Ode to Nostalgia

You are salty tears;

Nail polish in my mouth.

A scab

I unpick again

and again.

Blood that tastes of metal.

Bitter aftertaste.

December blues and other worried colours

So it's December. 

There's one more week until the end of term. 

My previous update on my PGCE was almost a month ago, when I first began teaching. I began with starters and small activities. I have since taught whole hour lessons. 

It's been hard and, well, just insert any synonym for difficult here.

I have noticed a few things:

I am constantly pretending. 

Constantly pretending. 

And I don't mean that in the sense that I feel like I have lost myself or that I am pretending to be someone else. It's more nuanced than that. I'm realising more and more that I have to feign confidence in order to have confidence. A teacher told me this week that I seem to be sharper and more direct in tone but I don't feel different. I still feel nervous. I still feel anxious. I am always worried. And I still feel inadequate. I suppose the hard part is that even when it may seem like I have had a good lesson, it never feels like it. So I find it hard to tell if I've made progress. This is a wider issue I have. You would expect compliments and positive feedback to gear me up a notch, encourage me. Instead, I feel like I am still trying to convince myself.

How does one do that? How do I convince myself?

Another issue I have is the planning and the understanding of teaching as a profession. As much as I love uni, in the real world, as a teacher, I need to prepare kids for GCSEs. That is an enormous responsibility. I'm terrified that I won't be able to give pupils what they deserve. There is so much to consider in the planning of a lesson that I worry that I am merely going through the motions and that once I am on my own, I won't be able to do it. I am absolutely terrified about being a member of staff and having to interact with so many teacher on a day to day basis. I am good at pretending that I am confident but I hate feeling anxious all the time, especially in staff rooms. I still feel out of place sometimes.

It's like I am a muggle, entering Hogwarts for the first time. I am excited and I know that I could fit in. I know that I do fit in. I have been invited. I got the letter. I went to buy my books. I have a pet owl. I have the robes.

But I don't have the language. 

There are places in the castle that other people know about.

I always forget the password to the common room.

I feel weird when sitting in the Great Hall. I talk to lots of people but I don't have my Ron, Harry or Hermione. 

I am adrift. 

If I was advising someone else I would say, 

               "Don't worry. You will learn about secret places in the castles. You will find a Hermione.                      She will help you with your exams. You will get better at remembering the passwords."

but life sucks and like most people, I ignore my own advice.

It's silly to worry, I know. But I am constantly second guessing myself. 

We shall see how I feel in January.

x

T

Affect: The 'Now'

In Semester 1 of my final year of university- from September 2014 to January 2015- I took a module in 21st American Fiction. As part of the module we studied Don Delilo's novel The Body Artist. Alongside the novel, we studied the theory of affect.

Eric Shouse describes affect as 'prepersonal intensity'. This is what we experience before feelings and emotions. Our lecturer described it as the experience you have when you walk into a room and you just have this inkling that there is tension in the room. Or when you just know that someone has been talking about you. Or when you just have this instinct that you like someone. It is an involuntary intensity. It is not something that you have made sense of. It is instinctive. Feelings and emotions occur when we make sense of affect. Feelings, as opposed to affect, are based on prior experiences. To be sad is to have experienced sadness in the past, and to recognise in the present moment what being sad means. Affect occurs in the space before this. It is not codified or understood. It is outside of time or culture or society. It is abstract. It is non-conscious.

It may seem like a strange topic to write a blogpost about and I doubt I've explained it adequately, but during the summer, I thought about affect a lot.

As a university student, summer is not just a regular holiday. It is an extended holiday. When uni ended in May, even though I had experienced the long months of holiday, it was a strange feeling. I was faced with this stretch of time where there was nothing really after it. Graduating is a surreal experience. It is the culmination of 3 years' work and the beginning of the end. I know that sounds pessimistic but that's what it felt like to me.

I sound ungrateful. Unlike many of my peers, I had decided to do a PGCE. I had a place at a university. I knew what I was doing in September.

You would think that this would give me perspective. That it would focus me. Surely, there would be no reason to panic?

I think it freaked me out.

Up until that point, school, college, university were abstract places. You went to learn. There was a freedom in that. But to follow a career path. That's the adult world. The real world. The scary world.

So summer for me, became a space where I was swinging between a life which offered me dozens of paths without the pressure to choose one and a life which involved a career. I love teaching and I am glad that I chose it. But during the summer, the prospect of starting the course terrified me.

I entered, like Lauren from The Body Artist, into a state of affect. The more worried and anxious I got, the more I entered into this state of pre-personal experience. The post I wrote about the Rothko murals for instance, is an example of how I became so attuned to moments. Staring not only at the murals but into them was like entering into this state of affect, the 'now'. You become submerged in the present. It's liberating but at the same time, it can be lonely. I'd really suggest reading The Body Artist. It really brings highlights how affect works and it explores grief in a wonderfully tentative, sensitive and poignant way.

