Full of the Right Ideas

"You can have a head full of the right ideas, but if you can't make the right moves in the world, they're worthless."

That line comes from The Education of Charlie Banks. This post isn't about it, but it's a great film. You should go watch it. I just thought: that's a really good mantra to live your life by. I know it certainly applies to a lot of the crap I managed to cause throughout my life. It's like, you think you know what's best, you think you have it all figured out, but really, really, when it comes down to acting on it you can't. You make the wrong decisions with all the right ideas.

It's too easy to ruin everything. It's far too easy to take your own life and the lives of others and set them alight like you're just living in some fictional world, like everything's a computer game, like the consequences don't matter and you don't have to believe what's happening, or you don't have to save so nothing you did matters. All the mistakes you make, you think you know what you're doing. I mean, most people my age have some experience with computer games, with getting something wrong in them and having the character die, but then coming back and thinking they know how to beat the Big Bad, only to die again. And in the games you can just retry it again and again and it doesn't matter. If you're like me, you figure out how to beat the Big Bad, but you don't know how you can do it. I was always better at telling That Guy I Am how to do it than do it myself.

So it's like the line - having the right ideas but not making the right moves. Except life isn't a game. We live in this messed up world where we can send a text or an email and a second later the person can have received it and then you deal with the consequences. You can bitch and you can moan and you can hit send and then it's too late, then you can't take it back. And I mean, it's easy to do something positive with texts and emails, but it's the wrong moves that come back and bite us in the ass.

I've made those mistakes too many times thinking I knew what was best. I made those mistakes because I didn't want to talk to somebody, I wanted to talk at somebody. You know those sort of relationships where one person does all the talking and it seems fine, except when the other person has something to say they can't because they don't know how that sort of thing works in the relationship? Like, you can't say something because it's not your job to say something when you're actually talking, and you can never find the right time to do it? And when you do say something, it's in an email or a text that's too long and convoluted to get the message across or it's too emotionally charged to make any constructive sense, and all it does is irritate?

Then the shorter messages come along and they can have the biggest impact because you didn't say something. You know you wanted to say something but you don't know how, so the person finally seeing those words instead of hearing them, instead of seeing you, gets the wrong impression.

And you say sorry, and it doesn't mean anything really, even if you mean it, because to the other person it's just one more apology and one more message - heard or seen - among the crap you created before. And there's this impression of you made - unforgivable, it seems - and no matter what you do you don't know how to fix it, because all your right ideas only led you to the point where your actions ruined everything until there are no more right ideas left, only the wrong ones, and you can't act anymore.

Relationships are very, very complicated and fragile things, sometimes. I want to convey that message in a way that will reach everyone, but I don't know how to do it except like this. I mean this in the most sincere way I can manage - don't mess up the relationships closest to you because you'll only hate yourself for it.

But - and I really have to say this - just because you think you've ruined something, don't assume it can't be put back together. You just have to find all the tie all the loose strings together again until you've got something that you looks remarkably similar to what you had before, even if you've had to replace some of the stuff you lost.

Best wishes,
Paul.

Being a Teacher

People seem to underestimate the work involved in being a teacher. I can say this, without conviction, because I have been doing some of the work of a teacher. If you think it's just standing up in front of a class and talking for the day, you're wrong. At primary level, which I've been getting lessons together for, there's a lot of creative thought necessary.

Why?

Because children don't want to listen to someone drone on about everything day-in, day-out for eight years. They need activities, stimulation, colour, videos, music, and time away from being spoken at about all the subjects they don't care for.

So what does a teacher have to do?

Let's put this into context: I have three classes to teach in January - 2 Religion and 1 English, every day for two weeks. For each of these three classes and for each of the weeks, I need to prepare what's called a Scheme of Work. I normally like scheming. This involves so much more than just minute preparation and a lot of winging it, though. Each scheme needs to cover the AIMS of the week's lessons, CONCEPTS & DEFINITIONS involved in the lessons, RESOURCES that were used to prepare the lesson and a DESCRIPTION of each of the five lessons per class per week.

After that, there then has to be a Lesson Plan for each of the lessons in each of the classes for both weeks. For me, with only a fraction of the work of a fully-qualified primary school teacher, this is still a huge amount of work: 15 lesson plans per week! New teachers would use lesson plans for a while until they had everything more or less prepared for the duration of their time teaching a particular school year, only tweaking things when necessary. However, this means an estimated 8-9 lesson plans per day, which amounts to 40-45 per week, for 37 weeks of the year (I'm told). That's 1,480-1665 per year. Bare in mind that many teachers stay with the same class group for two years, so they don't repeat a year until after they've done the same workload again.

That's a LOT of preparation...

And it's only the beginning! Teachers still have to prepare worksheets and resources for all of these lessons, and... yes, you guessed it: they have to teach the lessons. But it's not over after that. There's also this thing children hate called HOMEWORK and it has to be collected. Fun times, yeah?

