Meanwhile, In The Real World…

In the midst of all my stupid ideas and rambling, I’d forgotten to mention I’d found a school to do my three days’ French class observation. Well, happily I did, and today I had my first day at the Manor School in York!

‘Observation’ is a bit of a misleading term though, as from the moment the classes started I was giving presentations about myself in French, answering questions, helping with activitites etc,  so it was a lot of fun. Being on the other side of the education fence is fascinating, though being referred to as ‘sir’ is strange. Very strange.

Tomorrow I also get a free reign with all the  Modern Languages department’s resources and intranet, and while you probably aren’t jumping out of your seat in excitement at the sound of that, for a languages person it’s pretty cool 😉

On the writing front, the other day I sat down and wrote a thousand words of a novel that comes three books further down the line from the series that Nocturn will be a part of. It felt like a glimpse of ‘what is yet to come’, and it was a stirring kind of feeling knowing that there’s still so much to be unwravelled!

Also went to see the film Brüno earlier this evening. There are definitely certain… images… I wish I could scrub from my mind, but it kept the laughs coming. His line to an Al-Qaeda chief that Bin Laden should shave his beard because ‘he looks like a dirty wizard’ was cracking. Borat was a better character, and I wouldn’t ever watch this a second time, but it was worth one viewing.

Shaving Foam

is something I may need, seeing as I now dance a merry jig upon the razor’s edge. On one side of the blade lies PGCE and teacher training, and remaining in Leicester. On the other, a return to York, and getting a job while doing assistant teaching volunteer work in to improve my chances for next year. All that remains is for Fate to give me a push.

Bloggish melodramatics aside, yesterday wasn’t actually as intense as I was expecting. Most of the other candidates seemed to be fairly taciturn, which surprised me as the last interview day I went to was for a sales company, and all the other candidates there were stone sharks, who would happily compare how many family members they’d sold for a raise in commissions bonuses.

I was also quite surprised to find myself almost the youngest there, with only one exception, another bloke called Alex. He was how pretty much how I expected myself to be; twitchy, shambolic and mumbling. Five minutes in and his name-sticker was tattered and falling off, and within ten he had lost it, and there were no stickers left. Apparently he’d also only gotten three hours sleep the night before – it really wasn’t the poor guy’s day!

As for my assessments, yeah the spoken part of the interview might not have been the best part of the day, but aside from that I think it went great overall. The first part was a group exercise in which we had to sort through thirty or so cards and put, in order, the top five most important aspects of being a teacher. Most of the rest of my group were rubbish, and it was I who got them sorted out, so I’m hoping that stood me in good stead.

The actual interview part lasted half an hour, and seemed to fly by, and all in all it was actually a pretty enjoyable day. Let’s see what Fate makes of it, because I’ve done everything I can on my part.

Also,  I did actually get round to shaving my beard off,  so am currently in mourning over losing it. I miss having something to stroke pensively.

(Get your mind out of the gutter, Jaym! What would your family think…)

Set Blog Headlines to Predictable!

While the old idioms and adages remain, Star Trek was seriously cool. And very lens-flarey, which is fine; it reminded me of Mass Effect’s visual style – no bad thing. I won’t review it, but suffice it to say that it was one of the most fun sci-fi films I’ve seen in a while.

Had some great news today; I’ve been waiting to hear back from Leicester University about my application to do a French PGCE teaching course, and this afternoon I got a letter telling me I’ve made it to the interview stage… Now these things usually come back to bite me on the arse, so I’m not getting my hopes up, but it’s a good start. The interview day’s on the 11th of June, so got a bit of time to get myself back into French mode – it’s been a year since I’ve *really* focussed on the language, so better start greasing the old cogs with garlic butter and wine…

Got a load of documents that they sent me to read about why nobody’s bothered with taking Modern Languages any more that’re filled with charts and graphs ranging from the useful and interesting, to…

To be fair, my decision to study languages was greatly influenced by free lasagne and chips.

So does the future begin here? We’ll see.