I see affect as being in a long, blank space. You encounter moments. But they are small.

Minute.

Mostly mundane.

Small moments.

For me, during the summer, I became acutely aware of the most minutest of things. Spiders crawling across my wall in the early hours of the morning. Babies and young kids out in public, talking and giggling. Snippets of conversation from TV shows. Everything seemed to be going at lightning speed, and yet it slowed down. Time seemed to be emptying out and I got closer and closer to affect.

I spent a lot of time in this limbo. This period of affect. Of intensity. It was not easy.

I read Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem again and enjoyed it so much more, now that I was in a moment of involuntary experience.

Anyway, I realise that this all sounds utterly bizarre and strange but it's something that I have been meaning to write about for some time now.

If you have ever felt in limbo, or experienced a time where you were thinking a lot and reflecting constantly, I think it would make sense.

T

x

There is life beyond you.

standing on the platform
i watch the train drift away

you flitter through my mind

a vague memory

i realise-

i have not thought about you for a while.



there is life beyond you
without you
there is life beyond
you
don't need to exist here
anymore

Dipping my toes in-

For the past month or so, I have been hovering around the back of various classes. These are the classes which I will eventually be taking over. So far, however, I have been mainly observing and walking around the classroom. 

This week, I ventured to the front of the class for the first time. 

Classrooms are strange spaces. There are so many dynamics to it. I didn't notice until I began my placement how many different spaces there are in one classroom. There's the back and the front of the class but there's the space amongst the students also. Sitting at the back feels the most safest. Walking around the class, speaking to kids at different tables is slightly more difficult, but it still feels relatively safe. Moving to the front of the class, however, is a whole other kettle of fish. It's a scary place. It's terrifying. This is the space where all eyes are on you. This is the space which theoretically is mine- MY space. 

It doesn't feel that way though. I taught for only 10/15 minutes at the beginning of a lesson but I felt exhausted afterwards. And numb. I felt so numb. As if I wasn't actually there when I was teaching. Like an out of body experience. I couldn't remember anything about my part of the lesson after I was done. I immediately tried to rid myself of the memory. But I know this is stupid. Rationally, I know that it wasn't terrible. But I still lack so much confidence. 

Each day is a challenge for me. I consider often, the possibility of leaving the course. Of giving up. I know I can't give up. I know that I need to keep going. But I can't imagine the end right now. It feels like it won't happen. Like I won't get there. So I tell myself to not think that far ahead. To take it all one step at a time. One day at a time. One lesson at a time.

So, I have dipped my toes into murky waters... We shall see how I fare...

Short Story 5- "Memo: Dr James Spratt is not in favour of homeopathic medicine".

Dr James Spratt leads a solitary existence. He has decided this is the best way to live one’s life and to keep one’s sanity. Dr Spratt’s patients at his GP practice disagree. They would argue his solitary existence has the counter effect he was hoping for and he is actually stark raving mad and an overall miserable old man. It is for this reason that Dr Spratt has had an influx of older women on his patient list over the last few years. Dr Spratt to this day does not understand the reason. He mentioned it to Martha the receptionist once but she shrugged her shoulders and suggested it was a coincidence. Strange, she said, I wonder why that is. And they’re such lovely women too. Dr Spratt grunted and left as confused as he came.

At sixty years old, Dr Spratt is in denial about his impending retirement. He is the only GP at the practice over fifty who is still currently in full time employment. Gradually, the older practitioners at Dr Spratt’s practice have gone through the motions of getting married, having children, getting divorced, watching their children go to university and have now packed up their lives to live in the countryside where no one complains of clinical depression, mental health, obesity and most importantly Wi-Fi is non-existent. Dr Spratt however, is unmarried, childless and living in the city.

The Chatfield Health Care Centre has five full time GPs. Gemma Paisley is Dr Spratt’s worst nightmare. She has been at the practice for ten years now and insists on wearing this old yellow gaudy sweater which smells of moth balls that Dr Spratt despises. He has told her on many occasions that yellow is most definitely not her colour but Gemma always laughs and shoves his shoulder affectionately. Oh, you are hilarious, she guffaws. Harold, the newest recruit at thirty years old, is the youngest of Dr Spratt’s colleagues. Like Spratt, Harold detests Gemma’s sweater, but decides communicating with her would waste valuable time he could spend scowling at her instead. Dr Spratt won’t admit it but he is envious of Harold’s youth and suspects that Harold is secretly waiting for him to ‘cross over’. Chrissie is the peacemaker in the practice who never actually achieves peace. Bobby Patel is the most recent addition, the token ethnic minority. The board instructed Dr Spratt to employ more ‘ethnically diverse’ staff. When Dr Spratt first met Bobby and shook his hand, he was surprised at how un-ethnic he looked.

