Sunday, July 30, 2006
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The madness begins....
Well. One week down, three (or five) to go.
I have survived, I have done parts of it well, I have enjoyed parts of it, and other parts have been hell. My class are lovely - very quiet, well-behaved and hard-working, though I took until yesterday to get them to loosen up and have fun - by planning a lesson on football (yes, yes, I know) that involved lots of competitive games, and then taking them outside to have a lesson on the grass. Heehee. In the afternoons, though, I was talked into taking a class on international affairs for 16-19 year olds, most of whom didn't care about anything I tried to talk about and spent the entire time sniggering and talking. I offloaded the particularly unpleasant Spanish boy (subsequently put on his final warning for pinning a kid half his height to the ground and pouring pepper in his eye) onto Matt, my colleague, who also found him obstreperous and disruptive, so I don't feel too bad about not being able to control him, but his six remaining friends still managed to ruin the class for the Germans and Russians who were very motivated and serious. Oddly, a workshop on international affairs with students from many different countries has mainly reinforced a lot of national stereotypes.
I have been asked to provide lessons on music next week, and my class's suggestions included: 50 cent, Eminem, Dido, Britney Spears, James Blunt, Green Day. Any ideas as to how this could be incorporated into a coherent lesson plan that will appeal to more than two individual students greatly appreciated. Also, Jaime has requested 'no more paper with things to do', which does limit things somewhat.
Still, there always seem to be plenty of other teachers around for a consolatory pint (or half) afterwards. I seem to have overcome my silly mental block about not being able to drink beer in England and the prospect of having some money means I've got less stingy. Yesterday was lovely and sunny, so we went to the Trout, had random conversations (why Matt is like a duck, why Christ doesn't wear underwear), listened to Chris playing the mandolin and drank Pimm's in the sunshine. Then there was a formal dinner, nominally to encourage us to bond with the Canadian teachers, regular school teachers and New York Film Academy people also on site, but I ended up sitting at a table getting rather drunk and talking rubbish. For a long time. Oops.
And even though it's my day off, I'm still planning lessons, cos I have to help supervise a trip tomorrow and won't have any time to do it before Friday.
Sorry. I have just rambled about my job for longer than you probably want to read about it. I just haven't done anything else and won't for the foreseeable future. I'll try and confine it to comic anecdotes rather than extensive complaining, but can't make any promises....
I have survived, I have done parts of it well, I have enjoyed parts of it, and other parts have been hell. My class are lovely - very quiet, well-behaved and hard-working, though I took until yesterday to get them to loosen up and have fun - by planning a lesson on football (yes, yes, I know) that involved lots of competitive games, and then taking them outside to have a lesson on the grass. Heehee. In the afternoons, though, I was talked into taking a class on international affairs for 16-19 year olds, most of whom didn't care about anything I tried to talk about and spent the entire time sniggering and talking. I offloaded the particularly unpleasant Spanish boy (subsequently put on his final warning for pinning a kid half his height to the ground and pouring pepper in his eye) onto Matt, my colleague, who also found him obstreperous and disruptive, so I don't feel too bad about not being able to control him, but his six remaining friends still managed to ruin the class for the Germans and Russians who were very motivated and serious. Oddly, a workshop on international affairs with students from many different countries has mainly reinforced a lot of national stereotypes.
I have been asked to provide lessons on music next week, and my class's suggestions included: 50 cent, Eminem, Dido, Britney Spears, James Blunt, Green Day. Any ideas as to how this could be incorporated into a coherent lesson plan that will appeal to more than two individual students greatly appreciated. Also, Jaime has requested 'no more paper with things to do', which does limit things somewhat.
Still, there always seem to be plenty of other teachers around for a consolatory pint (or half) afterwards. I seem to have overcome my silly mental block about not being able to drink beer in England and the prospect of having some money means I've got less stingy. Yesterday was lovely and sunny, so we went to the Trout, had random conversations (why Matt is like a duck, why Christ doesn't wear underwear), listened to Chris playing the mandolin and drank Pimm's in the sunshine. Then there was a formal dinner, nominally to encourage us to bond with the Canadian teachers, regular school teachers and New York Film Academy people also on site, but I ended up sitting at a table getting rather drunk and talking rubbish. For a long time. Oops.
