Sorry for disappearing!

I am still alive and well.... ok...well, still breathing, at any rate .

I know I have been a terrible blogger of late, but the last month or so has been absolutely insane. I went directly from my two week stint in the Psych ward to a months Practicuum for my uni. Not the best timing, but if I deferred the prac, I would have had to wait a year to do it. So, a couple of weeks ago, I packed up my best 'teacher' outfits, all of my resources, my doona and a body pillow and headed to a small town in the middle of nowhere, to practice my craft on a bunch of little shites....an interesting group of adolescents in a small country high school.

How has it been going? Well.....healthwise, it's been a complete nightmare. In the first few days I caught a stomache virus, but continued to go to school anyway, because I did not want to have to make days up and have to stay away from home any longer than necessary. Cue trying desperately not to have to rush out of the classroom to drive the porcelin bus. That was followed by a seizure a few days later, where I managed to break a tooth in half. No dentists here in the boondock, so I'm holding that off with Nurofen until I get home. That was followed by a cold, turned into a chest infection (children truly are just little petri dishes of disease waiting to infect you!), which of course was followed by, you guessed it... another seizure. Still I was trying to soldier on and not miss any days at work. The cracking point came when one of the teachers in my staffroom suggested quite kindly that I take my typhoid mary ass home... I had to consider that by coming in unwell, I was exposing others to my germs. Quite rightly so. Unfortunately, this poor sod was unaware that I was feeling a little...erm....edgy......and I burst into tears in front of him. Humiliating. The poor guy didn't know what to say. He asked whether he could pray for me, and being in the state I was, all I could do was shrug. Kind of surreal, sitting in a staffroom with my mascara running and some guy I barely know praying to a god I don't believe in. But the thought was nice. By that point my mentor teacher had arrived, and asked me what was wrong. She sat with me, as I cried (that horrible, ugly cry... made worse by the fact I was totally choked up with the cold...not pretty, no siree!) and rambled on incoherently about feeling like shite, thinking I was doing a shite job, feeling like I was never going to be able to handle the workload of being a real teacher, if in the space of just two weeks of doing it I already had had two seizures...and a whole lot of other nonsense I can't remember. She was quite lovely. She took the lessons I had planned for the day and taught them for me. She assured me that everyone, even teachers who had been at it forever got overwhelmed and had meltdowns, and that prac was one of the hardest experiences you had to go through as a teacher, and she assured me that even if I couldn't see it I was doing a great job. But that I needed to give myself a break and a chance to rest and recover. And when, by mid afternoon, she came in during my spare and found me passed out asleep at my desk, she insisted I went home and take the next few days off. So, despite my determination not to have to have any days off, I submitted to the inevitable and took the next two days off to recover. Sigh....

As far as the Prac itself goes. Well, it has been bloody hard work. Lots of out of work preparation. And my confidence is not what it used to be. But my weekly evaluations have been really good, so I guess I just have to trust in what they are saying, and not my own self doubt. I also had the delightful experience of a teenage girl telling me that I was, quote "A bitch that nobody liked". At first I was quite affronted, because kids normally love me. But then I realised, she is a snotty little 16 year old, trying to be the Alpha female, and really... I could care less what she thought, as long as she did the damned work! And as my mentor teacher said "Embrace the Bitch". Not all of the kids are going to like me, all of the time. I gave her a detention with an essay to write on how to communicate effectively and respectfully, and would have been happy to leave it at that. However, when I told my mentor about the encounter, she told me policy was that the girl had to be written up for it. Yikes! I spoke to her year coordintor the next day, and at one point he was saying it was suspendable behaviour, but thankfully, we settled for her being placed on a behaviour monitering sheet. (She has to get the teacher to sign off each period on how her behaviour has been, and be consistnetly well behaved to get off the sheet... while on the sheet they are excluded from participating in things like excursions). She was being a little brat, but still I wouldn't have liked to have seen her suspended! Despite some of the stresses, there have been a lot of things I have enjoyed. Teaching the kids about things I am passionate about. I have also spent a lot of time working with the kids in the special education unit, which has been throughly enjoyable, and really cemented the fact that this is an area I would really like to work in. I'm still not sure how exactly its going to work... teaching, when my body begins failing me after just a few weeks, but, for now, am just focussing on getting through the prac, and leaving big decisions like that till afterwards.

Now you may well think that being three hours away from home, I may well have gotten a bit of a hiatus from therapy. No such luck! D insisted that we continue twice weekly sessions by phone. If you think its bad sitting in silence for 50 minutes in front of someone, try sitting in silence for 50 minutes over the phone. Awkward! But the reasoning is, the sessions are not to do any heavy duty therapy.... more just as a form of holding and containment while I am away. And I guess she is probably right that that is important.

So, that's where I've been my internet friends. I did not mean to disappear, but I've found it hard to find time to sit down and breathe for 5 minutes, let alone blog. I just under a week to go and then I will be done. I cannot wait to gethome to my little nest, and my cat, I can tell you!

I have been staying with my aunt and her two little ones, which has been nice-ish...but no time or space to myself. Luckily, she and the kids have gone away for the long weekend, so I've had the house tomyself for a few days. Unfortunately, she doesn't want me lighting the fire (she's afraid i'll have a seizure and burn the house down....lol) and it is below zero here at night.........so I am currently freezing my behind off. I can have peace and quiet or feeling in my extremities....not both...lol. But I am happy to endure a little frostbite for the quiet!

I will try to update during the week, if not, I will definately be back online by next week. Sorry, if I have caused any worry. I hope you are all well

Peace and love
Ophelia