All four of the Chatfield staff have been enquiring about Dr Spratt’s plans for the future. Harold has been leaving travel brochures on the kitchen counter- ‘Pensioner’s Paradise’ and ‘The Final Voyage’. If it didn’t take him five minutes to raise his hand, Dr Spratt is convinced that he could punch Harold on the nose. Chrissie, the do-gooder that she is, pops into his office regularly to see that he’s okay or if he needs anything. Sometimes he’ll hear the sound of her heels pad across the carpet as she approaches the door of his office and he’ll shout out, I’m alright, Dr Ward. There is always a sigh of relief and the sound of hurried footsteps as she retreats.

Today, Dr Spratt is feeling especially cranky. He has been seeing patients since ten in the morning and his legs feel so numb that he has to look down at them constantly to see if they’re still there. The patient he is seeing now is being particularly tiresome. Mrs Pritchard has high blood pressure and despite explaining to her very clearly that she may be at the risk of hypertension and needs further tests done, Mrs Pritchard doesn’t believe him.

‘But I visited Dr Rudy at the Wellness Centre-’

‘This Rudy fellow, is not a doctor, Mrs Pritchard. As I have told you before, he is a homeopath. There is a difference.’

‘Yes, well, Dr Rudy at the Chatfield Wellness Centre tells me that if I drink hibiscus tea every morning and evening for a fortnight, my blood pressure will right itself. It’s just a blip you see.’

‘Mrs Pritchard, I really must advise you to follow up on these tests. An ECG will allow us to trace your heart and some blood tests will help us to identify how your kidneys are functioning. Homeopathy on the other hand, is not a certified science.’

‘Well, I’ll think about it Dr Spratt-’

‘I must insist Mrs Pritchard. This is your health we are talking about-’

 ‘Yes yes- I was wondering if we could discuss my knees now. I’ve been suffering from-’

‘I’m terribly sorry Mrs Pritchard but I’m afraid you’ll need to book a new appointment to discuss your knees. If you see Martha, she’ll book you in at your earliest convenience.’

‘But I don’t understand-’

‘Yes, it’s extremely unfortunate but it’s regulation I’m afraid. We have too many patients to see and not enough time-’

‘First I’m told I have ten minutes. A mere ten minutes to discuss my problems.’ Mrs Pritchard’s voice becomes shrill and high pitched. ‘Then you tell me I need to book an appointment for each of them! Is it any wonder I visit the bloody homeopath!’

‘Mrs Pritchard-’

‘The NHS is going to the dogs I tell you! Am I supposed to fall down the stairs and break my legs before someone takes me seriously?’ Mrs Pritchard starts to hurl obscenities at Dr Spratt. Dr Spratt sits there and nods at her. Finally, Mrs Pritchard stops.

‘So, what do you have to say for yourself Dr Spratt?’

‘I can only apologise Mrs Pritchard, but you really must leave-’ He sighs. ‘It’s been ten minutes. I have other patients I must see.’ Mrs Pritchard curses loudly and glowers as she grabs her shopping bags and hobbles to the door. She tries to slam it behind her but the bags get caught. Dr Spratt moves to help but she gives him a death-stare and he retreats. The door finally slams and Mrs Pritchard's determined footsteps can be heard moving away, down the corridor. Dr Spratt stands up and walks slowly to the coffee machine. 

He lied. He has a twenty minute break before the next patient. 

He says to himself, "I need it it".

Beginnings and worries and fears and anxieties and..... I don't know if I can do it.

I have tried to write this post so many times.

Here goes- 

I've started my PGCE course. 

I've been at uni for a few weeks and now I'm starting my first placement. I'm absolutely terrified. TERRIFIED. 

I keep going through these highs and lows. At first my brain tells me I'll be fine. That I can do it. But then I picture myself standing in front of a class and I just have this image of water passing through my fingers and the kids not listening to me. Then my brain shuts itself down and I retreat. A bit like how a hedgehog turns back into itself. And then my rational self tells me that I'll have to confront the fear. 

I have these constant thoughts about quitting. I keep saying that I don't need to put myself through this. I tell myself that it'll be ok. But every time I think this, it gets slightly better. 

Of course, the moments are fleeting. Uni has become a haven. A safe place. The tutors are like a warm, comforting blanket on a cold day. I had two days at my new school and went back to uni feeling panicked. Being around the others in my group, however, made me feel less scared and more hopeful. Sitting here now though, the fear is creeping back. 

People always talk about how hard this year is. I'm seeing it already. The hard bit for me is trying to identify if I can do it. Can I do it? 

I'm worried about the teaching element. I'm nervous about having to find a place in a school where I'm the 'new' one. I have to navigate the staff room and other places in the school where I'm not already someone who belongs. In general, I'm having to create spaces for myself and assert myself. This isn't something that I'm used to. In fact, it goes against my entire being. It freaks me out.

The hardest part is deep down I know I can do it. I know that I could be a good teacher. But that's not enough. Knowing it isn't enough. I have to learn how to be a great teacher. I have to figure out how to manage a class so that I can teach. 

In summary:

Level of hope-           1%

Level of fear-          99%