And even though it's my day off, I'm still planning lessons, cos I have to help supervise a trip tomorrow and won't have any time to do it before Friday.
Sorry. I have just rambled about my job for longer than you probably want to read about it. I just haven't done anything else and won't for the foreseeable future. I'll try and confine it to comic anecdotes rather than extensive complaining, but can't make any promises....
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
I am sitting in the computer room in college with a new bike lock and a package from my mother, neither of which I can get into. The woman has used epic quantities of sellotape, even for her. So now all I have to do is persuade the porter (who took a while to be convinced that I was even a member of the college) to lend me some lock-cutters, walk all the way down to Cardo with them enduring, doubtless, suspicious looks, break into my own bike and then take it all the way back to Botley Road, on the way buying fruit and veg, a birthday present for my mother (more sellotape?) and going to explain to the Oxfam bookshop that my job is going to allow me next to no free time, ever. The last isn't really on the way. Sigh.
Last week was fun. I didn't do a whole lot, but it was probably good for me to get out of Oxford. We went to one of Nik's friends from home's birthday party, where I got rather drunk, but don't think I disgraced myself. We also went to his mum's graduation, and then I spent the weekend lazing around by the pool while Nik went off to another party/slept.
On Monday I came back to Oxford and after a brief period of uncertainty where it transpired that nobody was really expecting my arrival, I managed to get in, have dinner and make some progress on Debbie's jigsaw. Yesterday I had my induction day at work, which was... an induction day. I was absolutely terrified to begin with. Everybody seemed to know each other, have taught there before and have been teaching for ages and I felt hideously lost and newly-qualified. Then, I was told I'd have to design all course programmes and lessons myself, provide enough detail in my plans so that someone else can teach my lesson if I'm ill, include lessons to be taught by the changeover teacher in my schedule and generally, like... be good at this. I also have to run activities and it looks like it's going to take up horrid amounts of time. Bah. And I have no idea what level I'll be teaching till tomorrow night (though I know all my students will be aged 12 - 14) so I can't use today to do any planning. Grrr. Still, we were all given pizza and wine and I got talking to some of the other teachers properly, and actually, they don't all know each other, and some of the others haven't been teaching for very long either, and they were lovely and took me to the pub and showed me a short-cut into Oxford along the towpath. Still glad I'm not living on site though - it'll be nice to escape at the end of the day.
Also, when did 'sunny' come to mean 'unpleasant'? I'm sure when I was little, when the weather was nice it was, well, nice. Now, whenever it gets hot, it doesn't stop until it gets far too hot, and you don't actually want to go outside and do anything. Damn global warming.
Hmm, anyway, I have a bike to sort out and errands to run, so I'd best stop procrastinating and go and brave the lodge.
"... all the signs are that the European Union is developing a policy of particular complexity and interest..." (from a book on language policy)
Last week was fun. I didn't do a whole lot, but it was probably good for me to get out of Oxford. We went to one of Nik's friends from home's birthday party, where I got rather drunk, but don't think I disgraced myself. We also went to his mum's graduation, and then I spent the weekend lazing around by the pool while Nik went off to another party/slept.
On Monday I came back to Oxford and after a brief period of uncertainty where it transpired that nobody was really expecting my arrival, I managed to get in, have dinner and make some progress on Debbie's jigsaw. Yesterday I had my induction day at work, which was... an induction day. I was absolutely terrified to begin with. Everybody seemed to know each other, have taught there before and have been teaching for ages and I felt hideously lost and newly-qualified. Then, I was told I'd have to design all course programmes and lessons myself, provide enough detail in my plans so that someone else can teach my lesson if I'm ill, include lessons to be taught by the changeover teacher in my schedule and generally, like... be good at this. I also have to run activities and it looks like it's going to take up horrid amounts of time. Bah. And I have no idea what level I'll be teaching till tomorrow night (though I know all my students will be aged 12 - 14) so I can't use today to do any planning. Grrr. Still, we were all given pizza and wine and I got talking to some of the other teachers properly, and actually, they don't all know each other, and some of the others haven't been teaching for very long either, and they were lovely and took me to the pub and showed me a short-cut into Oxford along the towpath. Still glad I'm not living on site though - it'll be nice to escape at the end of the day.
