed the button on the CD player, desperately hoping that they would understand my carefully over-planned instructions. They didn't. "What are those pictures on the board - do we use them?" "It's too fast" "I can't do this" "What do we have to do again?" Oh god, oh god, oh god. The back of my neck sweated out my whole body's anxiety as I glanced at the teacher who was pretending to work but quite clearly silently assessing what was going on. Disaster management. I stared at the furrowed brows and twisted open mouths fixated on me. The idea of getting 25 kids to understand something at the same time was suddenly up there in the impossibility rankings, along with me ever doing a bungee jump or becoming a world-class physicist. I skipped back to the beginning of the CD, paused it and embarked on my fourth and final explanation, deciding to pause the extract after every sentence and, more or less, complete the task with the pupils. With this method, and forty minutes later, I had just about managed to drag 25 schoolboys through the gruelling task. We all came out the other side - if a bit battered and bruised of soul. I was exhausted. It wasn't the kind of exhaustion I had experienced at the end of a long day in the newsroom - although, I am sad to admit, the memory of this is fading a little - it was much more of a physical and emotional exhaustion. A day staring at a computer screen juggling a series of words, sentences, stories, phone calls and often hilariously cynical comments from colleagues was a mentally tiring day but basically a day spent sitting down and sitting alone. Just me and the computer. Commands came at me from outside, but I was alone, a loner. Like everyone else there. I was hidden behind a computer and behind a name in a paper. Being thrust in front of a class of kids with the responsibility of putting knowledge into their heads is the opposite of hiding. It's an exposed position, a revealing position. As a journalist you can conceal your personality, your foibles and faults, your insecurities behind words directed at other people. I'm not making a grand statement about all journalists in the world but it is interesting to see how focusing on other people's problems every day can very easily take the emphasis and the sting out of your own. As a teacher, your tool is your personality. The classroom blows away any self-deprecation. School-kids don't get your irony, cynicism or bitterness - and if they do, they don't appreciate it. They can, I fear, see through their teachers. And there are more of them so multiply that clairvoyance by 25. Teaching forces you to react and interact with other human beings - you can't just comment upon them passively. It's a weird thing to get used to.

Of course, you can't let them get the better of you and I have since succeeded in taming my adopted form class by handing out two detentions in one morning and getting on to the better side of a Year 7 class by employing the odd stern pout or raised eyebrow. I am also experimenting with asserting my authority outside of the classroom and have already jumped the canteen queue (a good way to assert authority at this initial stage but not something to see through the year for fear of coming across as downright obnoxious) and have just about mastered the art of chastising rowdy pupils on the staircase as they move between lessons with an "Um, excuse me lads!" - said with gravitas and coupled with a knitted brow. Seems to be working OK. Just a shame I can't translate this behaviour into the staffroom to ward off coffee mug-stealing colleagues. That is one place where newsroom expletives could really come into their own. Still working on taming my cynicism there.

And let the PGCE begin..

When a friend and recent graduate of the PGCE course remarked a few weeks ago that I would find it difficult to keep this blog up due to the threatening storm of workload headed my way, I wasn't thrilled but it seemed a fair comment to make. It didn't bother me though because I had no intention of adhering to the advice. More relevant to me, perhaps, would have been a heads-up (how I hate that phrase and yet how useful it is) as to the amount of time it would take me to wrap my head around the entire PGCE experience and its baggage. As it happens, it has taken the first two and a bit weeks (which I have now successfully survived) to just about comprehend the vocabulary, politics and general etiquette of teacher training. Which is why I am only just in a position to convey anything. Any attempt to do this during the last two weeks would have resulted in half a page of the following copied and pasted word - bleurgh.

The fog set in from the second day really. The first was filled with the pomp and circumstance that fills every first day - or at least all the 'first days' I have ever experienced at university or work; an opening/welcoming/introductory (delete as appropriate) meeting, which is almost always a lecture, in which the heads of your course of workplace shoe-horn in their final advertisement for the course thinking that you'll bugger off if you're not impressed with what they're offering, never to see that all-important second day. If I'm honest, I was underprepared for all that the first day brought. I was thrown by the newness, enthusiasm and, to be quite frank, youthfulness of the whole affair. All around me 21- and 22-year-old undergraduate leavers cooed their long-held desires to teach those they probably shared a bucket and spade with in the sand-pit, announced their fears to one another, their excitement about going out and drinking those fears away in nights of pre-pedagogic hedonism 'because this is the last year we can do it' - and they bonded. They glued themselves to each other, finding lectures and seminars together, eating lunch together and planning shopping trips together. I joined the tribe but felt distinctly outside of it. What I had imagined would be a year of professional training, a sort of 9-5 with homework, was metamorphosing from the first day into a 24/7 PGCE university experience. For which, at the age of almost 27, I was very much not prepared. My anxiety was also exacerbated by the fact that I have opted to live in halls this year. You know, for 'independence' and all that. However, what struck me from my first week was that I had actually entered into something much more binding and communal than the simple 'room away from the parental home' that I had dreamed of all these months past.

