Living to work and Working to Live.....the Great Divide

If you're looking for the reasons I'm contemplating giving up teaching before I've even competed my NQT year, you need to read this post here. I couldn't put it better myself.

Ultimately, the work/life balance should be working to LIVE and not living to WORK.

Life is short, it may feel long and full of shit when times are challenging, but it is short and more importantly precious.

Letting Go

I promised myself that I was going to change from 'half a glass' girl to 'half full' girl. I say that because the glass is neither half empty nor half full, it's half a glass, which means it has equal potential to be either of those things.

Yet...I find myself in need of a friend to drink coffee and share the last few weeks with. I imagine myself sat at a kitchen table, the sun is streaming through the windows and patio doors and a friendly, sympathetic face pours me coffee.

In a nutshell they have been tough. My final placement was awful, absolutely awful. My mentor was....something else. Every bit of her feedback was negative; it was always about what I was getting wrong, what I wasn't doing and how much I needed to improve on just about everything. Her whole attitude was 'it's ALL you now' which would have been fine if I had felt I had someone to turn to for advice or clarification, yet she was very much absent: from the classroom and her role as a mentor. At one point her feedback was that I needed to work harder at my timekeeping in terms of getting the children ready for the transition to the next lesson. Fine, but it took her 3 weeks to give me the weekly timetable template! I asked her repeatedly for it and even tried to take the one off the door to make my own...she beat me to it and had put it in the bin. Nothing about her was kind, caring or nurturing, especially with the children. To all intent and purposes I don't believe she even likes children. Some how she had managed to crush every spontaneous and creative impulse in them. They weren't children so much as jaded drones, caught up in the factory production of attainment and progress. She tried to fail me.

I could spend hours pouring out all the things she said and did to undo my fragile confidence and self esteem...but I just don't have the wherewithal to.

On top of that and right in the middle of it I failed my Maths skills test (can't be a teacher without passing it), failed one aspect of a Master level module (a folder due to its contents) and L has an outstanding complaint against his boss. It was akin to being besieged on every side.

Now with time and distance I'm still no closer to understanding it or to closure. I'm not sure I ever will and so I think I should just let it go. Just let. It. Go.

Overwhelming Blanks

In the past I've looked to my past for answers, recently though I've begun to feel like my past is too much of a burden.

The knowledge and memories it throws up at me are too much to experience all over again.

This weekend we visited my mum and as I am apt to, I got out the old photo boxes to trawl through what few photos we have of us girls as children.

Usually I smile a lot when I do this, I laugh at our clothes, our expressions, our chubby thighs and the things we found fun.

I didn't this time though. 

All the memories and emotions they stirred were overwhelming, they were too much to take and hold and accept.

I took a few photos of the old photos but at some point the task felt too heavy, too immense and I didn't understand why I was doing it or what I was looking for.

Today I cleared out and organised two cupboards - I presume in search of something - and have still come up blank.