And this is what I've signed up for, only with secondary schools instead. This means less freedom for lessons, but less subjects to cover. That doesn't make it easier, it just means that I'd have to teach up to six years worth of material. Yeah, that's more lesson plans the first time around. And with the way the curriculum is in English, it'd mean having to change the plans every year for fifth and sixth class, based on what texts are on for their Leaving Cert exams.

That doesn't sound like fun... why are you doing this again?

I ask myself that every time I have to do the preparatory work. I guess I just want to teach. I want to pass on knowledge, maybe make a generation of people excited about books and reading and, if I'm lucky and good enough, half-way decent citizens. Religion teaching isn't just "Yay God and all that"; it's about encouraging pupils to make an educated choice about religion; it's about teaching morals and values that have real importance in the world; it's about promoting equality and understanding and removing all the presumptions about other religious faiths, which I find to be of high importance given South Park's attacks on Judaism and Islam, even they're meant to just be funny; and it's about helping pupils to progress in their faith development.

Their...what?

Faith development; it's part of Robert Fowler's study of what he calls the stages of faith. They're not specific to Christianity, though a lot of the work was done in a Christian context. The stages of faith present a stage of someone's life, allowing them to understand the world in different ways to others of different stages. It's generally accepted that there are very few stage six people who ever lived... one of them is Jesus, another is Mahatma Ghandi. See? Universal! And Religion in schools is about helping people with their faith development so that they can understand the world in new lights. It's all very fascinating, really.

And this is what being a teacher is about?

Well, this is an idea of what being a teacher is about. Contextually, this is really what being an English and Religion teacher is about. Maths and Science teachers wouldn't be as concerned with faith development, I wouldn't imagine! But the workload is the same. It's a lot to do and a lot to teach, and while it's not as easy as people think, so far it's been as fulfilling. And I haven't even taught my lessons, yet!

Post

You know, I seriously thought the postal service would be fecked because of the snow... but no. I posted something yesterday and received confirmation of its arrival earlier today. I didn't really that the Irish post was that good even with good weather! Next day delivery, like? Ha!

I received a German mail order catalogue, too... I don't know how to un-subscribe. All the instructions on how to do that are in German. (Note: I receive this because I bought a birthday present from them for my friend...) Thankfully it doesn't cost me anything to be subscribed. It's just a little annoying.

And why am I mentioning this?

Because my Robert Frost poetry book still hasn't arrived! Something came from GERMANY, and something was delivered in Ireland IN ONE DAY, but the book can't get here.

Efficient or what?

To make things more fun, the ironic weather is getting worse. God College was closed early today (I think people are forgetting to pray for the snow to go away). Among the shenanigans of the day are a giant snowball fight, a lecturer getting hit in the back of the head with snow and an hour and a half walk home in the snow. The buses were cancelled and it's a long enough journey as it is. To make things a little longer, one of the girls who shall remain nameless (for the benefit of people in college... she does music, she's short and she's always really cheery!) stopped to talk to a couple of friends of hers. It was all grand, though. We only got pelted with hail for a little while, and the snow had stopped long before we got home, so it's not like we were exposed to more than we ought to have been.

I think I actually became immune to the cold at some point. Curious...

Still... I want my Robert Frost poetry book!

Irony, Poetry Books and the Weather

Forgive me if I'm wrong about irony, but when I get snow instead of the Robert Frost poetry book I ordered, I wondered what was going on. I'm still waiting. I received half my order of books yesterday - half, being one book. It was an edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, using the original text. What I'm still waiting on is Poems by Robert Frost.

It's not that I have a need for these books of poetry, since they were on my course last semester; I just really liked them. I also have an Elizabeth Bishop poetry book, and when I can afford it from my online survey PayPal vouchers, I'll be getting a book of Tennyson poems. I kind of fell in love with the works of these poets last semester, and I could never find affordable editions of their works in book shops in Dublin (and I have yet to be anywhere with a decent bookshop otherwise... more on that at a later date). So, when I found them online, I jumped at the chance to buy them.

Buy Poetry Against Cancer here

I just wish the Frost book would arrive! I have a feeling the snow and ice here in Dublin is affecting the post... but that doesn't explain why the two halves of my order were sent separately! It doesn't make any sense, dammit!

Also, while I'm here, I'll give Poetry Against Cancer another mention; it's still on sale, and I really, really hope you'll support it. All the money, as I've said several times before, goes to St John's Ward at Our Lady's Children's Hospital here in Dublin. The book is affordable and makes a great present for poetry fans!

Until next time, take care with this adverse weather! I hope it doesn't affect you too badly.

Peculiar Inspiration

I have an odd habit of getting ideas for stories in college. It's not just with the people around me. Most of the time its actually what we're studying that triggers of the gears in my head off. I'm like a factory... only the physical products don't often get shipped off.