My obvious discomfort with my new social situation manifested itself in very unfortunate fashion on this first day during the scheduled 'ice-breaking' hour. Having been used to going it alone when it came to breaking the ice - using my own special blend of awkwardness and self-deprecation - I was thrown by this social assistance. Sitting in a circle after a round of clapping, tapping, clicking and saying our name, we were required to come up with an adjective that began with the same sound as our name. 'Sh' is a tricky one. Or at least that's my defence for having only managed to generate the word 'shameless' from my bank of adjectives. And so it was that the 2009 intake for the Modern Foreign Languages PGCE were introduced to Shameless Charlotte.

The first week passed in a flurry of acronyms. Acronyms for everything: CLIL, BSF, Kal, PLTS (pronounced plats), ECM, KS3, MFL, GCSE, RIP, WTF? I was loaded up with government documents with grand, fuzzy-sounding titles like 'Languages For All', which we were required to study in preparation for seminar discussion. After having been trained in the journalism world in the ways of scoffing cynicism with an end to tearing such waffle to shreds, it was an effort to take it all seriously. To be honest, my head was exploding. Each night I came back with a thicker fog in front of my view on to the teaching world. What had seemed a simple career path allowing me to work with a subject I love and enjoy a nice holiday now and again was revealing itself to be a policy minefield full of alien lingo and horrendous pitfalls. Most frightening of all was the day of lectures and seminars on child protection in which we were catapulted into an unhealthy debate on how to deal with a pupil who is upset for whatever reason; to put a comforting hand on a shoulder or not? To question the reason for their distress or not? To look directly at him/her..or not? Distressing, to say the least.

The experience so far has been slightly overwhelming I have to admit; I am building a tower of paperwork, already have four lever arch files that I fear will be full before Christmas, and have filled in more forms than I can stomach. I am also seriously considering buying a laminator (apparently vital for the all-important Spanish flash-cards). It feels like an exercise in filing. However, perhaps most overwhelming of all has been the realisation that this profession is a great deal more complicated than I first thought. Or at least has been made to appear that way. With so much legislation, policy-making, strategy-building and Ofsted-ing, it is no wonder many teachers go round the bend. This course, so far at least, feels like a holding pen - a sort of quarantine - for aspiring teachers; DO NOT ENTER THIS WORLD BEFORE YOU HAVE BEEN HOSED DOWN WITH A GOOD DOSE OF PARANOIA. Is the sign on the door. To my mind anyway. I began by thinking that I would throw merely a cursory glance over some of the literature prescribed to us before the course and nearly three weeks in I find myself sitting in the library (I've found myself a nice spot looking out on to a courtyard) trawling pedantically through textbooks blandly entitled 'Learning to teach in the secondary school' for fear of missing some vital piece of advice that will help me to sidestep pedagogic pitfalls. And I have to say that some of it is in fact very interesting. Although just over two weeks into my course I am by no means a convert to acronyms, strategies, frameworks and the potential legal slip-ups of the teaching profession, I am getting into the swing of things and my initial panic has abated. I'm breathing more slowly, calming down and learning to digest it all. I am trying my very best to switch off my cynicism when it comes to the theory bit. It IS important. I'd much rather be prepared. There's a definite sense of being on display and in a position of responsibility as a teacher and it's not to be taken lightly. But the transition has been hard. During the first week I had at least three 'oh god what the hell am I doing?' moments. But I have got to know those 21- and 22-year old students I was so scared of in the beginning and see that we have a lot in common - namely our reasons and motivations for being here. The ex-City types are populating the Maths and Science courses, leaving the Modern Foreign Languages course (or MFL as it is affectionately called) to be filled with people who have a genuine love of languages and travel and are really very interesting people. I've been on the statutory 'night out initiation', which passed drunkenly and successfully and allowed me to involve myself in the group bonding experience through the medium of dance. I've also settled (just about) into living in the rabbit warren that is 'halls' and have fashioned what I believed to be a perfectly respectable 'professional's apartment' out of my long, thin room with the standard-issue green carpet and magnolia walls. Apart from the discovery of a dead pigeon outside my window, the experience has so far been a pleasant one.

We begin our period of observation in our first placement school next week which, although providing yet another challenge (I'm going to be in a mixed Catholic school in North Liverpool) will hopefully give the information that has been pumped into us much more meaning and relevance. I'm looking forward to breaking out of the teacher factory and getting to experience what this job is really like.

