A new job and other stuff

I find that my life is a lot more productive when I’m more scheduled. Something about having limited time makes me actually use the time I have.

I just started a new job. It’s part-time, it’s temporary (until Christmas), but it’s an income for now. As long as it gets me through until I apply for my next visa, I’m okay. [Note: the visa will not guarantee me a job afterwards, but should make it a little bit easier, plus to get the visa I need a minimum bank balance so that I can prove that I’m not going to be a drain on UK society.]

The job is a teaching job, which also accomplishes the goal of getting experience in a UK school so that I can apply for the GTP (which is an employment-based teacher qualification program). In fact, the head of the department talked to me today about treating this next month as if it were an unofficial GTP. So in addition to teaching classes, I will occasionally observe and be observed (a few times a week, we’re thinking). I am all in favour of this. Anything that makes me a better teacher and gives me a bit of an edge finding another job is a good thing. As an international (non-EU) resident, I face quite a lot of barriers to employment until I get a permanent visa (which will be difficult for me to do without a job).

But anyway, the job. Like I said, it’s part-time, it’s temporary, it’s teaching. It’s a private (independent) school, which is how I’m able to work there actually as a teacher even without qualifications. I’ve taken over some classes for a teacher who’s been ill since August. He’s recovered enough to take back his exam-level classes, but that leaves quite a few classes that he’s not ready for yet. So I’m teaching a class of year 9s and a class of year 10s and I share a class of year 7s. I’m teaching Lord of the Flies to the year 9s and Great Expectations to the year 10s.

It’s been a bit rough. The other teachers are wonderful, and I have no problems with any of them apart from my natural shyness and independence which combined make it difficult for me to offer opinions and ask for help. The fruoghness has come with the kids, especially the older ones. I am the third teacher they’ve had this year, and it’s not even the end of the first term. I am obviously new and unfamiliar with the school’s procedures. And by the end of my first week of working (I started teaching on a Wednesday and the crisis hit last hour on the next Tuesday) they’d pushed me and themselves to a breaking point. Things are better now – they’ve been yelled at, repeatedly, and I have a better idea of what to do and how to handle them – but I’m used to classes who, for the most part, love me, and even if they don’t, they respect my being there and they don’t punch each other out in the middle of my class. (Unless they’re making a YouTube video.) I need to become better at discipline and classroom management with classes that I don’t know, with students that I don’t know, and with systems that I don’t know. If I can’t, I’ll never survive the GTP next year (assuming that I do the GTP next year).

And I do still want to get teacher qualifications – at the very least, it would be nice to have qualifications to match my experience. But I also am still looking for office-type jobs. I can’t help wondering what it would be like to work in an office instead of a school, having set tasks to do and a defined job description that doesn’t necessarily require me to be ‘on’ all day.

And this leads me back to my opening statement. This is a great job, a great school, and may lead to further things next term (details pending). But I’m not busy enough to get things done. There’s always ‘more’ that I could do, of course, but I’m only scheduled to teach a few class hours – or, in this timetable, half-hours – each day. Today, even, I only had one half-hour since my double class was cancelled (the class was doing something else with their form tutor). I was technically done teaching at 9:40 this morning. I stayed, of course, for a quick staff meeting and to at least outline my classes for tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday – I didn’t go much further for various reasons, including not really having a sense of how much we’ll reasonably get done tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday, and having no classes until 11:30 tomorrow so I can spend the morning tweaking it, and having a huge block of time Tuesday to do more – and ended up observing a class which, as previously mentioned, is a good thing. The thing is, if I’d had more classes to teach yesterday, I probably would even have gotten more done. Because I wouldn’t have had as much time to ponder what I was going to do, I would have made decisions faster about what to do in my various classes. And probably still gotten the blog posts written and etc. etc. etc. Oh, well. Sigh.

As I was leaving today, I told one of my colleagues that I was done for the day, and she jokingly asked if I wanted to teach her afternoon class instead – I told her that, seriously, if there are days when she’s feeling too overwhelmed by her other stuff and can hand me a lesson plan, I’ll do it. And by the end of the brief conversation, we’d tentatively agreed to team-teach a General Studies unit about the different education systems/experiences in the US and the UK. Yay for more work and more experience!