Also, when did 'sunny' come to mean 'unpleasant'? I'm sure when I was little, when the weather was nice it was, well, nice. Now, whenever it gets hot, it doesn't stop until it gets far too hot, and you don't actually want to go outside and do anything. Damn global warming.
Hmm, anyway, I have a bike to sort out and errands to run, so I'd best stop procrastinating and go and brave the lodge.
"... all the signs are that the European Union is developing a policy of particular complexity and interest..." (from a book on language policy)
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Found it!
The Words Continue Their Journey
Margaret Atwood
Do poets really suffer more
than other people? Isn't it only
that they get their pictures taken
and are seen to do it?
The loony bins are full of those
who never wrote a poem.
Most suicides are not
poets: a good statistic.
Some days though I want, still,
to be like other people;
but then I go and talk with them,
these people who are supposed to be
other, and they are much like us,
except that they lack the sort of thing
we think of as a voice.
We tell ourselves they are fainter
than we are, less defined,
that they are what we are defining,
that we are doing them a favor,
which makes us feel better.
They are less elegant about pain than we are.
But look, I said us. Though I may hate your guts
individually, and want never to see you,
though I prefer to spend my time
with dentists because I learn more,
I spoke of us as we, I gathered us
like the members of some doomed caravan
which is how I see us, traveling together,
the women veiled and singly, with that inturned
sight and the eyes averted,
the men in groups, with their moustaches
and passwords and bravado
in the place we're stuck in, the place we've chosen,
a pilgrimage that took a wrong turn
somewhere far back and ended
here, in the full glare
of the sun, and the hard red-black shadows
cast by each stone, each dead tree lurid
in its particulars, its doubled gravity, but floating
too in the aureole of stone, of tree,
and we're no more doomed really than anyone, as we go
together, through this moon terrain
where everything is dry and perishing and so
vivid, into the dunes, vanishing out of sight,
vanishing out of the sight of each other,
vanishing even out of our own sight,
looking for water.
Margaret Atwood
Do poets really suffer more
than other people? Isn't it only
that they get their pictures taken
and are seen to do it?
The loony bins are full of those
who never wrote a poem.
Most suicides are not
poets: a good statistic.
Some days though I want, still,
to be like other people;
but then I go and talk with them,
these people who are supposed to be
other, and they are much like us,
except that they lack the sort of thing
we think of as a voice.
We tell ourselves they are fainter
than we are, less defined,
that they are what we are defining,
that we are doing them a favor,
which makes us feel better.
They are less elegant about pain than we are.
But look, I said us. Though I may hate your guts
individually, and want never to see you,
though I prefer to spend my time
with dentists because I learn more,
I spoke of us as we, I gathered us
like the members of some doomed caravan
which is how I see us, traveling together,
the women veiled and singly, with that inturned
sight and the eyes averted,
the men in groups, with their moustaches
and passwords and bravado
in the place we're stuck in, the place we've chosen,
a pilgrimage that took a wrong turn
somewhere far back and ended
here, in the full glare
of the sun, and the hard red-black shadows
cast by each stone, each dead tree lurid
in its particulars, its doubled gravity, but floating
too in the aureole of stone, of tree,
and we're no more doomed really than anyone, as we go
together, through this moon terrain
where everything is dry and perishing and so
vivid, into the dunes, vanishing out of sight,
vanishing out of the sight of each other,
vanishing even out of our own sight,
looking for water.
Monday, June 26, 2006
To continue last week's theme of using this as a vehicle for self-indulgent rambling...
Hmm. I'm plucking my eyebrows while Nik is pollyfilling cracks in a bathroom wall. Is this some form of hideous stereotype I promised myself never to become? If so, when did this happen?
