The Rest of My Life

As of last night, my undergraduate Research Paper is now an existing thing. The first meeting with the moderator is next week, I have to get my ideas all together in advance for that, and it's going to follow me about for the next seven or eight months. I'm going to be honest, it's a long time since I spent so long writing one thing. I've never written something academic that's worth as much as this one paper.

What's more is that this paper, once completed, represents me in the college. And worse, when it's done I'll be almost half-way through my final year in college. That's where this post comes in.

I'm on the final steps towards facing the rest of my life. I might go and do a Masters, but I couldn't tell you what I'd do. Chaplaincy maybe. Or Counselling. I'm not sure. Maybe even Creative Writing, but I already know that's not a sure-fire way to get published.

And that's the thing: I want to get published. I want that to be how I make a living. Right now I feel like I'm too young to be in a classroom from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon. I'm too young to face a few hundred people every day and try to get a message through to them under the pretence of Mr Carroll. I'm just not that person. Not yet, anyway.

I still want to teach. That much will never change. But how I teach is a different story. I wrote up a big list of things I'm interested in that I've covered in college, and so far I'm looking at over a dozen different things I would like to write about. You know, academically. Or, at the very least, informative. I want the writing to be accessible, not something you would quote in an essay or article. For me, it's more important that people can read about the topics and understand them. That has to come first, or I'm not doing it properly.

As well as that, I want to teach creative writing. I know I'm not published, but I do have a lot more experience than some people do. In particular, since it would be a course for beginners, I would have more experience than everyone in the room. (It's what happens when you've been writing for seven years and been mentored unofficially for at least three of those years by a number of people online.)

Then, you know, there's my own creative writing. Fiction, poetry, plays. I just want to keep writing, to get published. That's how I want to make a living. I have dozens of stories in my head, all flying about untamed and unwritten, and if it weren't for the aforementioned Research Paper and the college hours that go along with it, I'd be writing full time by now. I plan to, in the summer. I need to get that experience, and I need to be doing it for money.

That's not a greed thing. That's a genuine need. I can't spend the next eighteen months sitting at home writing for nothing to find that come graduation I'm still only working weekends in a bookshop. It would drive me insane.

I need to change my life, and it starts now. It has to, or I'll keep putting it all off.

It's time to face the rest of my life, before college ends and I'm dropped in the deep end with a stitch in my side and nobody around to stop me sinking.

All the Parties!

This has been one of those Reading Weeks that involved little-to-no reading. For the citizens of the Hallmarkian  Empire, Valentine's Day reared its vicious, consumer-focused head. Immediately following it was my birthday, more a product of my parents than Hallmark. Cue the parties.

Monday
The day before the V-Bomb hit, a group of friends and I got together for some drinks. We called it Anti-Valentine's Day. It's not a unique event, but our way of sticking it to the man was certainly more enjoyable than the Dreaded Singles of us sitting at home alone, albeit eradicating dragons and whatnot in Skyrim. Instead, we played Truth or Dare.

How horribly 1990s adolescents of us. Of course, ours was a 21st Century version: it was done using a Truth or Dare App. Society, you have lost your ability to exploit your friends and colleagues darkest secrets with the invention of Apps. Nonetheless, we did manage to have a lot of fun, while drinking too much and eating too much. Sure it's Anti-Valentine's Day; it'd be rude not to.

Tuesday
Tackling the Hallmarkian Empire once again, I settled into a day-long session of bitterness and banter with the Drama Society. Most of us are part of the Dreaded Singles, the Empire's biggest foes. For some, it's for lack of trying. For others, lack of interest. I don't know what to say about the rest. Heck, I'm not even sure where I fall in that system.

Regardless of whether we were a Dreaded Single or a Hopeless Romantic, we gathered around, chatted a lot, and ordered pizza. This was before the alcohol later that night, with which the Hopeless Romantic Singles drowned their sorrows. We piled into a car called Fearghus and drove to the off-licence, bought just enough alcohol that our livers wouldn't hate us for a week, and headed off to a house with two Hopeless Romantics, lots of bitterness and an attention seeking kitten.

A bottle of Captain Morgan's later - shared with a friend - I stumbled home. Actually, I got a taxi home, but Anti-Valentine's Day Part II ended, for me, at 3am. It was officially my birthday.

Wednesday
With my birthday on top of me - a heavy 21 years - we had some friends down at the house. I hadn't really planned on them coming down. One of them said to me before my brother did. Oh well! I still got to have people down.

