Words of Wood

I've completed seven weeks of teacher training, and am starting a school placement on Monday. Hilariously, I feel way less prepared than I did in September -- the more I know, the more I know I don't know &etc.

It's been a good term. Really good. I mean, it's been endless seminars and trying to work out what the hell "reflective writing" actually MEANS to your tutor's mark scheme, and crying at midnight because of not having enough extended reading journal entries and drowning in acronyms and buzzwords and educational policy...

...but I'm good at it. This has actually surprised me. I am our group's mascot for nerdiness and tutors have stopped calling on me in maths and computing and science "to give someone else a turn." I've been told by several people in my group that they find me slightly terrifying (and I've given so many explanations to my coursemates of how academic papers work and how you put refs in writing and what the point of an abstract is), and my endless repertoire of Useless Facts are actually really useful in lesson planning and discussing curricula!

I'm bragging, yep. But I can't tell you guys how good it feels to be good at my work again. Oxford crushed me and made me feel stupid and inadequate all of the time and stopped me being able to read novels and I never really recovered. I started my Oxford degree seven years ago this week and right up until then my entire definition of self was tied up in being a bookworm, in being clever. I used to find learning so much fun and I adored school and Oxford stripped that all away and I had forgotten how much I missed it. Except now it's even better because there aren't looming exams and expectations and constant suffocating pressure and emotional abuse and I'm properly medicated for the depression that was grinding me down since adolescence. I still smash into walls of despair and awful, but I can climb them now. It's a hard-won skill.

I'm getting really emotional writing this.

It's just. I'm so grateful. I love Brookes, the university Oxford students sneered at for coexisting in their city (where the not good enough, the boring, normal students went). I love studying. I love my volunteering twice a week, with Brownies and Yellow Submarine, and I'm busy and so happy. I was so scared, before I started this course, that I was going to feel stupid all the time again and be overwhelmed and fall apart. But that's not happening. The opposite, in fact.

I'm going to be a teacher, and I'm going to rock.

Wow I am so tired how do I even internet. But tomorrow is the last day of term! I feel like singing ONE DAY MORE over and over except I literally have no idea of any of the other words or tune and the only reason I even know it exists is because my wife-to-be is sadly obsessed with Les Mis and reads all the weird AUs and tells me about them in detail.

You can tell I'm really tired, can't you.

I am obvs SO behind on the talky meme, but will hopefully be able to catch up, or at least keep going! I will just keep working through topics until I'm done.

Also I haven't written my Yuletide fic yet -- I'm still frantically re-reading the canon. I don't know why I said I could write for a hard sci fi canon with literally a million characters and also I forgot which book the requested character was in so I read the WRONG book. I'm so cool.

Also! My fandom stocking is here. I love fandomstocking! It's my favourite winter internet thing :D As soon as TERM ENDS and my life quietens down or at least contains 95% less small children (I've just come from our Brownie Christmas party, and they're DONE until January too). I do love all my small children, but SO EXHAUSTING.

Also also. CHRISTMAS KNITTING. This is another reason I haven't written the meme post about current projects. NO TIME, MUST KNIT.

Looks like I have at least one source of income over the summer! My mentor wants to hire me as a maths and science tutor for her daughter, who'll be taking GCSEs next year. I'm really excited about this! :D

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Still watching Grimm, and mostly enjoying it. It's certainly entertaining, and it has good characters. (Discounting the bee!fail, there have only been two episodes which have been rather DNW for me so far, 9 and 13. First for Nice Guy TM plot, second for embarrassment squick.) The lack of women in main and secondary roles is still incredibly glaring, but at least Parker is very awesome as the coroner and Juliet has finally begun to occasionally do more than to make out with Nick. The CGI Wesen faces and terrible German creature names continue to be hilarious.

My favourite character continues to be Captain Sam Adama Sean Renard - he is by far the most interesting to me. Followed by Monroe, who is adorable. He plays cello! And is a clockmaker! And gets all upset when his routine is interrupted! *d'awwws at him a lot* I'm not sure that I feel especially fannish about the show yet, although it strikes me that it would be quite a nice one to write fic for as you could handwave just about anything for plot convenience, since the show does :P

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Linky post, by s. e. smith: Makin' Me Crazy: The madness of Drusilla, Sierra, and River (mild spoilers for Buffy, Dollhouse, Firefly)

Tomorrow is my LAST DAY at the primary school. This makes me really sad - I've fallen in love with the little year 1s (ages 5 and 6 for those outside the UK) who mispronounce my name and demand unceasing attention. They are the cutest things ever, seriously. To give some examples from the past few days: we had a discussion about what they want to do when they grow up and one of them wants to be Godzilla. I'm not exaggarating. Also, this exchange outside when they were playing with the sand:

Little Girl: Miss, my daddy might walk along the path past the playground. Can you tell me if he does?
Me: Um, sweetie, I don't know what your daddy looks like!
LG: *stares beseechingly* I think he might be wearing a black t-shirt.
Me: ...Okay, if I see your daddy I'll tell you.
LG: *beams and wanders off*

Aside from the children, both the teachers who I've been assisting have been wonderfully lovely in putting up with me and answering endless questions about teaching. Later I'll be making them chocolate brownies as a thank-you present, which I hope will go down well!

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I can't be all sad about the end of term, though, because it gives me the chance to have a week's holiday in Cornwall staying at the cottage by the sea of the lovely lily_moonlight before I go back to Oxford. Going by past experience this will be a week of being over-excited about fandoms, which is always welcome!

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Speaking of fandoms, I can't find a fandom for Iain M. Banks's Culture novels, which makes me sad :( Does anyone know of one? The only related comms I can find are completely dead. I'm also really getting into the show ReGenesis (biology! genetics! biotec! SCIENCE THAT IS ACCURATE AND REALISTIC!), anyone happen to know anything about a fandom for that?

On a more guilty note, I've only so far read ONE of the fics from sga_genficathon , which is pretty terrible going. But I've written about a third of my telyafen story, so I may actually get a submission into a fest for the first time this year. Ahem, make that academic year. Yup.

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Lastly, thank you to treacle_tartlet  for the chocolate vgift! That made me very happy :)