Blah blah I did things. And now holiday!!!
HELLO. Okay, so further detail/new info on life/stress since the last post. Life has been CRAZY busy, but I got to the end and I’m on hooolidaaaaaaay yay :D Coming to you from Liverpool, more specifically from 
sodsta’s sofa. I’m here til Saturday afternoon :DDD
Things I did in April and May: find and move into a new place, do a stupidly intense portion of a qualification (and pass!) then find and move into a DIFFERENT new place. Also various social things.
So basically I spent the middle two weeks of April working on my next teaching-English-as-a-foreign-language qualification. (I have the standard CELTA, but I’ve been teaching for five years, give or take - time for the next level, which qualifies you to do stuff like be a Director of Studies.) The whole qualification is worth a third of a Master’s, and I did half of it in two weeks. x_x
Cos you do the practical portion, and a phonetics exam, all at once. It’s two weeks that include five observed lessons (all the teachers reading this just winced, haha), all of them needing around 5k of lesson plan + detailed individual learner profiles + materials you have to make yourself. At the end of it you hand in a teaching journal, and there are interviews where you debrief the lessons in detail. AHHH. And then a thirty-minute interview where you talk about pronunciation, basically, and the science of it and how to teach it, in excruciating detail.
I PASSED YAY! 58% for the phonetics (coulda gone better, grumble, but not a disaster!) and 68% for the teaching (including planning, delivery, and self-assessment). 50% is a pass, and 80% is a distinction. The equivalent of a C and a B feels fairly reflective of where I am, in the context of a high-level teaching qualification. So I’m fairly pleased, especially since usually people do this bit last, and I did it first!
Anyway! Did that in April. It’s short, but it swallows up all your time and energy and is famously exhausting for those two weeks. My school is a teaching school, so I’ve seen people do it and a lot of my colleagues have done it too, and they all stumble around on little sleep and usually take a week off after doing it. I not only didn’t take a week off, I also moved house the next weekend.
ARGH.
I got given notice in late February, but there’s nowhere available that far in advance. So I needed to find a room in a shared flat in early April, and move in late April. Because of the Diploma, I needed to do it in the first week. I found somewhere, paid a week of double rent, and got ready to move. The new place was nearby and quiet; one guy gave me a slightly off vibe, but I was so tired when I met him so that could’ve been why.
Two days before I was due to move, said guy - flatmate not landlord, but in charge of sorting the bills - emailed me to say I needed to send £x for council tax. I reminded him that in both his ad and in the message when I’d specifically asked, he’d said the room cost £x in rent, plus £x for gas and electricity. Nothing about council tax or anything else. No real response.
If he’d been the landlord, I would’ve demanded my deposit and first month’s rent back. But since he was just the flatmate I wasn’t sure what the legal options were, and this was late Thursday when I needed to move Saturday. So I sucked it up and lived there for four weeks. This last weekend, I moved to my new new place.
It’s ambiguous so far. Somewhat annoying but not awful flatmates, and I’ve barely been there cos this weekend was Expo, haha. (Aka London’s mini comic con.) So I moved in, showered, and ran off to drink and hang out in east London on Saturday. Came back Sunday afternoon, hung out for a couple of hours in my room mostly, then left again. Was back at half-midnight on Sunday night, spent Monday working on unpacking, and then left in the early evening to get a train up to Liverpool.
The room itself is nice - bright, relatively big, places to hang my art, and cheaper than my last place. (Significantly less nice, but I barely used that sitting room and the last place was a steal.) Still in the same area, so I know it, and it’s good for work and social life. I’m rather put off by the amount of noise from neighbours (and flatmates) I heard on Saturday and Sunday, but hopefully I’ll learn to not notice it, and anyway half-term can be noisy. So yeah.
Expo was fun :D Saw my faves, met a couple of lovely new people, squeed a whooooole bunch about FFXV. And now sweet relief of being off work, and physically unable to unpack more. So like - stress free! I needed a holiday SO MUCH, and now I get to spend four days hanging out with a bunch of my best beloveds :DDDDD
I might do a bit of work for school… or I might just spend four days doing fannish stuff. WHO CAN SAY.