Lets take a few recent examples of this; I've mentioned my sin story. This came about during a lecture on Dr Faustus. The slight mention of the seven deadly sins kind of sorted that one out. (note to self: write more of that book!) Another idea came about during a cross-over between two lectures; there was a discussion about the plague to contextualise another of the tragedies we were studying, and then we had a lecture in Philosophy about a particular political philosophy. The mash-up of two lectures made a book. Today, I had the wonderful idea of a comedy story come into my head... We were looking at New Comedy in Rome (to show what Shakespeare did differently), and a single line in the PowerPoint got a fat man dance-walking into a town. Yeah, a fat guy. Deal with it.

This isn't the only stuff that happens. I had a recurring series of ideas all about a world built on Morals. That description does the idea no justice, but I don't want to give it all away. Other times, it's just something in someone's life that triggers an idea. Those ones are the risky ones to write; they get very personal. First drafts of them, even if I like how they turned out, have to be combed to remove references to real life. Usually there are a lot of references to real life.

Situations are strange for ideas. I have a strange memory-recall thing... if I go somewhere I've been before, I get sort of flashbacks of something that happened there (in my life, obviously...). All the significant people of the situation haunt the place in a very polite manner, some more than others, depending on how much I'm thinking about them. These flashbacks lead to stories coming into my head. I cannot help my memory-recall doing this. It's just less useful in exams when I can't remember the details that aren't already jotted down!

I don't quite know why I get ideas so easily in certain circumstances. It's not something I think could be taught to people. The best advice I can give is to just open yourself up to the world, let fiction and life cross over a subtle line that lets one work off the other. Reflecting on experiences that stick out also help, so keep a journal. I did find that one series of events that have inspired a story (that I haven't yet written) were fresh on my memory because I'd been looking over relevant journal entries about them before revisiting the places in which the events took place. This doesn't work for fiction that takes place in entirely fictional worlds, or in places we've never visited before, but it works wonders if you're setting a story somewhere that just looks or feels like the location of your memories.

And for crying out loud, don't be afraid to use your memories. As John Green puts it, "For me at least, fiction is the only way I can twist my lying memories into something true."

Review - Erase This

It's been a while since I reviewed anything, and here we are - a DFTBA Records album called Erase This. The album is a projected by founder Alan Lastufka and one of DFTBA's prominent artists Luke Conard, with some cameo appearances from some other singers, including Kristina Horner. I happened to be lucky enough to see Lastufka announcing a give-away of the album on Thanksgivings Day last Thursday, so I swooped in and got a free download.

So what did you think of it?
In short - brilliant. Some of the tracks don't work alone, simply for the fact that there's a radio theme running through the album, but the songs within the tracks are still fantastic. Other tracks hold their own and really blew me away!

Wait, radio theme?
You read that right. The album has a DJ speaking every three or four tracks to introduce a song, making them seem like a radio track-list. It really was a great way of doing things, even if it's been done before (Queens of the Stone Age did it, right?).

Oh right... so, did any tracks stand out then?
A few; I have a weakness for Kristina Horner, so when she and Luke Conard sang  Mirror Song I fell in love with the song. Beforehand, I'd only been able to hear that version on YouTube. There's a solo version of the song, too, which is good but not my favourite of the two. Without making my list of Favourite Songs from the album too long, I'll just give one other song a mention - Forgiven. I'd heard a cover of this song on the EP Taking Leave (Alan Lastukfa and Tom Milsom), and the two versions are so different! I mean, they're barely recognisable as the same song. I'm still not sure which one I prefer!

Is the album recommended?
Well I liked it! If I had the money, I'd have bought it a long while ago, but my online purchases have been restricted to cheap books and birthday presents. The album is really catchy, though, works great a whole piece of music and it's full of great songs! Buy it and love it!

Welcome Back to Hysteria

Back to this wonderful thing we call the Internet, or the World Wide Web. I prefer the latter - it implies we're trapped. Damn Web... Grr!

This have been... interesting. I started a wonderful tale of sin and destruction... I really ought to get that checked out. My attraction to destroying things (which two people will see in the story...) is a bit odd. I think it's part of the world of fiction, having the power to create and destroy whatever you want. Yes, novelists get to play God. Deal with it. We're normally a lot more introvert in person.

I'm enjoying the sin story, though. I don't want to give too much away, because I'd like to keep the idea as original as possible, but it's fun to write. I get to bend reality a bit, fashioning a world in darkness.

Aside from that, I've been on a school visit, written an essay, done some lesson plans and gotten a few things on track. I had great big plans for something that I've been talked out of doing. I let myself get talked out of it, because I wasn't entirely sure what to do about it. Big thanks to Rebecca W for that; I needed to hear what she told me.

Once I have my stuff at least mostly ready for Teaching Practice in January, I'll be doing more work on Meet Sam. I didn't get much done on Love, Sam for NaNoWriMo, so I kind of lost. Not to worry.

Also, I appear to have forgotten how to write a blog post that's engaging. I feel like I'm reporting the news, and doing it poorly. Forgive me, it's been a long weekend (as in, it started on Friday... and I thought yesterday was Sunday...)

Anyway, I'm back. I may be on less than before, but I'll be online nonetheless. I'll leave you with an extract from a poem. 10 points to whoever knows the author without having to Google it.

‎"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -