I had my hair cut today. It wasn’t something I planned, so I am a little in shock now. This morning I had what appeared to be black hair: the stubborn locks that remained since dying it in December covering what lied beneath. It was also rather long, gathering at the base of my neck and swept across my eyes. Now, it is desperately pale blond, and rather short. I look rather anaemic now.
Beforehand I had been working on some freelance work. It isn’t all that easy. I had been hoping to get it done fairly quickly but the intricacies in the detail are quite amazing. I am, in fact, surprised by the additional research I’ve had to do to get the results that are required. That’ll teach me!
The final thing that affected me this week was being called a coward. It was meant in a light-hearted way and I don’t think there was too much meaning behind it, but it did get me thinking. It followed me saying how I now crave a simple and quiet life: to settle down and knuckle down. I don’t want to be under undue pressure and I don’t want to be in a job that no-one else gives two hoots about. I think I’m in the right, but does it make me a coward?
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Well the exams have passed. Now it’s a waiting game for the results. It wasn’t a great exam. Everything I had studied on Monday had pretty much vanished from my short term memory… perhaps occupied by recent events. I relied on my long term memory which thankfully wasn’t too shabby as usual, so I should have done enough to get a half-decent mark, though I suspect it won’t be as high as I might have expected. It’s all rather unfortunate.
But I haven’t been allowed to feel sorry myself for too long. I am getting constant reminders of what should be my current preoccupation: finding a job. And I am still being too picky. I’ve decided I won’t work or live in London. I really don’t like the place and I cannot see why so many love it so much.
I am thinking of becoming a personal tutor again: and that is no easy option. I need to seek some advice on that score. In the mean time, I do have a couple jobs that should see me through the summer at least.
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I have returned — I have fixed the problem I was having, which seemed more to do with my host than WordPress itself. A lot has happened since my last post.
I’ve been told that I have been rejected a place on the PGCE course, to my extreme annoyance. It seems the reason for declining my application was because I am not a teacher. The feedback suggested I ought to get experience teaching for a length of time before applying again. However, getting a decent run at teaching a class of secondary school pupils is hard to obtain: you need a teaching qualification. For much of the PGCE course, this is exactly the experience you get. So it feels like I can’t do the course because I haven’t done the course before. It’s a shame.
I guess I am a fool for applying to Newcastle University again. It seems a ridiculous reason to turn away what would have been a committed and enthusiastic student and a talented teacher. I suppose it also serves me right for chasing after a position doing a thankless task. It used to be medicine. Perhaps I ought to chase after self-glory, easy wealth and the supposed lure of the City. There seem plenty faceless, ruthlessly competitive financial jobs there, but they just don’t interest me, and as for London…
I suppose I’m too picky. I want a job with pressure I can handle; I want to be creative and to be able to apply all the skills I have collected from a wide variety of disciplines; I want to be an important member of an organisation so I can feel committed and settled. These are few and far between.
We get the Evening Chronicle every Thursday for jobs: the number of jobs available is getting lower to the tune of around 100 a week. There were less than 500 this week. Most of those were either teaching jobs or those that request a ridiculous amount of experience for the wage they offer. They aren’t even willing to buy experience; they just expect it. Every receptionist job going wants three years experience "in a similar environment". Why bother? I may as well look into self-employment.
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Applying for a place on a PGCE course isn’t as simple as just completing an application form then popping in for an interview, as I found out this week. The application process is controlled by an arm of UCAS, the university admissions service. As such, it costs £5 just to enquire. Furthermore, any correspondence you make to any universities you apply to must pass through their hands first. That is just the first obstacle.
I was invited for an interview on Wednesday (yesterday). However, this “interview” would last from 11am until 4pm. The actual interview lasted half an hour at the end of the day. Beforehand, we were asked to present a small presentation on some rather appalling “stimuli” for starter activities for a lesson; discussed the worst piece of television journalism ever created to support private schools in the developing world; and finally writing an essay on how labelling children as problems based on their welfare is bound to inhibit their self-esteem. Two sides of A4…
That’s not to say I didn’t learn anything: the interview was rather useful. The head of maths in the education department pointed out my errors when attempting to answer his classroom-based questions. And I committed a few errors. I’m not so sure I shall get a place on this course, so I was rather hopeless (in more way than one) until today.
Today was the deadline of my written project. It’s funny, most people were very reluctant to hand it in. They were talking about asking the secretary to pull hard on the file to prise the object from the author’s hands. I’m not so sure why that is. Perhaps it is a fear of the impending scrutinising of the work inside. Perhaps it is the fact that they have spent the best part of a year working on it, and continually changing it and never truly reaching satisfaction. I was quite pleased to hand it in in the end. It isn’t perfect. I would have liked to have added more, particularly proving that the simplicial homology groups of a space make a topological invariant. But it’s not bad either.