Regardless, it's very peaceful. I've never been so relieved to get out of Oxford before, which feels very weird. It's only through getting out and coming back that you realise how much of a bubble the place is. That used to be part of its charm, but I spent most of the last few weeks railing frenetically against it in a desperate bid to seem happy and fun by drinking more Pimm's than anyone else. No, it didn't work; yes, I felt hugely silly; yes, the second I got outside the ring road I felt much freer than I had previously. Ah well. When I get back next year I'll have my own space, my own keys and my own life and (I hope) won't feel a huge sense of purposelessness in an atmosphere where you thrive on being manic and forever bouncing from tute to worthy activity to social to squeaky college single bed.
9th week was quite a lot of fun. I proved (three times) that it was possible to go out and enjoy myself without drinking, once in Kasbar, once for the football (people I texted for an alternative, I am disappointed in you) and once for the end of Tim's exams, and also proved (once) that curling up in bed with a bottle of red wine, some jam doughnuts and lots of episodes of Scrubs is something that must be done once in a while to restore sanity. I cooked a moderately exciting meal and swore at facebook a lot. On Friday in the Raddy, there was a large group of loud people sitting near us and one girl was insistent that it was possible to use three had's in a row in a sentence, though could not justify this with an example. However,
This is my last week of respite before actually beginning to earn some money in July. I feel dimly that I ought to go home-home, but I've been banned until my brother finishes A-Levels and it doesn't seem worth spending a grand total of 16 hours on trains and buses for the two days I might get at home. Particularly when I can't afford a ticket. Particularly seeing as here there is wireless internet and a pool, even if I was cruelly prevented from swimming on the day it was actually warm. Damn biology.
I was feeling old, but last night we watched the first ever episode of Spitting Image. And didn't really get most of it. So now I feel less ancient. Hurrah. And today I bought a lovely birthday card for my mum and found the shampoo I used to love and haven't seen for over a year and now I have a short-haired, new-shoed boyfriend.
Regardless, it's very peaceful. I've never been so relieved to get out of Oxford before, which feels very weird. It's only through getting out and coming back that you realise how much of a bubble the place is. That used to be part of its charm, but I spent most of the last few weeks railing frenetically against it in a desperate bid to seem happy and fun by drinking more Pimm's than anyone else. No, it didn't work; yes, I felt hugely silly; yes, the second I got outside the ring road I felt much freer than I had previously. Ah well. When I get back next year I'll have my own space, my own keys and my own life and (I hope) won't feel a huge sense of purposelessness in an atmosphere where you thrive on being manic and forever bouncing from tute to worthy activity to social to squeaky college single bed.
9th week was quite a lot of fun. I proved (three times) that it was possible to go out and enjoy myself without drinking, once in Kasbar, once for the football (people I texted for an alternative, I am disappointed in you) and once for the end of Tim's exams, and also proved (once) that curling up in bed with a bottle of red wine, some jam doughnuts and lots of episodes of Scrubs is something that must be done once in a while to restore sanity. I cooked a moderately exciting meal and swore at facebook a lot. On Friday in the Raddy, there was a large group of loud people sitting near us and one girl was insistent that it was possible to use three had's in a row in a sentence, though could not justify this with an example. However,
"The good times she had had had been behind her for ages."
This is my last week of respite before actually beginning to earn some money in July. I feel dimly that I ought to go home-home, but I've been banned until my brother finishes A-Levels and it doesn't seem worth spending a grand total of 16 hours on trains and buses for the two days I might get at home. Particularly when I can't afford a ticket. Particularly seeing as here there is wireless internet and a pool, even if I was cruelly prevented from swimming on the day it was actually warm. Damn biology.
I was feeling old, but last night we watched the first ever episode of Spitting Image. And didn't really get most of it. So now I feel less ancient. Hurrah. And today I bought a lovely birthday card for my mum and found the shampoo I used to love and haven't seen for over a year and now I have a short-haired, new-shoed boyfriend.
Monday, June 19, 2006
"Excuse me, can I interest you in buying this dead horse?"
I had such good intentions. I came to update this virtually the second I'd come into the room, and it refused to work. Grrrrr. I pressed 'Refresh' a lot and then got sidetracked listening to I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and checking my email (oddly enough I didn't have any new ones since checking half an hour previously), and trying to destroy a paying-in receipt with nail clippers.