Pre-course feeding

Welcome back from your summer holiday. OK, welcome back from my summer holiday. It's been a while. If you did go away I hope you had a lovely time. And if you didn't, I hope you live in the south of England and have been able to get a tan regardless. I've spent most of the last two months either away or organising myself for when I will be away. I felt it necessary as an antidote to six months at home existing on a dangerous cocktail of anxiety, anticipation and general professional confusion. I also love the travelling thing; it came with the degree so I don't see it as my fault at all if I can't resist Ryanair's so-called low fares. I am aware of the tax deception but by the time I have got to that stage of the online search form where it generates the final cost of your flight after fuel tax, luggage tax, foot room tax, annoying announcement tax as well as a tax for just looking at the in-flight menu, I have convinced myself that paying 100 quid for a flight that was advertised as 25 really isn't such a great deception because the mere act of filling in the form has got me so excited about foreign climes. The addiction isn't my fault; you are required to spend the third year of a modern languages degree abroad so that when you finish the four year course you are walking away not only with a degree certificate but an urgent desire to itch the soles of your feet. Anyway at least I'll fit in with all the other students; it'll be nice to share our experiences of backpacking over a cheap student cider...Won't it? No, from the point of view of a second-time young professional what it's really been about has been training my body to adapt to the six week holiday in preparation for what my new vocation has in store holiday-wise. Yeah, that's it. Well, whatever my excuse and despite the fact that it's bankrupted me, it's been good to get away and join the working population on their annual summer-time Ryanair flight. Makes you feel like you're back in the race. YES! I'M NORMAL AGAIN! I'M WONDERFULLY, SQUISHABLY AVERAGE! It's been a while since I felt like I was doing what everyone else was doing. Amazing what unemployment makes you crave.

I won't go into great detail about my holidays. I don't gloat. So, in summary:

Holiday season began with a week in a spa hamlet in the darkest depths of the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France. My travelling partner (a good friend who has officially acquired that title after the French trip became our fifth adventure together) and I decided that we were going to go back to botching together our own holiday since the Lanzagrotty package deal experience left us feeling used, empty and, if we're honest, a little dirty. This sort of do-it-yourself holiday has often been referred to in travel supplements as 'going organic', which is just a fancy word for not relying on some inept travel agent to do it for you - there's really no need to create another verb to make doing something on your own appear to be a grand gesture of making an effort. Anyway, for us this meant hiring a car and exploring the area for ourselves. Before heading out there, we filled our heads with dreams of sweeping around rural French roads in a old Renault convertible. (How wonderfully pretentious) However, we arrived to find ourselves in the airport car park walking towards a Renault Kangoo Be Bop, which is about as far from the old convertible version as the designers could have managed. I don't know anything about cars but a vehicle that looks like a hearse cannot be a great design move. While there was lots of space for your head, there was very little for any other body part, nevermind the luggage. And so, our two-tone hearse became our jokemobile and, in the end, the amusement far outweighed the crapness. We found beaches, cafes, more cafes and a lovely place called Carcassonne where we pranced around the ramparts of a medieval castle. It was lovely. I discovered that I have to really try not to comment on other people's driving and that I have a real cheek in doing so in the first place since I seem to have a habit of ignoring all road markings myself, including the STOP sign at junctions. However, we found the perfect antidote to driving anxiety in bottled beer, which we consumed in large quantities while playing cards in our sperm-scented rented flat. Yes, you read right. It was a lovely flat, decked out in Ikea's best. With just one problem. It stunk to high heaven. And a very unfortunate comparison was drawn. So, we spent our days driving around breaking all manner of European motoring laws, and in the evening we settled down to play cards, drink beer and give ourselves future health problems by eating far too much cheese, all the while trying to forget we were sitting in a flat which smelt of youknowwhat.


The next was a more intriguing jaunt all the way over to Hungary and Romania. A friend who had spent a year teaching English in Romania a few years ago invited me along with her on her return visit. I had no idea what to expect from the trip but curiosity combined with the promise of a country in which good restaurant food costs half the price of bad restaurant food in the UK tipped the balance in favour of an Eastern European adventure. (It's hard to convey the richness of the countries we visited in a paragraph preceded by sperm-related holiday anecdotes but I'm going to attempt anyway). The bare bones of the trip were four days in Budapest and six-ish days in Romania, based in a city in north-western Transylvania called Cluj. The places we visited were incredibly beautiful and I became an obsessive photographer of buildings. Buildings, buildings, buildings - I couldn't get enough of them. A cornice, a roof, a windowsill, I photographed them all. Obviously I ate a lot. The schnitzel was pretty good in Budapest and everything was good in Romania so I stocked up for the winter. But all of this frivolity and over-indulgence was punctuated by sharp glimpses into the fairly recent histories of these countries of the former Communist bloc.