Keep in mind I was tired at this point, but I was surviving on chocolate and awesome home-made burgers by my older brother. Hallmark got nothing out of my friends, but Forbidden Planet got themselves a lot of business. I had a few small presents, while my brother got a bag; the fun part was when I was pulling vouchers and money out of my gift bag and he could just sit there watching until I was done. Then they handed him his vouchers. Those kidders!

I suddenly regret sounding so 1970s American. Let's move on.

I spent this party sober, partially to give my liver a break, and partially to save myself some money. We watched The Breakfast Club, one of my favourite films of all time. After that, we played yet more Truth or Dare. With an App. I ought to ban that App. It was a good night, anyway, even if I was about ready to pass out from exhaustion from the day.

Friday
Yes, I skipped Friday. It was DnD day, not a party. This was the big day of the week, with the actual arranged 21st birthday party. I sat in the pub for over two hours waiting for the majority of my friends to arrive. In fairness, my secondary school friends and two girls I worked with made the effort to arrive earlier, but I wasn't drinking with them.

That was when the Drama Society, the first group of friends (and the same crowd from Wednesday) and my Meath friend arrived, all within ten minutes of each other. It was also when I lost control of when I was getting drinks (though I didn't have to pay for any myself previously.) The Meath Man covered the costs, and damn near did my liver in in the process. The result was that I struggled to stand up without leading against something and my face went numb.

I call that a success.

A group of us went back to my house afterwards, already heavily intoxicated. The Mammy and the Daddy had already set out drinks, which were hastily tucked in to by a number of the group. I avoided further alcohol at this point, and resolved to having what one of the girls calls a DMC with the Meath Man while he drank and smoked. I couldn't stand for most of it. I literally had to pick my moments wisely and appropriately, before collapsing back onto my seat (which was actually a sleeper in the garden).

I managed to walk around again after some time and a little encouragement, and two hours later the guests were leaving. Those two hours involved a number of broken glasses, lots of alcohol consumption, the breaking of a flower pot, a tour of the house (minus the bedrooms that aren't mine), more DMCs and a few falling people.

Le Conclusion
Overall, a successful week. But no study or reading done. Still, I think part of my education process involves having friends and having four parties in a week at least once. Further conclusions that can be drawn from the experience? My friends are crazy, my liver doesn't hate me, I can survive partying better than I first thought and I definitely want to continue living my life to the full.

And there you have it, my summary of all the parties!

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This blog post was brought to you by the letter H, for Half-Assed Hangover. I'm tired, my stomach feels funny (I can't tell if I'm hungry or full!) but I don't have a headache or any of the other features of a hangover. My body really doesn't like trying too hard, does it?

Balance

Like everybody else in this world, I make mistake. I made one that got me upset earlier, confusing my time table and not being able to take part in a workshop as a result of it. I freaked out more than a little bit.

However, I was determined not to let it get the best of me. So I reacted with writing. However good or bad I might be (I don't pretend to be an expert in myself) it's something I know I can do at least a little bit right. So I sat down in my Nerd Corner/Corner of Shame and I got to writing. I won't say what. It's still sooper sekrit. But it had swearing and anger and I got to vent through this story all the little things that were going through my head.

It's a sort of therapy that works on me when I get a bit down, like everyone does. I'm happy writing, because it restores me to some sense of security and comfort and I don't feel like I'm going to mess up tremendously. I wrote a few hundred words, before people started arriving for Drama and I had to stop, but it was enough for me.

Writing wouldn't work for everyone. Some people, no matter how good they might be at it, don't believe in their ability. But there's something everyone can do that makes them happy, and I reckon we just need to find those things for our own emotional balance. It's like a weighing scales; when something bad happens and/or we get upset, we need something to fall back on.

For me, of course, writing a blog or an email isn't going to sort it out. I need to write fiction, something that I can just let loose with. I like to write angry characters, people with problems, people who don't know how to deal with the world, people who are weird and wonderful but don't fit in. I like writing characters that are that little bit like me that I can understand them, but that are so bizarre I still need to do some thinking about them.

And that works for me. I'm addicted to people, and making them up always helps me satisfy my need to vent problems at them.

I'm weird like that. But hey, anything to get an emotional balance right? It stops me making big mistakes (and boy do I make those...). More than that, though, it helps me make the right choices. (Bliss, The Phantom Zone, my website, The Rest is Silence...)

