The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

24th March 2014. A bespectacled man sits opposite me with a grim expression on his face. By this point I realise my fate is inevitable but this conversation is unavoidable. I’m desperate to escape, to be anywhere but there. The man delivers the news kindly but it doesn’t hurt any less for it. I’ve failed my teaching practice. That is the sort of flashback I seem to have on a regular basis at the moment. My final year teaching practice was the worst period of my life. Every day was a battle just to get through and I was so disappointed to have failed. Eventually I decided that teaching wasn’t for me, that as much as I wanted to keep going I knew I would always be doomed to failure. I’m just not teacher material. That is why my current position is so hard. Thousands of graduates end their degree and have no idea what to do next but I suspect hardly any didn’t know it was coming. Right up until the middle of March I was certain that my future lay in teaching, as I had been for over f...

A month has now passed since I finished university and I am still no closer to finding a job. Some days have been indescribably challenging. On these days I manage find until about dinner time at which point I feel hollow. It’s so infuriating after four years of uni to leave with nothing. The only thing I gained there was weight. Hmm, that was a bleak start. But then again it really is a bleak life at the moment, the few moments of joy mostly coming from the fictional worlds of the many books I am zooming through. I have applied for three more jobs this week, all of which are school-based support posts which involve supporting children with special needs. Each is a very different circumstance so any of them would be interesting. I’ve down applied for a fair few jobs and have constantly been frustrated about the application forms. Jobs in the education sector don’t usually want a CV, you have to fill all your details out on a form with part of that form being some sort of cover let...

The football World Cup is back and unlike millions of others I am not excited in the least. This shot from The IT Crowd, one of my favourite TV shows, pretty much summarises my feelings on it: As an English man in my twenties I really ought to be into football. Virtually every man I know of my age has an interest, especially in the World Cup. I was thinking about much I simply don’t conform. I am not your typical English guy by any stretch of the imagination. The sport thing is just the tip of the iceberg. Probably the next big thing after being into sport is being into drinking beer down the pub. Now I’ve done some drinking in my time but I’ve never been a huge fan of going out. I also detest beer and would really struggle to finish a pint of the stuff. The closest I get is cider but I’ll just have happily have some kind of spirit or wine. Then there’s my career choices. A typical man’s job depends on his level of education and goes up from some form of construction to a sa...

Another week has flown by. Life continues to suck hugely. First things first, no I don’t have a job yet. In a modern world it is unusual to hear anything at all from an employer unless they are want to interview you so I was surprised when all three of the jobs I applied for last week responded to say they had received my applications and I might hear from them at a later date. It didn’t really mean anything but it is nice to know that there are some courteous employers out there. I won’t count them as ‘responses’ at the bottom of the post though as for that they need to offer an interview or decline me. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was trying to meet with the university careers advisor but she proved surprisingly elusive. Well I finally managed to track her down and headed into university to meet her. It was odd being back when it already feels like that chapter of my life has long since gone. The careers office is fairly sizeable at our uni so it was a little odd to ...

Something a little bit different today but still in keeping with the the blog’s direction. It is a slight edit of a post that appeared on a past blog of mine so there’s a chance you have read it before. Either way, I reckon it’s a decent post and this has an additional postscript that wasn’t on the original piece.  So then, this is the story of how I discovered I am dyspraxic and how it has affected me. Firstly, I should explain what dyspraxia is for anyone who doesn’t know. Dyspraxia, also known as “clumsy child syndrome”, is a neurological disorder beginning in childhood that can affect planning of movements and co-ordination as a result of brain messages not being accurately transmitted to the body. Essentially it means that a person is clumsy and lacks co-ordination but the actual “symptoms” vary from person to person, as they always do. I discovered I have dyspraxia about six months ago, now aged 21 and a half, almost to the day . I am doing a module on special educatio...

First of all I have to thank you, lovely reader, for making this blog such a success over such a short space of time. The stats are looking fantastic and somehow I even managed to get featured on 20 Something Bloggers’ weekly round-up. Now I feel great pressure to make this something worth reading rather than a nonsensical soliloquy like usual. Right now I am feeling weirdly positive, despite the fact the past week has largely been dreadful. I looked through page after page of vacancies and came to the conclusion I do not have the skills for any of them. I don’t think my self-esteem has ever dipped so low, lower than I even thought it was possible to go. It was the feeling that I quite literally couldn’t do anything, the feeling of complete worthlessness. It is weird though how the world sometimes tries to balance things out for you. This week a barrage of unexpected compliments fell my way as if the world was trying to tell me that I am not as worthless as I thought. I’m a comple...