Week 5: Looking Back, Looking Forward

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 five years. Then suddenly it all changed and I was left with nothing.
I don’t regret the decision and know it was the right one, but I am frustrated by the position it has but me in. Every single person I know from my degree course now has a job lined up for September, almost all of them as a teacher. Then there’s me sat here desperately trawling through job sites and filling out annoying application forms. Yet another week has passed where I am still no closer to getting a job.
I’ve only found one more appropriate job to apply for since my last post, although it is rather a good one, working in a new specialist autism unit at a local special needs school. It’s a job I would love and is probably now the job I will accept if end up having a choice.
The next five days see the deadlines for four different vacancies so I expect to know if I will be called for interview for any of them by the end of next week, which will no doubt be extremely tense. I also get the grade for my degree next week, just to add to the drama. 
There is lots to worry about concerning these. Firstly, the worry about trying to do a good interview and not clam up like I usually do in an unusual social situation. Then there’s the worry that more than one of them will offer me a job and I will have decide between 2 or 3 or even 4. What if I get offered one of the ones I want less first, do I risk turning it down for the others? And looking at it from a more pessimistic point of view, what on Earth do I do if none of them offer me a job? If I don’t have a school based job for September within the next few weeks then it is likely that route will be closed for me, certainly for the next academic year.
At least next week the boredom of being unemployed will hopefully be dispersed. I have literally done nothing of interest for over a month and don’t have a reason to leave the house most days. It is a pretty miserable existence. 
The other day I heard that classic “Wear Sunscreen” track and a line in there seemed rather appropriate (given that I am 22 ):
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
*Considers oneself interesting*
*Ends blog post pleased with self*
Jobs Applied for: 9   Responses: 0

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