The grind continues. We have become a pathetically ragged group. It's monotonous at some point to describe what I describe every day. Suffice it to say that the next 10 days (including 2 days of weekend) seem like a long dark tunnel. Is there a light at the end? Faint... Ever so faint. Tomorrow should be another long day (but hopefully not the at-CELTA-or-across-the-street-at-Starbucks-studying-from-8am-to-10:30pm-straight-eat-dinner-at-11pm thing again). I'm really not kidding. I know that I tend to exaggerate, but this is real.
There are moments in the middle of the afternoon teaching sessions when I go completely blank. About an hour before it's my turn to stand up and captivate everyone with the beauty of "either...or" and "not only...but also" for 40 minutes, when I'm completely exhausted, I find that I cannot operate my brain. I sit during the periods that I'm supposed to be observing my peers teach but I just kind of disappear for a few moments. Then I blink back in and remember that I need to concentrate on quelling the butterflies of anxiety, on manipulating handouts and visual aids, holding my notecards with all my cues, remembering my cues in case I put down my notecards, and maintaining eye contact with 12 people. It's like a circus act--only I'm doing it in a wool skirt and heels.
This is not like college. It is its own thing--beyond comparison in the relentless intensity. Shelly--the woman whose friend died on Friday--has had five friends complete CELTA. A bunch of us were huddled at a 24-hour Starbucks earlier and she told us words of wisdom from her five friends: Just pass. Do what you can to make it through. Just keep showing up...
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1 comment:
Jaime, hang in there! It sounds incedibly hard and exhausting. The good news is that the actual job won't seem so hard by comparison. You are getting the knowledge, skills, experience, and feedback that you need to be effective. Once on the job, you will be the "expert" and get better every day. One of the exciting things about teaching is that it is never the same, because you are continually growing, and each student receives the lesson from their own unique perspective. (This can be viewed as the "good news" or the "bad news," depending on your point of view.)
Love,
Colleen
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