Until recently a teacher in sunny Taiwan, Laura Carr is now acclimatising to work in a college in north-east England. Dark thoughts Except for the hour between getting up and going to work I see no natural daylight whatsoever. My mammoth filing system blocks the window in my office and in the classrooms all the blinds are drawn to allow for the use of new-fangled technology (otherwise known as Power Point). Yes, the British winter is upon us and I’m remembering how truly abysmal it is.
I may soon have to buy one of those light-therapy machines to combat S.A.D. Not only have the evenings got shorter thanks to daylight saving, any chance I have of getting out of work early enough to catch a bit of sunset has been snatched away from me by the need to stay back and write reports for every student I teach. Over the last two weeks I have turned into one of those teachers who moan about paperwork: I’m positively wading in it at the moment. On top of the paperwork, I’ve also got the added stress of an external observation to look forward to and, unfortunately for me, it’s going to be in my least favourite lesson with one of the more challenging classes! It’s like I’m being punished for something – maybe I was a nightmare student in a past life. More controlledBut it’s not all doom and gloom. Except for the day last week when I flipped out in a lecture and sent them all away for bad behaviour, the teaching part of my job is going well. I’m caring less and less what the students think of me which can only be a good thing in terms of class control and I’m getting more and more comfortable with the syllabus. I don’t mean that I’m being nasty or naggy or anything, it’s just that I’m losing the need I felt before for them all to think I’m nice! I still enjoy working with the students (most of the time) and a lot of them impress me with their attitudes and opinions - mind you, a lot of them terrify me with their attitudes and opinions as well. I’d say about a third of my students I’ve spoken to about animal testing think that we should test on criminals instead! As always, I miss working with little kids but at the same time it’s good to be able to have more meaningful conversations. In addition to my developing teaching skills, I’m also slowly but surely getting the hang of Power Point presentations which I use for lectures. Unfortunately for my students, I have discovered how to get two-tone backgrounds and I’m currently colour-coding my lectures by subject. This week they had to sit through a fluorescent green-blue section (the need for morals in society), a magenta-purple section (the basis of moral reasoning) and a green-yellow section (contemporary moral issues). I thought it jazzed things up a bit. They were semi-blinded. Cat name callingWhat else is new? Not a lot really. My new cat is settling in well, and even though she’s such a scaredy-cat, she’s gorgeous. She thinks she’s Charlie’s shadow, but Charlie disagrees and gives her the odd swipe, but other than that they have a fairly harmonious relationship. Since we’re on the subject of cats, I think that now is the time for me to confess to months of deceit – my cat is not actually called Charlie at all. Her real name is Charlotte. When I first got her, I thought she was a boy, hence the name Charlie, but after a couple of months I renamed her Charlotte because she’s a very feminine feline and Charlie sounded too blokey for her. Anyway, why am I confessing to my deceit now? Well, because I can’t think of a name for the new one which sounds good with Charlotte. At the moment she’s called April, Emily, Mini and Little One. None of them seem quite right and I’m in a perpetual dilemma on the issue. I did think of buying a Baby Name Book but felt that I would be taking things a little too far! Dream onI also have another confession to make. While I’m trying really hard to keep my feet on the ground, I couldn’t resist having a sneaky Internet-peak at language schools for sale in Spain the other day. Mostly though, I’m managing to keep my daydream impulses under wraps, although the day-time repression is causing me to have break-free dreams at night. The other night I dreamt that I recklessly gave up my job (or went nuclear as Sarah-blog puts it) and signed up to a full-time Journalism masters which in the dream-world was the best thing I’d ever done. When The Nameless Cat woke me up by miaowing in my face and demanding a tummy rub I felt so extremely proud of myself for making such a brave and successful decision with my life. And then my alarm went off and dragged me down to the real world. See Laura's earlier writings Prospects Graduate magazine is aiming to expand the team of bloggers. If you would like to lay bare your soul and job plans on a fortnightly basis, please get in touch. | 
