I feel tempted to write the confessions of a failed art teacher here for that unfortunately is more or less what I’ve become. There are a myriad of complex reasons for my quitting this course and I’ve become sick of reiterating them over the course of multiple friend and family reunions over the Christmas period. The more I here my own explanations the more absurd sounding they become to my ears – they are over rehearsed and remind me of how painfully deluded I’ve been about things at times. All I will say is that it’s a very demanding course and one I entered into somewhat naively. I feel that without total commitment I was always doomed to fail so I dropped out instead of wasting any more time on the enterprise. What can I say? I always felt like the odd one out on that course for a number of reasons not least of which was the fact that everyone else seemed much more settled than me. I feel I still have wild oats to sow and other clichés of that nature. The trouble with the PGCE is that it completely takes over your life for a year. Then you have your NQT year that by all accounts is hellish, and then it’s a couple more years until you feel you’re any good at it. Basically you’ve really got to want to do it to succeed. I knew I needed to adopt an attitude of “well this is what I do now”, but unfortunately this always eluded me. The thought of a teacher centred social life was not a prospect I relished (sorry to any teachers reading – that’s not meant to be a dis). Anyway I could go on and on this but the debacle is over now. I’ll never get those four months back but what the hell, I got a pretty sweet new laptop with all the money the government gave me.
So what to do now? I need to be gainfully employed in some capacity. I know I’ll do TEFL course and live somewhere hot! That’s what people do when they want to defer getting a proper career isn’t it? So I’m applying to do a course in Barcelona in March. Eh up, things are looking up: the days are getting longer, I’m going be out of here soon, and Celebrity Big Brother has started. It’s not looking like being as unmissable as last year but, well, I have quite a lot of free time on my hands now so I’ll be watching. The Johnny Tourette vs. ‘H’ showdown is a potential mouth waterer, and Ken Russell is clearly unhinged, perhaps about to have heart attack at any moment.
Right, where’s the gin?