On first glance, Cluj in August was like any other balmy European city at that time of year with people sitting out on terraces sipping the same cafe au laits I had been drinking a couple of weeks before in the middle England of France. But these were people who, only twenty years ago and when they were probably kids or teenagers, witnessed the end of the Ceausescu regime. If a walk along the main streets revealed few signs from that era, a visit to the city's department store certainly proved the point. As my friend and I wandered around the greyish looking Women's Fashion floor, wading through the empty floor space to get to the first clothes rail only to encounter a variety of garments seemingly not from this time and hung from yellowing plastic models more reminiscent of 1950s England, it was a superficial reminder of the kind of country I was meandering through so nonchalantly. Out of the department store, however, what we encountered were the kind of amusing cultural disparities to be found in most foreign countries beyond the familiar Western European holiday resorts; traffic was stopped while a workmen jovially performed an emergency repair on an overhead tram cable which had just fallen to the floor as if knackered after a day holding itself up, I ate food I have NEVER heard of let alone seen, I came into contact with more animals than is the norm in my life (resulting in an unfortunate incident where I ended up on the receiving end of a gassy expulsion from a horse's backside) and I ripped the skin from my throat after assuming I could knock back some Romanian plum brandy like the locals. As always, the tourists come off worse.



One happy coincidence was that I came into contact with quite a few English teachers (my friend's contacts from her stint as a teacher there). They were, in the main, the most enthusiastic bunch of teachers I had met. I wondered if this was something to do with the fact that learning English would be such a vital part of the lives of the young people they taught and so was taken much more seriously by them and their students. For the students, it wasn't simply a subject to be picked up and dropped whenever the fancy took them; it was in many cases a determiner of their futures. I'm no expert but that's my hunch. In the light of these observations, what was so astonishing was the bitterly low salary these teachers were receiving. I was told that a teacher's wage was not enough to afford a monthly rental of any sort. It must take a lot to maintain that professional enthusiasm. I began to cook up grand plans of dragging hoards of British Modern Languages teachers over to Romania for some sort of professional exchange, slash damn good lesson. One step at a time.

I begin the long-awaited course of study in just over a week. Monday 7th September is the date. Etched into my brain. If any of you have been following this online journal of my musings and bruisings over the last six months then you will have some idea of what a relief this is to me. I hope to continue this blog into next year and, even though I have been warned by former PGCEers that this is a tall order due to the mountains of work I am to encounter, I've sort of committed myself to it now. So I'm doing it, alright? I always liked a challenge. Of course, this coming year is the year of the great 'PGCE Surge' so I'm hoping to meet lots of ex-bankers, ex-lawyers, redundees and sufferers of disillusionment. What a loony bin it could be.

When in school, eat Ryvita

Whilst students across the country have been winding down and getting ready for the summer, I have used the past couple of weeks to renew my working activity. Rather than slowing down, I have been cranking up for the year ahead by spending time in a primary and a secondary school in preparation for the PGCE. Basically, work experience - something I am an expert at.

I have a theory about the fine balance required for a successful work experience placement; it's nestled snuggly between arse-licking and complete disinterest. I decided to voice this theory to the Modern Foreign Languages teacher I was introduced to on my arrival and who was to show me around and guide me through the week. By omitting the word 'arse' and yet keeping the theory intact, I thought it would serve as a sort of amusing ice-breaker. I conveyed it not without an awareness of the conversational risk I was taking. But she took it well. In fact, she was refreshingly cynical compared with the teachers at the school I had visited the week before and was very honest about the kind of experience I was to have - it would be challenging. But she seemed to take it in her stride so I relaxed and attempted to adopt her laid-back attitude to teaching angst-riddled, street-wise teenagers by strutting along the corridor and into my week of new experiences.