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I got up just before 6 am and was out of the house for just after seven. This was to be the start of 800 miles of travel today, for a job interview in Swindon. It never happened.
I mentioned before about the BROD. If I see rabbits on my journey — those cute and cuddly little things — I am doomed for bad luck. I didn’t realise at the time, but seeing a huge gang of them on my train journey just before Durham would spell out the ultimate disaster.
I managed to get as far as just outside Sheffield when the bad news started. Quite frankly it was unbelievable. It is an apparently frequent problem around these parts that some chavs steal a length of signal cable and renders that part of the track dangerous. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have mattered; but now the announcer insists that the train would have to terminate at Sheffield. I was rather hoping it would get me to Bristol Parkway, as per my ticket.
I was still hopeful I might get there in time for my connection; however the coach drivers were particularly rubbish. Derby is around 35 miles away from Sheffield, but somehow it managed to take an hour and a half via Chesterfield. I had to cancel my interview.
And so my journey back began. It seemed they had now fixed this cabling problem, but had not sorted out the train cancellations as I had to stand from Derby to Wakefield-Westgate for the return leg. I managed to get back home for about a quarter to five. And when I got back, I received a letter informing me of another interview for next Tuesday — and really is another story.
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It has been a pretty bad week to be honest. It feels like it has just been a succession of kicks in the teeth. It started last Friday with my exam results.
I got a 52 and a 66 for the two modules I sat exams for in January. I wasn’t too happy about the 66 in Modern Bayesian Inference, but that wasn’t so much of a disaster. The 52 however I was quite annoyed with. No-one felt confident leaving the exam room, and after having asked a couple of people the results they achieved, I thought it might have been worthwhile talking it over with my personal tutor. However, since he was inaccessible for much of the early part of this week, I didn’t. That perhaps was no bad thing, since having spoken to others it seems it was just my performance in the exam that was to blame for the poor mark.
As a note, it isn’t just exam performance that earns you a good mark for a module. It also depends on the performance of the rest of the class. The intended result is that if an exam is "too hard" or "too easy" the marks are adjusted to suit. However, this lends itself in turn to create a competitive environment in the leading weeks to the exam. For the most part, they are your friends and colleagues (and arguably victims), but come the exam period they are the nemesis, for their performance has a bearing on your results.
That was just the first knock to my confidence. I had been waiting for results from GCHQ to arrive this week, and yesterday I received the dreaded email informing me that I had been unsuccessful in achieving an interview. That was a real shame, because that was my dream job. I would be playing about with computers and codes, doing some analysis and using some maths in my job. Furthermore, work stays at work: due to the sensitive and secretive nature of the work, I couldn’t take things home and I couldn’t discuss it. That would have been ideal.
When I told Mum she immediately came and hugged me. It wasn’t really what I wanted to be honest — I didn’t really want a reminder that I should be disappointed. But she could clearly see how important it was for me. It’s left me a bit stumped to be honest. I had really pinned my hopes on it and hadn’t considered any other career direction, so I am at a loss. I also feel I have no real direction now and feel a little disillusioned.
And they say they come in threes. And they do. I also found out today that I have not been accepted onto the Great North Run. That was a substantial knock too. This additional setback means I am not going to achieve any of my goals this year. It’s only February.
I don’t even know what it is now I need. A direction would help; a goal even better. But right now I feel that everything I have been working for was in vain. Bugger.
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It feels like 2008 should be the most exciting year of my life thus far. It hasn’t really disappointed so far — not necessarily for the good in the main it must be said — but I anticipate a lot to happen in the coming months.
I should be graduating this year; perhaps moving out and getting a job. I don’t feel scared as such, but I don’t feel that excited either. Is that a bad thing? Am I underestimating the change in front of me? It really feels like doing my A Levels again… everything is hard, and there is the prospect of having to move away. Indeed, I’m approaching my final months in education with a narrow-minded approach, anticipating one outcome and not even contemplating an alternative. That could be a problem this time round: if I don’t have a backup plan, my 2008 will prove to be a bit of a stutter.
This week could make or break my year.
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So often as I do come across stories of note on the BBC website – such as this one: The Beauty of Maths – it is not often that these stories strike a chord particularly.
But this one does. It highlights the problem of a lack of teachers of Mathematics in secondary schools, and how such a negative view of Mathematics by adults and children alike are damaging the chances of finding raw mathematical talent.
I had once been drawn to teaching, and particularly of Mathematics at secondary school. However, there is little that draws me there now. All those things that attracted me to the profession are the same ones that make me feel that teaching Mathematics privately is a more attractive option. It is of little wonder that the turnover of teachers in the field is so frequent, when quite frankly the prospect of teaching is financially uncompetitive and offers far more in terms of drawbacks than perks.
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