This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/374586.html. Comment wherever you like :)
sodsta’s sofa. I’m here til Saturday afternoon :DDD
Things I did in April and May: find and move into a new place, do a stupidly intense portion of a qualification (and pass!) then find and move into a DIFFERENT new place. Also various social things.
So basically I spent the middle two weeks of April working on my next teaching-English-as-a-foreign-language qualification. (I have the standard CELTA, but I’ve been teaching for five years, give or take - time for the next level, which qualifies you to do stuff like be a Director of Studies.) The whole qualification is worth a third of a Master’s, and I did half of it in two weeks. x_x
Cos you do the practical portion, and a phonetics exam, all at once. It’s two weeks that include five observed lessons (all the teachers reading this just winced, haha), all of them needing around 5k of lesson plan + detailed individual learner profiles + materials you have to make yourself. At the end of it you hand in a teaching journal, and there are interviews where you debrief the lessons in detail. AHHH. And then a thirty-minute interview where you talk about pronunciation, basically, and the science of it and how to teach it, in excruciating detail.
I PASSED YAY! 58% for the phonetics (coulda gone better, grumble, but not a disaster!) and 68% for the teaching (including planning, delivery, and self-assessment). 50% is a pass, and 80% is a distinction. The equivalent of a C and a B feels fairly reflective of where I am, in the context of a high-level teaching qualification. So I’m fairly pleased, especially since usually people do this bit last, and I did it first!
Anyway! Did that in April. It’s short, but it swallows up all your time and energy and is famously exhausting for those two weeks. My school is a teaching school, so I’ve seen people do it and a lot of my colleagues have done it too, and they all stumble around on little sleep and usually take a week off after doing it. I not only didn’t take a week off, I also moved house the next weekend.
ARGH.
I got given notice in late February, but there’s nowhere available that far in advance. So I needed to find a room in a shared flat in early April, and move in late April. Because of the Diploma, I needed to do it in the first week. I found somewhere, paid a week of double rent, and got ready to move. The new place was nearby and quiet; one guy gave me a slightly off vibe, but I was so tired when I met him so that could’ve been why.
Two days before I was due to move, said guy - flatmate not landlord, but in charge of sorting the bills - emailed me to say I needed to send £x for council tax. I reminded him that in both his ad and in the message when I’d specifically asked, he’d said the room cost £x in rent, plus £x for gas and electricity. Nothing about council tax or anything else. No real response.
If he’d been the landlord, I would’ve demanded my deposit and first month’s rent back. But since he was just the flatmate I wasn’t sure what the legal options were, and this was late Thursday when I needed to move Saturday. So I sucked it up and lived there for four weeks. This last weekend, I moved to my new new place.
It’s ambiguous so far. Somewhat annoying but not awful flatmates, and I’ve barely been there cos this weekend was Expo, haha. (Aka London’s mini comic con.) So I moved in, showered, and ran off to drink and hang out in east London on Saturday. Came back Sunday afternoon, hung out for a couple of hours in my room mostly, then left again. Was back at half-midnight on Sunday night, spent Monday working on unpacking, and then left in the early evening to get a train up to Liverpool.
The room itself is nice - bright, relatively big, places to hang my art, and cheaper than my last place. (Significantly less nice, but I barely used that sitting room and the last place was a steal.) Still in the same area, so I know it, and it’s good for work and social life. I’m rather put off by the amount of noise from neighbours (and flatmates) I heard on Saturday and Sunday, but hopefully I’ll learn to not notice it, and anyway half-term can be noisy. So yeah.
Expo was fun :D Saw my faves, met a couple of lovely new people, squeed a whooooole bunch about FFXV. And now sweet relief of being off work, and physically unable to unpack more. So like - stress free! I needed a holiday SO MUCH, and now I get to spend four days hanging out with a bunch of my best beloveds :DDDDD
I might do a bit of work for school… or I might just spend four days doing fannish stuff. WHO CAN SAY.
This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/374586.html. Comment wherever you like :)