Now, it was a hot week. A sandal week. A put-your-sandwiches-in-the-fridge-within-five-minutes-of-arriving-at-work week. This done, I walked purposefully to my first lesson. I had a timetable, which made me feel useful, important and required. And, of course, I was once again wearing my work clothes. It felt very good indeed. Until, that is, I stepped into the classroom. If it was a summery, balmy heat in the corridor, inside the classroom the air fizzed with sweat. It was horrendous. I had forgotten how much body heat thirty hyperactive teenagers could create. I tried to hide my appalled reaction (something friends have told me I'm not so good at) and I took a seat at the front, in the corner. By force of habit, I pulled my notepad and pen from my bag and just concentrated on breathing whatever stale air was available to me. I expected that, once everyone had settled down, the air would cool and we'd all be much happier. But it seemed that I was the only one aware of the heat. When the teacher pronounced her morning greeting, there was no quiet, no calming down - instead, there was more movement. Scuffling, shifting, talking, moving. The teacher, becoming exasperated, began to shout. And then that was it. Taking each student at a time, she dealt with their issues, crises, complaints, disobedience but, despite her efforts, all she could manage was to get them to find a seat and sit in it. The talking continued but the lesson started nonetheless. "Jamie can you concentrate?" "Shhh." "Don't call out, put your hand up." "That's your last warning." "Get out..." I felt dizzy. It was almost impossible to communicate any information in between the crowd control. Needless to say, the rowdiness was an unwelcome accompaniment to the heat and I began to feel faint. I have never fainted but I was sure that if it was going to happen it would happen in there. Then, one boy answered a question. He got it right. A flicker of interest at the front. I listened and was relieved. My head cleared a bit. Then five minutes later he was shouting again. Someone else needed the toilet so the lesson stopped, a note was written and he escaped, to the teacher's evident concern. I stared, bemused, at a sign on the classroom door that read: "Enthusiasm and hard work are indispensible ingredients of achievement." - Clarence Birdseye. I looked at the clock. Thirty minutes in and I wanted to leave. I wanted to get out and sit on my own in the playground. Anything but be in this ugly situation. Another half an hour and the lesson had ended. Although a useful chunk of the Spanish language had been covered, very little appeared to have been absorbed and the class fell out of the room, relieved. I began to wonder if the expression 'pulling teeth' had been first used by a dentist who had moved into teaching. I decided that pulling your own teeth out would probably be easier than teaching Spanish to over-heated teenagers.

Admittedly, my reaction to my first lesson had been fairly extreme but it was a good initiation and I left feeling much more intolerant of bad behaviour and much less inclined to smile at students than I had done before. In other words, I began to blend in much better with the other teachers.

The next couple of days passed in much the same way, with occasional flickers of interest from the front of the class but with teachers mostly wrestling to keep everyone sitting and quiet. I was soon enrolled as assistant class disciplinarian, being asked either to "show so-and-so out of the room" or "take his water bottle/pen/book from him". I learnt that "I haven't got it Miss!" translates as "I haven't done it" or "I've lost it", a ruse that most teenagers carry around with them from the age of 13 but something that I was never really aware of. The students seemed to feel that all attempts to keep them quiet were infringements of their human rights, with one even declaring: "It's like the army here." Hmm, not quite. I prepared a lesson on North African women and the veil (something kind of linked to my Masters project) and it didn't happen because there were no students to teach. One lesson which was being taken by a supply teacher came to a complete standstill about fifteen minutes in when a couple of mating pigeons moved the activity from the desks to the window. However, I was introduced to one wonderful service provided by the school and, I believe, others in the country - the 'On Call' team. This is a crack team of disciplinarians who are called upon to deal with students out of the teacher's control. The first time I witnessed their arrival was in the middle of a particularly dire lesson in which it took forty minutes to get the class to just sit down. They arrived and silence ensued. The effect was hypnotic. They were brilliant. I think they should wear leather jackets and turn up on motorbikes. That would be very cool. Despite the reluctance of some students to get involved, there were others who, whether it be to their playground detriment, seemed more enthusiastic. And some of the teachers were absolutely brilliant. Inspiring, in fact. I learnt that calm always wins over crazed and that showing a small amount of interest in the particulars of someone's weekend really does help you when you come around to teaching French numbers up to a hundred.

As teachers became aware that I wanted to get more involved and that I found sitting down for an hour watching other people do and learn a bit boring, they started volunteering me to speak at the students in either French or Spanish in an attempt to incite some interest in them. "You're young. It's good for them to see a young person speaking languages." "Now, Miss is a journalist," was the preferred introduction. Although factually incorrect, it became an excellent way of getting 30 kids to shut up. "How much do you earn?" was the first question fired in my direction. I decided to side-step the disappointing answer to this question by picking them up on the tense of their question: "Oh, I WAS a journalist - not any more." "Oh." And they didn't ask anything more. Interest lost, a few students began playing with their keys, crunching their water bottles in their hands and getting to work fashioning something a bit like origami out of their worksheet. They set to work filling in a worksheet. I patrolled the classroom in an attempt to look useful and to do my best NOT to look like a work experience girl. If they picked up on that, any thread of respect they had gained for me or my former profession would fray spectacularly. And I couldn't afford that so early in the week. I was just about feeling powerful enough to think that the rest of the week may not be so bad after all when the obvious but disappointing happened: "Miss, what's the point of learning Spanish if everyone speaks English?" She rounded off her question as an arrogant celebrity would write the final sweeping letter of their name in an autograph book; with a sickening certitude as to her own superiority. I thought about staring her out but she stood her ground well. She even leant back in her chair to get a fuller view of my circus clown act of a response. I dug around for something brilliant. "If you say that then what you're saying is that the last few years of my life have been a waste of time." Not the objective, successful response I had been searching for. And it wasn't what she had been expecting either. It shut her up for a second but I think that was just the confusion. These kids had been to Spain - one had even been to Cuba - and yet learning Spanish still seemed utterly ridiculous to many of them. Nearly defeated, I took up my position at the front of the class to begin my Spanish monologue. Spanish origami worksheets being turned over in their hands, the class chattered disinterestedly through this lesson transition. So I decided to start anyway. I began talking about my family. I rambled on for as long as it took to get the room quiet. Then I went on for a couple more sentences. And I stopped. "Oh my god, you sound like the woman on the tape!" The woman on the tape? Ahhh, I know, the woman on the educational listening tape. Wow. I felt a bit better. I replied, not without a little bit of smugness and milking their sudden interest: "I AM the woman on the tape.." They looked bemused so I decided bad jokes were not the order of the day and carried on. I carried on speaking, and then began posing questions myself. Five minutes later some of the kids were dislocating their shoulders in an attempt for me to notice their raised hand and give them "a go" at speaking. They told me about their families, themselves, their friends. All in Spanish. Only pausing in moments of social awareness to check that no-one was laughing at them. When they realised that they really weren't, they continued. Forty minutes later we stopped our Spanish conversation class and it was time for worksheets again. But not before one rather confident young lady spoke out: "You're really good you. Are you gonna come back and teach 'ere? I reckon you should. I've leeernt loads just now doin' that. That was dead good." I didn't know what to say. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel just a bit proud. But it was great. I'm not saying it made everything else easy, but it helped me through the rest of the week.

I arrived at Friday feeling surprisingly more comfortable in my new surroundings than I had done at the beginning of the week. A couple of the students called a "Hi Miss." as I walked into school and, whereas at the beginning of the week this would have scared the shit out of me, by the end I saw that it was a very good thing. The week was hard and there were times when I wondered what the hell I was doing. Sitting there with my notepad and pen, I had moments of nostalgia and was desperate to recount my experiences as opposed to, well, experience them. It's weird how journalism seems to train you to hang on the periphery. And, if I'm honest, it's where I feel most comfortable. But then, getting involved was pretty good too and, as long as I can vomit it all out through this blog then I'll feel OK. Teaching is...hard. Getting thirty kids to sit still, shut up and listen, and then actually absorb, is like trying to squeeze a story out of a non-story or an original comment out of a press officer. But once you do, it's fairly satisfying. Lunch-times will be different too. Rather than endless chocolate and coffee, I fear I am going to be surrounded by many many more salads-in-boxes. I have never seen so many women eating cottage cheese and Ryvita as I have in the last two weeks. God help the woman who turns up with a pie from the canteen. There was one such maverick last week and she just about got through the critical references to her lunch choice. She was skinny as well, so that didn't help her case. "Ohh, that looks naughty!" declared one woman, as she crunched her way through a cottage-cheese smothered cracker. The jealousy cut the air in two. It wasn't pretty. But, I feel pretty strongly about the 'speaking languages' bit and have met some brilliantly cynical teachers which makes the cracker-crunching for half an hour a day bearable. I have to say that it does surprise me that the TDA have launched a fairly huge campaign to recruit more teachers as if the money and the security would be enough to get you through. I don't think they are. The "when in doubt, teach" philosophy just doesn't work. There is no way you can get through five days a week doing that and remain distant from the school, kids and your subject, spurred on only by the promise of a pay scale. It makes me wonder what's going to happen to the swathes of businessmen who have plumped for a job as a maths teacher, or the other City slickers who have decided to put their Geography degree to better use. I don't even know what's going to happen to me. I may decide it's not for me. In the end. That would be hard after all this but it's still a possibility. Maybe the notepad and pen will indeed win over the blackboard and chalk. But if pretending to be 'the woman on the tape' can get a few kids to order their ice-creams in Spanish on the Costa Blanca this summer, then my contribution has not been wasted.