And this post? This was just me spewing up words. Sure it has to happen somewhere.

Subverted the Norm

My students described me in two ways, between talking out of turn, working and asking me questions about my personal life (name, college, do I work in X, do I hate them). I'm not sure I agree with their assessment in either case, but here we go. Apparently I am (a) cool and (b) scary. Sorry, what?

What?!

Urban Dictionary (a perfectly citable source for definitions) describes "cool" as: "The best way to say something is neat-o, awesome, or swell." However, "cool" is a term that is relative to the observer. (Which is why, when asked if I am cool - happened once - I respond with "No.") My classes consisted of twelve and thirteen year olds. They did a number of things, like play sports, not-read and play X-Box.

Somehow, I don't see how they then came to the conclusion that I am "cool". By their standards, I would need to:

(a) Play sport. Let's just be clear, here: the most physical activity I got in my three weeks in that school was walking to and from the bus stop and to the college. Okay, this amounted to several kilometres a day with what might have been heavy bags in each hand on some days (copies... gotta love 'em!), but I wouldn't call that sport. They even asked what team I supported, and were disappointed when I said I don't. I wasn't going to lie to make them like me. I don't like sports. I don't think people who play sports are "cool". (Correction: I don't think playing sports defines someone as being "cool" - I might think someone is "cool" who also happens to play sports, but the two are as related as myself and the president of Uganda.)

(b) Not read. I think we know by now that I read. More than that, I actually like to read. I also love to write, which is like reading by backwards. And I work in a bookshop, which more or less means I encourage people to read on a daily basis. At this point, I began to wonder if, by being the exact opposite of these kids, I was therefore "cool". I still disagree with the term, and I'm certainly nothing like them.

(c) Play X-Box. Okay, so I have a PS3. Well, I have 1/3 of a PS3. I sometimes get a chance to play it. Sometimes. I was asked if I played Skyrim, and I said yes, because I had to let a student know that I got his "arrow in the knee" reference, but it wasn't funny. He was asked to refrain from referencing the game again, or he'd have extra work. But a PS3 is not an X-Box.

So, I didn't do the three things they did. I was also eight years older than them, had an interest in religion and Shakespeare and gave them homework at least every second day. I gave punishment work and raised my voice at them when they spoke too loudly. I kicked people out of class (but kept them within sight with the door open, as I am legally obliged to). I did everything a teacher does. But I was described as "cool". I am as confused as you, believe me.

(And in case you think I'm being entirely self-critical, I told my friends about this: they laughed.)

As well as "cool", though, I was also "scary". The same student used these two words. I kind of understand the "scary" part, though. I raised my voice a lot. I didn't shout exactly, but when I do that Drama thing of raising my voice without much effort, it can get to a class. The teacher is supposed to shout and lose their voice. Then they lose the class and the students can keep on talking. After all, learning isn't "cool". But God I love learning.

There is a point to all of this, though. For a start, I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not think I am "cool". I am relateable and mostly easy to get along with. I am sometimes funny and sometimes smart and I almost always listen when someone needs to talk. I make stupid mistakes and embarrass myself, which makes people laugh. But being annoying, clumsy and in Drama does not typically equate to someone being "cool". Therefore, I conclude that I subverted the norm of social standards in terms of "cool".

The second point is much briefer, and related to this exchange of words:

Student: Sir, will you just tell us your first name?

Me: Why do you even care about my first name?

Student: Because we want to add you on Facebook!

No matter how "cool" they think I am, I would never accept them on Facebook. Ever.

And the third point: I have a kind of catchphrase that I intend to keep ironic: "I'm cool like that." It doesn't work if people start calling me "cool", because then it turns from ironic and possibly annoying to just annoying. I'm annoying enough as it is!

The Secret Life of Teachers

Teachers are a fascinating breed of homo sapiens, brought up from a young age to memorise everything about everyone without fail. In my time in teaching, three super important and totally true things have come to my attention:

1. Teachers never leave the school grounds. Ever. They stay there overnight, thinking up new and interesting punishments for the children that they just have to tell everyone about. They shout it from the noticeboard, laughing maniacally. This is a fact. All pupils have been talked about in great detail. Teachers don't need their spare time during school hours for anything else.
2. Teachers do not sleep. There is no need to sleep when you have lived for thousands of years. The body becomes changed, less human. Teachers can use this time to correct the multitude of errors found in the homework of their pupils. Teachers enjoy nothing more than repeating the same lessons of 'there', 'their' and 'they're', and so on.
3. Teachers spend the weekend thinking up new ways to punish their students. There is nothing better for a teacher to do than to find new and interesting ways to make someone suffer. After all, teachers are all sadists.