It has been quite a long time since I actually provided any illuminating information about my life, as opposed to pointless yet amusing quotes or photo-spam. This may be because the last posts went roughly along the lines of: "Ooh! Oxford is sunny! All my friends have finished finals and nobody has anything to do except sit on lawns and drink Pimm's or (once the bank statements come through) Blossom Hill." There have been several inclement breaks in the sunniness, but not frequent enough to prevent my back turning bright pink. Other than that, my life has really changed very little, except that Nik is no longer doing finals and is now able to watch epic quantities of 24 with me.
I could talk about various difficulties (re-)fitting into already established social groups (that I may once have been part of); or feeling like an appendage to the boy (a dull one, that gets sleepy at parties and nags him about finding a job) instead of an actual person; or not having a particular purpose now the mad Italians have gone home and finding a life of unmitigated hedonism rather unfulfilling having not just finished some very stressful exams; or general distress about The Rest Of My Life.
This last is, actually, rather unfair. I have a plan, involving postgrad funded by EFL tutoring and translation/proof-reading and then becoming a critically acclaimed novelist, and if this falls through (i.e. the idea of stringing together enough words to constitute a respectable thesis or novel overpowers me) then a helpful website has thrown up several more career options which had me raving about becoming a lexicographer (can't you so see that happening?), and it doesn't bother me at all that of the handful of jobs I liked the sound of, in 90% of them financial reward plays "no part". It is hugely self-indulgent to worry about all this now when a large proportion of my readership consists of jobless ex-finalists for whom this angst is a good deal closer than a year away (*hugs* to all in this predicament), but the astonishing number of transitions, goodbyes and departures I've endured this year has given me a peculiar twitchiness and an irritating tendency towards self-analysis.
It's just that sometimes I feel like the quote in the introduction to all the Folio editions of Beauvoir, that quote that I can't remember or translate about feeling torn between living life and writing about it; like how I updated this almost every day in Lyon, because I was bored and miserable, but as soon as Sainsbury's has Pimm's, Cava and strawberries on special offer, I can go days without stringing words together; and this choice between dullness/misery and productivity versus (most of the time) contentment, good company and not feeling the need to lock myself away with a computer may replicate itself later in life with something (I hope) of more worth than this. I feel passionate about so many things, but at some point I have to stop them, and describe them, or else I go mad.
My problem is not that I don't know what to do: I've known that since I was 5. My problem is that what I want to do scares me.
I'm scared that I'm not as good at it as I think I am. I'm scared that I won't have the discipline to find out. I'm scared the fear of rejection will turn me into the sort of person who hoards things in drawers and that all my descendents will find fourteen unfinished novels and say I could have been quite good, it's a pity I wasn't. I'm scared the ancestral curse will get me, and I'll give up being creative and notable in order to breed prolifically, like all the women I'm related to did while my Grandpa gets a CBE. (Sorry. Just had to drop that in.) Indeed, in a Shakespeare's sister sort of way, we could extend this beyond my immediate family, but that's a whole different ball game. I'm scared it may be incompatible with a normal life, whatever that may be, and whether I even want it.
There's a Margaret Atwood poem which sums up how I feel pretty accurately, but not even Google can find it. It begins "Do poets really suffer more than other people?" if you want to look it up. (And I recommend you do.)
And now I'm going to curl up in bed, with my diary, and Le Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs.
oh but now, old friends, they're acting strange
and they shake their heads
and they tell me that I've changed
well, something's lost and something's gained
in living every day.
It has been quite a long time since I actually provided any illuminating information about my life, as opposed to pointless yet amusing quotes or photo-spam. This may be because the last posts went roughly along the lines of: "Ooh! Oxford is sunny! All my friends have finished finals and nobody has anything to do except sit on lawns and drink Pimm's or (once the bank statements come through) Blossom Hill." There have been several inclement breaks in the sunniness, but not frequent enough to prevent my back turning bright pink. Other than that, my life has really changed very little, except that Nik is no longer doing finals and is now able to watch epic quantities of 24 with me.