Mr Magorium's Wedding Emporium

There is a sign outside a church down the road from where I live that reads: "WHATEVER YOU PUT ON, WEAR LOVE." Just like that. In capitals. Now I've never been shy of a bit of gentle sartorial experimentation; I indulged the shell-suit trend aged 8, the tracksuit trend aged 10 (a local phenomenon) and now own a pair of leggings. But love? Now, that is one thing that has never quite fit properly. Throughout this blog I have brushed past the odd mating catastrophe as if it were nothing but an irritating fly in my gin and tonic but the truth is, well..that I haven't been completely truthful. The truth is that, if love can be worn, as my Christian neighbours say it can, then it is as becoming on me as a pink mini-skirt on a rugby player; chafingly uncomfortable, amusingly carried off, and with the wearer secretly desiring more time to walk round in the ill-fitting garment despite everyone else telling them to PLEASE REMOVE THAT THING NOW. In my case, and taking a relieved step away from the simile, this manifests itself through friends' gentle coaxing: "Put the phone down NOW", "Step away from Facebook poke", or just "You're being a dick. Stop it." So, it is hardly surprising that with these seemingly helpful preventative measures, my acquaintances have unwittingly allowed a love-aversion to grow and fester. Callous! I hear you cry. OK, I may have flourished this with some fictional elements, namely, my friends' involvement, but the fact still stands, I am love averse. Now, before you brand me a witch, let me take you back to my favourite metaphor - the rugby player and the mini-skirt. It's not that he doesn't like it - au contraire - he loves it. But it just doesn't look right, however pretty it (or he) is. To be quite frank, his involvement with the skirt causes so much distress to those around him that they cannot bear for him to don the garment again. Is this in any way any clearer? Thought not. Now, I could live with this, just about. I mean, if I want to get myself all trussed up in an emotional mess then that's my prerogative is it not Britney Spears? "Yes!" she beams reassuringly, the word tinged with the dying embers of 90s Girl Power. People can spit and shout and wail that I'm making a mistake but who cares? Live and let live! Laissez-faire! And all that.

However, something has changed. The hypocrisy of our late twenties is beginning to show it's ugly face. I have started to receive signs that point to a sea change in opinion, a move away from 'carefree' as an adjective to describe our crazy youth and towards, well, 'settled'. These beacons of change feature fairly high up those portentous words "...request the pleasure of the company of..." Reading my name followed swiftly by "...to celebrate the marriage of..." I barely have time to gulp before I'm forced to stoop to pick up a slip of paper that has fallen, at once accidentally and deliberately, from the white glittering card. Picking it up I immediately discern the silver lettering which can only mean one thing: The John Lewis Gift List. And that's it. The full hit. The complete and bloody blow to the head. The obvious questions flash through my mind: Do I know these people? How long have they been together? Was I expecting it? What will I wear? And will there be an item within my budget on the Gift List that isn't a toilet roll holder? Once these questions have been posed and the first (and most important) ones have been answered in the affirmative then I'm left pondering the other stuff, raking it over in my mind...Are these the people who have been discouraging me from forming meaningful relationships with men they disapprove of, only then to run away and secure a life-long bit of company for themselves..? I mean honestly, I could if I wanted to, I mean I'm just going to go and find myself someone now, I mean there's no reason why I can't make it my project to secure someone before the wedding day and take them along and who knows maybe it'll be us this time next year...I mean... Oh, wait a minute, how am I ever going to pull in my current condition? The word "unemployed", when uttered, has never to my knowledge turned anyone on...Ah, but hang on a minute, this invitation is addressed to me. I mean, just me - no plus one. NO PLUS ONE! This is an abomination. (And that word is only ever used in cartoons.) No plus one. No plus one. The words ring in my head. I say them over and over as if it's wrong that I don't have an invitation for an imaginary plus one. I'm fighting an imaginary cause. It's getting more like a cartoon all the time.

Needless to say I got over the initial distress and, if I'm honest, I'm pretty excited about this wedding. I like the people (which is always a start) and it's an autumn wedding and I like the autumn. I could do with a bit of light end-of-summer dress shopping as well. That never hurt anyone. Especially me. Once I had secured a date for parting with some of my dwindling cash, the thought of going alone didn't seem as painful. And anyway, what was I whinging about? I had at least two other friends who would be going alone. I aired my concerns with one of them and I was almost bowled over by her insightful response: "Listen, we're good quality guests, you know?" "No," I replied. "I don't know what you mean." "Look, we're good quality guests because people know what they're getting with us. They don't have to worry about expecting some crazy lunatic plus one. They get us. In a nice dress. That's good value for money per head." With the simplicity and clarity of this statement, the clouds lifted.

I don't know what it was that made me feel better, the fact that I was amused or a genuine belief that I was excellent value for money, but it didn't much matter. My bizarre hissy fit deserved an equally bizarre response. And that was perfect. It IS weird to moan about other people getting married, plus ones, relationship histories and those over-priced, unnecessary presents. It's like the grown-up version of saying that someone's stolen your ruler or pulled your hair. I know that. I just ask one thing: that when I reach my thirtieth birthday, each of my friends selects a gift for me from my John Lewis Birthday Gift List. Well, I've got to furnish my one bedroom flat somehow.