You can totally trust me on this one. I've been in a staff room, hooked up to the mainframe* and interacted with most of the staff in a school. It's definitely all true.

*Staff rooms are the inspiration for the Borg in Star Trek.

Life Moves Pretty Fast

I've been going through a rather reflective period of my life, of late. Okay, so I actually mean for the last six months or so, but who's counting? (Yes, I am... it's actually more than six months.) It's had me look at things in a different way, both friendships and this thing I call my writing career.

Way back in July, I got bored. I started to write a novel called Bliss (Have I mentioned that before?) as part of Camp NaNoWriMo. About half-way through the month, I stopped writing. I figured it wasn't worth it. I mean, I loved the book, but part of me just didn't see the point in trying to write it. To put it bluntly, that part of me considered giving up writing altogether.

I finally got my head on straight towards the end of the month, and in defiance to that niggling doubt ten days earlier, I started to write Bliss again, picking up where I left off. Four days later, I finished the required fifty thousand words for the month. More than half of that was written in the four days.

When I realised I could write pretty quickly and that, yes, things were worth pursuing, my head started going all over the place. I immediately set up the wordpress.com account that would host the foundations of my website.  Over the following month and a half, I got to work on articles, poems and a short story to put on the website. I enquired about newsletters and hosting and all the fun stuff that make websites fun, but they had to be free for the public (i.e. the people looking at the site) and affordable for me to justify the expense.

However, it was still only the start of August when a link to an article was posted on Twitter. I read the article, thought 'That was fun', then noticed two words down the bottom of the page: Writers wanted. I tweeted the writer of the article, he told me about the site - turns out he's the editor - and later that day, after my exceptionally nerdy cover letter, I had a job at The Phantom Zone. Go figure. In three days, I had finished an impossible fifty thousand words, begun work on my website and had my first ever writing job.

I thought, life just got pretty strange. And continued on as well as I could.

I wrote a play. Between getting the writing job and writing a few articles for it, and a month into college, I had gotten the whole play written and edited, which was no simple task considering what it's about (you know, depression, suicide... the usual stuff a debut play should be about!). That should have been enough for me, to have written my very first play. But no. I handed it in to someone wanting to direct it.

It's going on stage in a couple of months. What? I mean, what?! That made October pretty strange.

Of course, the fun was only really beginning. I edited a novella I wrote in the summer of 2010, Stepping Forward, and put up a sample download on my website. That same website, with the download, went live on September 11th 2011. The date was significant for the release only because of when I would be going back to the college (i.e. the 12th!). Go forward three months, and Stepping Forward was available in its entirety for download on Smashwords. During that week, I was also interviewed about the book.

In November (yes, I'm going back and forth, but things don't just happen overnight in my life, most of the time!), having gotten back from Taizé in France, I decided I would give NaNoWriMo an attempt. I didn't have a full month, I had a lot of work to do for college, and I had an unfinished manuscript. I resolved to finish Bliss. Thirty thousand words later, the first draft was done.

Come up to January, and I'm teaching. Now, part of this is to write reflective statements, but I don't really care very much for them. The teaching part was significant, though. I didn't think I would be able to do it. I thought the syllabus was much too complicated for me, but when I went into the class and kids began to learn things - and I mean, they were remembering dates and names for Judaism and the consequences of the Schism and taking a huge interest in Islam and all that other fun stuff - I really started to believe in myself as a teacher.

Of course, I did say this post was also about friends. So, significantly, I spent more time talking to friends in college. I have an awful habit of vanishing on people in college, I should add, so I was glad to be able to talk to people properly. Not only that, but taking part in Drama again meant I made yet more friends (the Drama Society has a way of doing that!). Add in the Writers' Soc and my inherent boredom in the morning, and through one mature student in first year I met over half a dozen others.