I really do enjoy all the other teachers in the English department at this school. This school year so far has been incredibly chaotic for them – there’s the teacher I’m covering for who has been ill and is not sure when he’ll be able to come back full time, there’s the head of department who needs leg/hip surgery sometime in the late winter/early spring and has been trying to arrange that as well as take care of the personnel changeover of this fall, there’s the lovely one who had a miscarriage over half-term, there’s the new one who had a minor breakdown last week, there are a couple of part-time people who are wonderful but not in every day….it’s a department in flux but everyone is so nice and so supportive of everyone else.

There’s not a lot else going on in my life. I still miss my ex – one of the hardest things about that terrible Tuesday that I mentioned above was that I wanted to text him and tell him about it, so that he could sympathise and then make me laugh and forget about it – but I couldn’t. Not because I ‘can’t text him’ – because I can, we’re still friends of sorts, I saw him a couple of weeks ago and we’re fine – but because if I had, it would just have been a way for me to try to hang on to the way things were between us and not the way things are, and that’s not healthy.

I have no idea what I’m going to be doing for Christmas. I don’t think I’ll have enough money for a plane ticket to go home, unless one of my parents helps me out, and I don’t know where various family members are going to be for Christmas anyway. Staying here would certainly be easier from both a financial and a bureaucratic perspective. It may be incredibly depressing, though.

NaNoWriMo

I started to attempt National Novel Writing Month again this year. I've done it in the past, and I've even "won" twice. This year, I'm not going to finish.

I could make excuses like "I just started a new job" (true) "which usually leaves me exhausted" (true) and "I'm trying not to lose my semblance of a social life" (true) "which means, for example, that I only have an hour at home on Tuesdays" (true), all of which are factors in my wordcount of less than 10K right now.

But the main reason that NaNo is not working for me is that I care too much about this story idea. It's one that's been in my head for literally years, and I want it to work, even in a first draft. And right now it's not working. The plot isn't there and the tone is absolutely wrong. And I care too much about the story to want to throw in flying monkeys or black-suited ninjas.

So the way I see it, I have a few choices. I can try to restart this story, locking myself away and trying hard to gget to 50K in...twelve days. I could restart this story and change my goal to either 20 or 25K (...in twelve days). I could switch stories, also resetting the goal.

Or I could quit thinking of it as NaNo, which is a fairly arbitrary thing anyway that in the past has left me mentally and writingly (you'd think I'd know a better adverb for that, wouldn't you? One that actually exists?) drained and uncreative through December, and just try to write something, a few hundred words at least, every day.

I pick the last one.

Happy Remembrance Day

They shall grow not old, as we who are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them

------------------------------------------------

Last Post

------------------------------------------------

My all-time favourite poem

------------------------------------------------

And one of my all-time favourite books


------------------------------------------------

I was going to write more about today, and memories of today, and try to parse out why I am so fascinated by WWI, but I started a new job last week and even though it's part-time, it's still exhausting (and the last two days have been particularly emotionally draining) and I just need to collapse. I'll put it on my list for 'posts to write soon' but I can't promise that I'll a) remember and b) actually do it. I'll try, though.

My mind is confusing sometimes.

Oh, man, I miss football. I miss football so much. The Patriots and Bucs played at Wembley today and I so want tickets to next year’s London game and I want a friend to come with me so that I can talk about the game, both during and after. I am disappointed that the Vikings lost, but they kind of gave it away (TWO turnovers returned for touchdowns? Seriously?), it’s not good for teams to go undefeated too long because it creates way too much pressure, and if they had to lose I’m glad it was to the Steelers so that I could see Stefan (and kind of laugh at how upset he seemed that he only got to about the 30 on one return, instead of running it all the way back) because he is awesome. Oh, and speaking of undefeated teams? STEP IT UP SAINTS.

It is still weird for me to think of Brett Favre with the Vikings. He was such an iconic Packers quarterback, and the rivalry between the Packers and the Vikings is so, so, so strong, that it’s so hard to see his playing for the Vikings as much beyond a slap in the face to Green Bay. It shouldn’t bother me this much, but it does. (And next week is the rematch! Yay!) Other player transfers don’t bother me this much. When Terrell Owens left the 49ers, I didn’t care. (Although I don’t care about TO much anyway, except to wish that he’d shut up, go away, and get over himself.) Ricky Williams, one of the highest-profile signings the Saints ever had, is playing for the Dolphins now and currently against the Saints, and this does not bother me at all.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I went to the Robin Hood Pageant. It is essentially a Renaissance Fair that is pretending to be in the 13th century. It was awesome. Re-enactment festivals like this are places where, in order to get any kind of enjoyment out of it, you can’t take it or yourself too seriously. Also, it’s nice to see things marginally connected to the things I’ve studied, and think “Right, maybe all my education and knowledge isn’t TOTALLY useless.”

All the performances were, of course, Robin Hood based. The jousting performances were Robin and the band against the Sheriff and Guy (who did not look like Richard Armitage, but was blond like the guy from the 1980s series and not unattractive). The ‘medieval sports’ for kids purported to be recruitment for Robin’s gang. There was a no-strings puppet show of Robin and the Potter and Robin and the Monk. There was a storyteller, a book-binder, an alchemist, a juggler/fire-eater (who I wasn’t sure about from the description but who turned out to be quite funny). There was also falconry – for performances they use Harris hawks now, and the guy gave some interesting information about how to train birds, and what the different levels of birds were (peasants could fly kestrels, kings could fly goshawks, and everything in between), and the Harris hawks run to flush out the prey and it’s fun(ny) to watch. Wilf, one of the Harris hawks, ate things he wasn’t supposed to eat (such as a bit of a hamburger and chips) and then didn’t catch the ‘rabbit’ that was a demonstration of his hunting abilities. The falconer was kind of worried about him. He (the falconer) also demonstrated a barn owl, which is beautiful with such a big wingspan…..

The jousting was also incredible – it was actual jousting, with horses and blunted lances and a quintain and all. Robin won, of course (the jousting may have been real, but the battles were choreographed, of course), and it was cool to see. I had a bit of a bad moment when the Sheriff was a bit slow (for my taste) getting up afterwards [I …. really don’t like it when they don’t get up] but he did eventually get up and seemed fine.

One of the things that going to this did for me – besides updating my medievalist geek credentials, as if they needed it – was to kind of reassure me that there is a place for me and my interests in the world, even outside of academia. Don’t get me wrong: I still want to do a PhD and do feel like academia/education is the place where I am supposed to be, but it’s nice to know that I am not completely alone in these obsessions, and that there is a place for them, even in an entertainment/niche type venue. (Not that there’s anything wrong with entertainment as a niche. Far from it.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of my medieval geek interests, and entertainment, after writing this the other day, I started a list of medieval poems that I could adapt for television/movie/modern literary versions. I figured that I can’t justifiably complain about them not being there if I’m not willing to at least attempt to do something about it. I’m not going to say ‘it’ll be easy!’ because a) I’m not stupid, b) I’ve never written a screenplay before, but I know how difficult even a bad 30-day novel is, and c) I’m not stupid. But it’s something I think I should try. I watch a lot of TV and movies, and read a lot about the writing process in those media, so I have a basic understanding of how it works. And I know some of these poems almost by heart, so I have more than a basic understanding of the source material to know what can and should be included or not. I think I can do it, or, at least, I think I can try.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was going to write a bit about a ‘discussion’ I had with a friend last night about religion that started and ended with him telling me I was going to hell, but almost 1000 words is enough for one night, yes? (If only I could write this much on my fiction! Oh, well….)

