Passing Seasons

The past week I have had something of a thick head, a seasonal adjustment urging me to slow down and remove the build-up of stress from my life. Amazing how when we try to go hard, nature has a way of stepping in and going “Not so fast, buddy.”

No jumping off the train anymore; we’ve hit full speed and the ride is on. Though I’ve been studying for less than three months it’s on for young and old now. One minute I was craving stuff to get my teeth into, and now I’m grasping for a long lost focus I’ve never really possessed. No time for procrastination now, though. The funny thing is, I seem to be scared of success. Every time I complete a task, feel a sense of achievement, I seem to run from this sense. For example, I’ve been making another attempt at learning to draw; got myself a kids book - lets start simple his time - with a copious number of tasks that take one through basic construction of shapes to the addition of features and shading: the same task is repeated in an infinite number of forms. But, after successfully completing the first drawing, I’ve become afraid of the book. Perhaps I’m afraid of the monster in my head that will jump out on my first failure and leeringly remind me I can’t really draw.

Is study like this too? I want to master everything at once. No baby steps for me nosiree. My desire for profundity makes the required simplicity required for most of my assignments slip my grasp. I’m in the middle of an annotated bibliography; it should be a simple summary of a handful of notable thinkers in education, but, my ego wants to prove the complexity of my reading in a small assignment, not worth a lot, where we are being assessed more on form than content. I hate my brain.

School of late has become somewhat tedious. A routine has been established and I find myself in class listening to the bleeding obvious. I, the nerd, like the methodology, but we also have numerous classes on subject content: art, English, science, humanities and maths. And they all are preaching integration and group work. Yes, group work is important, yes I understand we need to work in groups cause that is how curriculum planning occurs in schools for the most part, but it would be really nice to be given the chance to think creatively alone. Oh how I miss Mitoyoshi sometimes – to think I used to rue my complete control over lesson content!

The other thing that’s bugging me is that with all this integration, I get to help other people develop units of work, but I never get to play with novels, plays, films and straight up and down English stuff. Integration is about taking a couple of subjects and blurring the boundaries, which have hitherto fore been set. Everything seems to be diluted with humanities in that watered down way I remember from high school, the life sucked out of topics I’m passionate about - or maybe that’s just this course. We have lecturers who can structure content well, and those that bring enthusiasm, but bar our science lecturer I continually find myself either bored or confused.

Next week I have my first practicum – real teaching – yeehah. Bring on November. Better still, leave me in the library with a list of books.