I could talk about various difficulties (re-)fitting into already established social groups (that I may once have been part of); or feeling like an appendage to the boy (a dull one, that gets sleepy at parties and nags him about finding a job) instead of an actual person; or not having a particular purpose now the mad Italians have gone home and finding a life of unmitigated hedonism rather unfulfilling having not just finished some very stressful exams; or general distress about The Rest Of My Life.
This last is, actually, rather unfair. I have a plan, involving postgrad funded by EFL tutoring and translation/proof-reading and then becoming a critically acclaimed novelist, and if this falls through (i.e. the idea of stringing together enough words to constitute a respectable thesis or novel overpowers me) then a helpful website has thrown up several more career options which had me raving about becoming a lexicographer (can't you so see that happening?), and it doesn't bother me at all that of the handful of jobs I liked the sound of, in 90% of them financial reward plays "no part". It is hugely self-indulgent to worry about all this now when a large proportion of my readership consists of jobless ex-finalists for whom this angst is a good deal closer than a year away (*hugs* to all in this predicament), but the astonishing number of transitions, goodbyes and departures I've endured this year has given me a peculiar twitchiness and an irritating tendency towards self-analysis.
It's just that sometimes I feel like the quote in the introduction to all the Folio editions of Beauvoir, that quote that I can't remember or translate about feeling torn between living life and writing about it; like how I updated this almost every day in Lyon, because I was bored and miserable, but as soon as Sainsbury's has Pimm's, Cava and strawberries on special offer, I can go days without stringing words together; and this choice between dullness/misery and productivity versus (most of the time) contentment, good company and not feeling the need to lock myself away with a computer may replicate itself later in life with something (I hope) of more worth than this. I feel passionate about so many things, but at some point I have to stop them, and describe them, or else I go mad.
My problem is not that I don't know what to do: I've known that since I was 5. My problem is that what I want to do scares me.
I'm scared that I'm not as good at it as I think I am. I'm scared that I won't have the discipline to find out. I'm scared the fear of rejection will turn me into the sort of person who hoards things in drawers and that all my descendents will find fourteen unfinished novels and say I could have been quite good, it's a pity I wasn't. I'm scared the ancestral curse will get me, and I'll give up being creative and notable in order to breed prolifically, like all the women I'm related to did while my Grandpa gets a CBE. (Sorry. Just had to drop that in.) Indeed, in a Shakespeare's sister sort of way, we could extend this beyond my immediate family, but that's a whole different ball game. I'm scared it may be incompatible with a normal life, whatever that may be, and whether I even want it.
There's a Margaret Atwood poem which sums up how I feel pretty accurately, but not even Google can find it. It begins "Do poets really suffer more than other people?" if you want to look it up. (And I recommend you do.)
And now I'm going to curl up in bed, with my diary, and Le Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs.
oh but now, old friends, they're acting strange
and they shake their heads
and they tell me that I've changed
well, something's lost and something's gained
in living every day.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
"Francis Bacon wishes to meet the Earl of Sandwich"
For the second day in a row, I have been abandoned by the boy, and have immediately turned on Radio 4 and started to eat salad (my poor vegetable-starved body...) and today I found myself laughing so hysterically at I'm sorry I haven't a clue that I thought I'd post some gems from the opening round. (The brief was to come up with responses to traditional chat-up lines.)
And now I really, really have to get on with the washing-up...
Where have you been all my life?
Well, for most of it, I wasn't even born.
Haven't I seen you somewhere before?
Yes. I'm the receptionist at the VD clinic.
The name's Bond. James Bond.
The name's Lost. Gert Lost.
Come on. Don't be shy. Ask me out.
All right. Get out.
Those clothes would look great in a crumpled heap on my bedroom floor.
So would you.
Your legs must be tired - you've been running through my mind all night.
Yes, it was lovely... all those wide open spaces.
Is that a ladder in your stockings or is it the stairway to heaven?
Yes, it is the stairway to heaven, but I've already got an arse up there.
And now I really, really have to get on with the washing-up...
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