This absolutely disturbs me. I don’t have a problem, per se, with a ranking system based on how many students drop out, since I think that is a relatively reasonable indicator of quality. I don’t have a problem with a ranking system based loosely on student satisfaction surveys, with appropriate caveats for personal bias and whatnot. I don’t even have a problem with a ranking system based on results, although that requires some sort of standardization and runs the risk of ‘teaching to the test’. In general, I don’t have a problem with ranking systems for education – with so much choice, there has to be a way to narrow the field a little bit or people get overwhelmed.

Earning potential should not be a part of these ranking systems. I understand that my attitude is born out of an upper-middle-class, privileged background that allows me to think this way, but education should not merely be a means to money. People should study something that they’re interested in, ideally in a program that provides transferable skills. (And employers should recognize these transferable skills, no matter what it says on a person’s certificate or diploma.) If you aren’t learning about something that you’re interested in, if you don’t work at something you enjoy at some level, then all the money in the world doesn’t matter.

Also, future earnings can’t possibly be a secure, reliable factor. Look at how much the economy has changed in the last couple of years, and the last decade. Plus, a qualification is not a guarantee of a job offer, much less a salary band. Certain courses – the ones that list higher potential earnings – will be flooded with people who have only a minimal interest in the subject, which will overload the job market – which right now is overloaded anyway. I see no good reason that is not purely mercenary to include potential earnings on a ranking system.

This is not to say that potential earnings do not have a place when people are making a choice about what to study. Just that they shouldn’t be used in a ranking system, and especially not one linked to funding of courses or – especially – whether or not a course continues to exist, as is implied in the first paragraph of this article.

Also, quango: Originally: an ostensibly non-governmental organization which in practice carries out work for the government. Now chiefly: an administrative body which has a recognized role within the processes of national government, but which is constituted in a way which affords it some independence from government, even though it may receive state funding or support and senior appointments to it may be made by government ministers. [OED]

Soap Operas

Guiding Light, the longest running entertainment program in the US, ended last week after 72 years on radio and TV. I find this kind of sad. I understand that the TV industry is just that, an industry, and it’s driven by costs and ratings, but soap operas and Guiding Light in particular seemed like stalwarts, like they’d never end. Even if other soaps failed (Sunset Beach, Loving/The City, etc.), soaps in general would go on, and Guiding Light would always be there.

I used to be a huge soap opera fan. My mom watched Days of Our Lives and Another World when I was very young – to the point where, when SoapNet started showing old episodes of Another World, things were familiar. My own personal fandom started one vacation, probably summer vacation, when I was in middle school with The Young and the Restless. After a year or so of that, I moved on to Days of Our Lives (I am slightly embarrassed to admit that the possession storyline drew me in, although it’s not what kept me) and Another World for the last year or so of its existence. Then I found out that an elementary school classmate of mine was occasionally an extra on Guiding Light, so I watched that in the hopes of glimpsing her. My roommate sophomore year of college taped Passions and would watch it every evening, and it was a small room so I watched too. Then, the year after I graduated from college, when I had nothing to do in the afternoons, I turned on the TV. I don’t remember what got me hooked on them, but somehow I ended up hooked on All My Children and One Life to Live, with General Hospital thrown in by the end of the year, partially because I was too lazy/distracted to change the channel. Thanks to SoapNet, I rewatched early-to-mid-80s Another World and kept up on all of the above. When I got my computer for Slovakia, my second year, and was investigating the wonderful world of free podcasts, I rediscovered Guiding Light and newly discovered As the World Turns, both of which had audio podcasts of their episodes. If I’m in a TV-watching mood in the US, I still will happily turn on SoapNet. Soaps are the television equivalent of Harlequin romance novels (which I also enjoy, probably more than I ‘should’). They’re formulaic, they’re repetitive, they require attention but not a lot of thought to consume, and every once in a while there’s something that stands out as beautiful or genius or true.

The thing about soaps – and fiction in general – is the story. That’s why I watched, anyway. (That and the hot guys.) Humans are a story-telling animal. That’s why even non-fiction books have to have some kind of narrative structure to them and some kind of character to identify with and care about. If they don’t, it’s like reading the dictionary: informative, but not something that (most) people do cover-to-cover or for fun. I watched (or, that year in Slovakia, listened) because of the story, because of the characters. I wanted to know what happened to these people, and I wanted to know how and why it happened. (And if the story didn’t turn out the way I wanted, John and Natalie on OLTL, then I often drifted away if there wasn’t any other story keeping me hooked.)