There's something to be said about mature students. Generally, they don't do clubs and socs. Generally, there are a few who just barely hit the over 23 mark and a lot more who are in their forties. These ones are mostly in their twenties. (Immediately less terrifying, because none of them are old enough to be my mother!) Since they didn't take part in any of the clubs or socs I did, I only really got to know them through proper human interaction. Mostly this was while blocking the smoke from a couple of cigarettes with a cup of tea (what can I say, I favour conversation over health - I just hate the taste of smoke!), but it meant I got to know some people who had a lot of real life experience (which you can only get after leaving school, unfortunately) and who made the decision to come back to college.

What this meant for my social life - which largely doesn't include a nightlife, because of the exhaustion of trying to keep up with third year and everything else I do, while having parents call me to come home for dinner - was that I had about a dozen new people in my life who were all that little bit quirky. (I have a theory that unless you're one of the ladz (yes, with a 'z') or you're a girl who loves shopping and WKD, you need to be a little bit quirky to survive my college. I'm more than a little bit quirky, but that's aside the point.

Now, remember that boredom I mentioned? The boredom back in July? Well, it was because I'd lost contact with a friend. (Boredom was the preferred mood, trust me.) Well, that same friend called me recently (okay, at four in the morning, and then again a couple of days later at twenty to six in the morning) and it's made me pause and think about life (hence this post.) During the first call, he had been watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you're seen the film, you know the iconic line:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Consider me looking around. I can't complain about life. Sure, there's always going to be something that could go wrong, but I've gotten to a point where I can deal with that sort of stuff, where it doesn't have to put everything on hold. (The teaching puts everything on hold, but that's expected when it's worth half my degree...) I'm happy, I've released a book, my play is going on stage, I have a writing job and my own website, and I have a whole load of fantastic friends to give me a reason to do it all, so I can finally show them and myself that I can do this.

Ferris Bueller, you're my hero.

Any Plan But a Lesson Plan

The one thing they don't warn us about in college is that lesson plans, being detrimental to banter, craic and "LOLs", can sometimes lead to this horrible form of procrastination in which the sufferer begins to plan everything. Except, of course, for the lessons. The psychosis is known to lead to planning away your youth until you're a withered old man or woman. More commonly, of course, the sufferer is left in a panic.

This, of course, leads to a number of stress related illnesses. Stress is known to lead to insomnia, lack of focus and a number of bowel movements that don't do well to describe. Add this to a classroom situation, and a student teacher may find him- or herself with a nasty case of God-knows-what, and failing to live up to their potential.

And why? Because, as a basic requirement, lesson plans cannot be done too far in advance of the class. However, given the nature of a teaching placement, designed to educate a student teacher in the ways of teaching, but not quite putting them into a full classroom experience in that we never truly know the pupils by the end of the period, it is impossible for the very basics of lesson plans to help.

How can a student teacher be expected to write up a number of lesson plans, never too far in advance, and still hope to maintain a shred of the necessary sanity to qualify teaching in a classroom? While it is capable to keep up with the workload, the real problem is starting.

Is there is a solution to this? Most likely. It would certainly help if one didn't ask so many questions. A proposed solution, of course, is to allow for a period of time, supervised and monitored, in which student teachers must draw up the first three lesson plans for each of their classes. In a supervised environment, with the lesson plans inspected and given construction criticism well in advance of the lessons, the student teacher - a strange specimen, half-way between qualified and stupefied - would be able to relieve some of the pressure.

For this to work, the environment in which the student teacher is being prepared ought to be made less stressful. While it is, of course, acceptable to assume that a degree of education must still take place, the way in which the student teacher is taught and assessed can be changed to allow for a different type of workload.

Back to my original point: planning. Lesson plans, being nigh-impossible to get to work on initially, lead to excessive planning. Holidays are booked, drink plans - a high risk social event so close to the teaching placement - are made and, in an extreme case, narrative plans are drawn out extending some years into the future. With so many plans being made - youth being wished away, while placement in a school situation wastes it away - it is not surprising that, given the insomnia and associated symptoms of stress, the student teacher suffers.

Consequently, the student teacher is not graded as they would be if they were to be inspected with pre-prepared lesson plans and a less stressful lead-up to the teaching experience. No longer in even a relative state of ease, the results of teaching placement, unless in monitoring an especially helpful class group and stress-free lesson, are subsequently inaccurate. The best they can hope to achieve is to monitor the implications of stress on a student teacher and the way in which he or she deals with this stress and still manages to cope.

There is, of course, a nugget of helpful advice within these words: de-stress, stay calm, and pretend there's nothing wrong with you. You might even believe it.