Ducks and Satellites

So, go on, who found the 'I've got a Ferrari in me yet' corny? OK, I'll be the first to say that I did. Although at the time of writing I meant it and still agree with it on re-reading, I still blush when I see it sitting there. On the internet. Being read by people. But that's the beauty of this. A little bit of honesty spewed out in a corner of my bedroom onto the World Wide Web. Maybe I should have thought a bit harder about my relationship with blogging before setting out on this little project. Oh well. Too late now.

It's about six months since I started writing this. I recently flicked back to the very first posting in which I triumphantly announced my departure from newspapers. Beginning on a note of panic, cleverly/clumsily disguised as self-deprecation, I had no idea what was going to unfold in the coming months but what I was definitely setting myself up for was a torrent of honesty. You can't really start to write something as self-indulgent as this without being honest. It's short-changing people. If you're going to talk about yourself, don't lie - it just spoils things. So, the Ferrari comment, that was me. Sometimes really honest just isn't cool. Hence the invention of punchy headlines and compromising press photos. Putting your thoughts to music also seems to add a cool shine to them. A recent musical obsession of mine is a very nice Australian lady called Kate Miller-Heidke. She writes about how ducks don't need satellites and about falling in love with the journalist who regularly interviews her. Yes, ducks and satellites, you did read right. I suppose it is all a bit odd but I enjoy her alternative reality. I can relate to it.

Having time does do strange things to your thought processes. You can allow your mind to wander. In fact, after a while, it wanders of its own accord. After about the first month of behaving rather hysterically about my unemployed situation (that was around the time of the one million emails a day to media organisations), I ran out of things to do. There were times in the week when I just had to sit back and let people answer my calls and respond to my emails before pouncing on them again. It was in these moments that I began to develop an interest in things outside of job-seeking. I remembered that there was an International Slavery Museum in Liverpool that I'd always meant to go to and that I had a few books I'd wanted to read for a while. I began walking to places too. In fact, just walking for the hell of it. A friend recently commented on the walking: "Saw you stomping down the road the other day! Was waiting at the traffic lights and there you were! You're a funny one." As if walking had gone out of fashion and I'd been caught in the act of extreme uncoolness. Leaving out the people who have cruelly commented on my 'dossing' (Ouch. Sore point), others have been perplexed as to how I have filled my days. They forget that, in their world, a weekend is framed by five days of work, rendering the weekend a 'holiday'. In my world, there is no such framing technique which means that there is only time - no weekend of holiday. You have to create a week. I have so far managed this fairly successfully. Monday to Friday I'll make my phonecalls, send my emails, fill in my application forms, do all my panicking. I'll only wander around the shops on weekends, as well. That is a weekend activity. Of course, money is rarely parted with. But that's not the point. It's about keeping up with the rest of the world. "I see they have new blazers in Topshop" is the kind of knowledge that feeds light-hearted chat on the phone. What is on BBC1 at 3 is the afternoon does not. Which I why I, thankfully, never gave in to the daytime TV temptation. It only loses you friends for, not only do they resent you for being able to watch it, but they can't discuss plot-lines or topics of the day with you anyway. So it's pointless. Enter museums and galleries. They have been a pretty healthy substitute for me of late. Although, admittedly, the free museums and galleries of Merseyside, while fairly great in number, do not six months of unemployment fill. But every little helps, as they say.

But however much you try, there's always the guilt. You can sit at a desk 9-5, stare at Facebook for the duration, leave at the end of the day, and legitimately bemoan your tired eyes, sore feet and buzzing head. "God, what a day! I'm so glad to be home!" you'll cry. I've done it. And yet no amount of emailing, panicking and head buzzing justifies your existence if you're unemployed. You can complain about not having a job but about nothing else. The sole purpose of your life is to secure that job. However, the longer the unemployment goes on, the less patient others become. 'Oh come on' they muse sceptically 'surely it's not that difficult.' But the transition from busy newsroom to very quiet corner of bedroom is a tough one. I can hear the sceptics guffawing. But that's the honest bit.

Some things remain the same; I'm still writing, for instance. About myself and not other people, but still writing. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if I had a greater readership now than I had six months ago. Secondly, the balance in my bank account is, give or take a couple of pounds, in exactly the same condition as it was back in December mainly as a result of me shedding my London rent. I'm not rich. In fact, I am poor. But I have read a bit more and seen a bit more than I saw in all of my working time. I've discovered a musician who sings about ducks, I've lingered over some art, I've walked. And I've written this blog. It has been my alternative reality. A reality that has not been easy to stomach in many ways but which, in other ways, has furnished me with some opportunities that may otherwise have passed me by. I only hope that, when September comes and I launch myself onto another educational institution, I will remember what it is to enjoy time in the ways that I have done over the past few months.