Year One

It has been pretty much a year since I started this blog. Admittedly I am about a week too early but for various reasons I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about the past year. So today I thought I’d talk about the last year, blogging and my continuing mission to become a Dan 2.0.

A few memorable images from the first year of Dan 2.0

A year ago today I was in Riga, Latvia. Having failed my final teaching placement of my university course my future was in limbo. I could get another teaching placement and try again or drop the teaching qualification and go off and do something else. Although I was having an amazing holiday in Latvia, ostensibly I was there to present my dissertation research at an Student Conference. The content of my presentation was frankly awesome but the delivery was less so.

During the conference I heard a lot of people present, all of them trainee teachers, and I found out something about myself. It’s hard to put into words really but I discovered I am not like them. Teachers are naturally outgoing and (outwardly at least) confident people. I am neither of those things. I then decided teaching was not the right career for me and shortly afterwards started this blog.

I put my failing point down to my final teaching placement. Yes, I did fail it but actually I should never have been there in the first place. The point I messed up was way back in 2009/2010 when I decided I wanted to go to university to train to be a teacher. It was a stupid idea really. My more experience self now wonders how I could ever have considered that a good idea, something that I could actually achieve.

The early days of this blog saw me discuss my search for a job. This was probably also a mistake in hindsight. I needed time to consider what I wanted to do, rather than rush into doing something. Initially I was applying for all sorts of exciting jobs which could have led to some brilliant careers. I’m not sure how gradually my aspirations dropped and I ended up applying for teaching assistant jobs, where I have now ended up.

Saying that the job I am doing is beneath me feels a bit pretentious but I can’t help feeling it is true. I was very close to qualifying as a teacher but am instead working as a teaching assistant getting paid almost half the salary. I mean I can do it happily and it’s ok as a temporary thing but I feel overqualified and that I should be making much more of my life. I’m not really any further in starting a career than I was a year ago which is disappointing.

In some ways I have changed though. My big achievement in the last year was passing my driving test, something well documented on this blog. I never thought it would be such a challenge for me, but it was really hard yet something I managed to overcome. This has helped me become much more independent than I was a year ago. Occasionally I’m doing something and realise how adult and responsible it feels.

Ultimately though, I still feel like a failure. I can find a long list of mistakes over the last few years which have led me up to this point. From choosing to go into teaching, to failing the placement, to rushing into a job and accepting one which didn’t fulfil me. Then there’s all the silly things I’ve done which have lost me my friendships and generally made my life a less enjoyable thing.

I always knew this day would come. I was a dramatic teenager and when I was perhaps 16 or 17 I wrote a Facebook status predicting my future. Ironically I had an awesome life then and would love to go back to it. I predicted how I would fail academically and would end up being single and alone with no relationship and no friends. None of those things were true at the time but wind on six or seven years and they all are. The failure came considerably later than I expected but nonetheless it came.

Some people would probably make comment on this saying that you will inevitably fail if you have a negative attitude. I personally think that is rubbish anyway but I’ve always hoped that this wouldn’t be the case and always strived hard to be a success. But I am really not a success, not yet at least.

I hope one day in the not-too-distant future I can look back on this dark time of my life and be pleased at how far I’ve come. This blog chronicles my journey and there’s something therapeutic about sharing my on-going personal crisis here. It’s a creative outlet too and I like the idea that people read and are interested in what I have to say. So a year from when I started I want to thank all of you who read this blog and especially though who have read from the beginning and those who have commented on what I have written. Sometimes you guys can really make a difference to my day.