The other thing that soaps can provide is history. Guiding Light was on the air for 72 years, and one of the reasons that it survived so long is because of its slow transitions through its history. That’s how most of the soaps that are still on survive. They started with a core group of people – usually a family – and introduced new characters in connection with that family, not in isolation. As the new characters became established, then perhaps the original group would fade out, but not until then. This is one of the problems with soaps today. In a desperate attempt to attract new viewers – especially in the summer when teenagers are out of school – producers throw new, usually teenaged characters at the show in a usually-futile attempt to make something stick. If these newcomers have a connection with established characters, it’s tenuous or very limited – in a new group of five ’16-year-old’ characters, one may be the child of a supercouple, usually a child that we haven’t seen for a while who has now undergone SORAS [Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome] and should really only be about 8 years old if we’re going by real time. (This is also one of the reasons that soap opera mothers can steal their daughters’ boyfriends – at a certain point every character over the age of 21 is portrayed as within about fifteen years in age of each other, unless they are in ‘grandparent’ character in which case they’re allowed to have grey hair but not usually a social life except in certain circumstances.) The year that I lived at home and was watching four or five soaps a day, minimum, I stopped watching consistently during the summer because I was so annoyed by the new teenaged characters that I didn’t know and didn’t care about. (I learned how to use the DVR so that I could fast-forward through storylines like that that I didn’t like.) Most viewers want the consistency of the history of the soap - an acknowledgment of characters and storylines past - and shows ignore that history at their peril.

Another thing that I find wonderful about soaps is the sheer volume. Almost every daytime soap in the US right now is an hour-long daily. There are no repeats. There are times during the year when they don’t air – major sporting tournaments, especially tennis in the summer, for example – but there is no ‘hiatus’ like primetime shows get. A primetime season of 22 episodes is just over a month in daytime soaps. The sheer volume of work that goes on with soaps is absolutely incredible.

There’s a good mental_floss article about soaps and the ending of GL (I figured since I commented about a bad mental_floss article a while ago I should link to one that I enjoyed). I particularly like the slightly snarky comments that undercut the actual good work that soaps do to highlight social and global issues.

Goodbye, Guiding Light. I'll miss you.

Sometimes you need to talk about something else.

Life kind of sucks right now, so I am in avoidance mode so that I am not in constant emotional-wreck mode.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was talking online to a friend of mine who is also going through a hard time, and we agreed that one thing that would be helpful when we are going through hard times is to talk about something other than what we are going through. Not ignore the bad things, necessarily, but everyone asks, “How’s it going,” and it’s exhausting to rehash everything over and over, and to dwell on it for too long. So my first message to her today was “I’m here for you if you want to vent/rant/talk about something else entirely.” She appreciated that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have found a way to watch football online. I love football. ‘My’ guys have had a good day, too. By which I mean their names have been mentioned on air. That is exciting for me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I finally put up almost all the pictures and things on the walls in my room. It still feels kind of like a dorm room, but I’m sure that once I settle more into the rest of the house, that feeling will ease. I still feel like a student, is part of the problem. Once I get a job of some kind I hope that feeling will fade a little bit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because of the depression/grieving that I’m going through right now, I have all these ideas for ‘things I should do’ (edit the novel, brush up on Latin, write a PhD proposal, etc.) but don’t have the energy or motivation to actually do them. This, of course, adds to my stress and depression. I’m working on it. Job-searching is soul-crushing and I find myself repeatedly refreshing facebook and twitter for about three hours, and then getting annoyed with myself for wasting time. I really should give myself a break. Something will turn up. It always does, somehow.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Depression/grieving is also exhausting. Even when I haven’t been crying, my eyes feel like I have. Being around other people helps, most of the time, but I can’t count on that for the however many hours I’m awake during the day. I’ve got people-oriented things I can do this next week, at least.