Should I be a teacher?

Having had a rotten week, I found myself contemplating (for maybe the hundredth thousandth time) - is this job the job for me?

This question made me reflect back to when I started training and whether I should have just plain and simply asked the question - should I be a teacher?

So before I give yet another weekend away to merciless planning, assessing and grading...I thought I'd ask the wise and wonderful one that is - Google.

I simply typed in Google - Should I be a teacher?

And even Google couldn't give me an answer... he's probably still scratching his head.
The only results I could find were quizzes...so it seems that a load of questions will determine whether this is the career for me.

Feeling like I wanted answers, I chose the Guardian one...Which happened to be a very bizarre list of questions which was hard to bag yourself into the right category as there are three options - a typical Ms Trunchbull, Miss Honey or the IDGAF category (work out that initialism for yourself).  The response was...

Could you be a good teacher?

Idealist teacher 

You are an idealist and still have faith in the capacity of teachers to be the midwives of dreams. But is there still a place for you amid the expediency and management-speak of education today?

And luckily ...THIS SCREAMS ME!

For whatever reason I joined the teaching profession (and I'm guessing it's something related to helping the young minds of today make progress...) it's still plagued by management.  

Damn you management for stripping apart education and making it a battlefield!

If you were to ask me the question...it would be a resounding - no.  But with an exception.  If you can deal with the red tape, the lies, the manipulation, the control, the no time to do anything and people telling you to jump off a cliff right now but make sure you've done this....then go for it.

If not...steer well clear and perhaps consider teaching assistant...(though not sure if that's such a good idea either...).

Working on a Bank Holiday...

Working all day in a building that is close to a hundred years old does not do great things for my imagination.

Having locked up a few minutes late thanks to some people desperate to read every last thing of the displays, I went around doing the usual - flipping the lights and knocking off the computers.  It was while I was cashing up that something caught my eye on the security system.  In one of the rooms there was a shimmering light, constantly moving.  Earlier I'd already caught something in the corner of the little shop as I saw rolls of map slide across the floor.  Wondering if someone was hiding there I'd gone to explore to find nothing.  So when I saw this light I kept and eye on it for a few minutes thinking it was my imagination.  But no it kept shimmering.

So I cashed up, put it safely in the safe before returning downstairs and entering the room next to it.  When I'm in there I hear the unmistakable sound of furniture scraping against wood.  As if someone has pushed a wooden chair across the floor.  I froze.  Took a couple of minutes to get a grip on myself then walked around into the darkened room.  It was still, quiet and everything in place but the light was on.  I'd definitely turned it off when I'd turned off the projector.  At any rate it wasn't moving like it had been on the camera.

I swear that that place is haunted!  Especially considering listening to the video all day seems to have burnt an auditory pattern on my brain and it's literally all I can hear on loop...

In other news, the City was celebrating the Battle of Neville's Cross.  I was made aware of this when a horse dressed in a elaborate blanket trotted passed with a knight in full chain mail armor on it's back.  The weird thing was that his leader on foot came in in all of his dress asking for someone that I've never heard of and all I could do was look at him in a bemused sense.  However, during my lunch hour I went and took pictures whilst listening to the amusing characters talk about bow and arrows and watch them start a mini attack on one another.

Working on Sunday...

...is perhaps the longest day in existence.

From the very start there was problem after problem lending itself to being a stressful and busy day.  However, on the other hand, there were long periods of propping up my kindle against my computer screen to pretend I was actually doing something useful, it was that quiet...

But at least today I spent my lunch basking in the afternoon sunshine - the first rays I've seen since the end of March (see above).  This followed a quick trip down to a well known supermarket brand only to witness a student being turned down because their driving licence had expired a week ago...Call me lenient, but seriously?  You're going to turn down business because of a date on a bit of card that clearly shows face and date of birth?  You absolute idiots!

But then I get so angry at things like that.  Life has become too PC for my liking.

The rest of the afternoon was quiet enough for me to get around to reassembling the two arches that had been knocked over by someone thinking it was easy enough to rebuild - they were wrong.  And it was with much trepidation that I had to piece them all together.  It took me 20minutes.  Twenty whole minutes to slot about 12 pieces together in their two separate forms.  Grrr.

Let me explain about why these arches are so important.  The one on the right is the archway we're perhaps more traditionally used to.  It's seen all around the world in bridges and tunnels and massive buildings.  It has its significant keystone in the middle, the piece that without it it would fall apart.  Yet notice the left model without it's key piece and with a pointed centre.  This one on the left was used suddenly in Durham Cathedral.  It was found that you could put more weight on the left one and it would withstand the pressure without crumbling.  Whereas you put weight on the right one and it crumbles.

It is this crumbling that I hear almost once every hour as someone knocks it down.  

So this is a note to any budding engineers reading this - use the left one - it's far less irritating.

Finally on some good news front.

The little lost boy that was swept away in river near me was found today.  Aged 8 and swept away down the river whilst it was flooded.  After a week and two days of endless searching by the never giving up hope volunteers from the community who were touched by the story, the little boy's body was found today.  The most potent thing from this was definitely the community spirit.  No matter what people say, it's still there.  We're united as one in times of moving events.  But let the boy rest in peace now.

The Incompetent Worker

I no doubt refer to myself with this title.

Here I am, sat in the cold confines of a working hotel castle (the room that used to be a gym I'm reliably informed by an alcoholic alumini guest a few weeks ago) not knowing exactly what to do.  Instead I thought I'd use my time to write about how frustrating it is being on the other side of the counter.

My mother yesterday was irrate when she contacted a company regarding our boiler breaking down.  She was affronted that the person who was coming out to do the annual check was unable to do it because there was a fault with the machine rather than the routine check he expected.  Instead he told her that an engineer will be with us shortly who will know more about what to do with the problem.  My mother couldn't comprehend why the guy that does the routine checks and is meant to pick out suspected faults, couldn't manage a little leak.  And this got me thinking.  We expect such a high level of competency from businesses and we're annoyed when they can't do the job they're being paid to do.  Then this got me worried, because no matter what job I do, no matter how long I've been at it, there's always something that I don't know, something that I need someone else to help with. 

For instance, innocently covering a lunch time shift the other day, I was asked a question that I'd spent the last month trying to work out an answer to - what do I do if a customer asks for a print.  All I got from everyone I asked was 'play it by ear'.  And that day, 10 minutes before the end of my shift someone wanted a print.  Nightmare.  This caused 10 minutes of humming and harring and 'would it be possible to come back in 10 minutes time?'.  The queue was mounting up and the woman behind this customer looked much put out by the wait.  This simply is not fair.  I wasn't given the information to deal with the customer no matter what length I went to even before the situation arose.  And plus I'm only casual staff popping in every so often so it's quite hard to keep a grasp of things.  In another scenario, I thought my life had been made easier by a till update on items instead of spending 2 minutes endlessly searching criteria just so someone can have a 50p postcard only to find out the option on the til wanted me to charge £2.50!! "Dear me, all this for one postcard!" exclaimed an old man, but all I could do was plaster a sympathetic smile on my face and wait for the till to get a move on.  This is what technology has brought us, reliant on machines to the point that when it goes wrong we're actually helpless.  Forget about robots it's already controlling us.  Working in a customer environment all we seem to get is complaints and 'why can't you just answer my question' - it's simply because I don't know or we don't know, or we're not even paid to do that.

Therefore, to end my rant, I have utter sympathy with the man that my mother spent the rest of the evening blasting about that he can't do his job.  We are, afterall, only human.  Next time a retailer has problems ringing up your product or they don't have the answer to your question, relax, you were in that position once.