The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

In which I reflect on a year of being veggie... It's now been a year since I decided to become a vegetarian. It still feels like something of a novelty but I suppose that can be put down to the strange sensation of time passing ever more quickly as you get older.  It all began in last year's searingly hot summer when I realised meat consumption was probably the biggest part of my carbon footprint and therefore cutting it out would be a step I could make against climate change. This year's summer couldn't be more different with the UK experiencing slightly lower average temperatures and much higher amounts of rainfall than normal. This has been down to relatively local climate conditions and the world as a whole has had by far the hottest year in human history. Much of the world has been struggling with temperatures around 40 degrees C and the dramatic events that come with them such as devastating wildfires and tropical storms and hurricanes. I may not have personally b...

In which I have some success... I've been meaning to write this post for about a month but haven't got around to it. I'm not sure why. I think there's a part of me that thinks I've fallen into some unrealistic fantasy and at any minute I will wake up.  On an ordinary Tuesday morning, I opened up my emails and received the news. I am now a qualified teacher. I'll be honest, I had to go and have a moment alone because I was somewhat overcome with emotion. There may have been a tear or two.  It feels like a big personal victory to me. I started university in 2010 to gain this qualification but things went wrong in the dying months of the course and I left uni in 2014 without a teaching qualification and a degree that was no use for anything else. I was traumatized by a bad experience and my already low self-esteem hit rock bottom. I basically spent the next six years trying to recover and rebuild without really any direction in my life.  Covid uprooted all our live...

In which I discuss an absurd news story... If you are to look on the website of any right-leaning newspaper for education stories you will almost certainly find articles about schools where students are 'identifying as cats'. Yes, this is widely being reported in sources including The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Sun, LBC, Metro and many, many others. These articles say that parents of these children are demanding schools respect them, that these children are wearing ears and tails and occasionally are using litter trays in classrooms. Oh, and according to a handful of these sources some children are also identifying as horses and dinosaurs.  This week, the media was whipped into a frenzy. Because this has been reported in the media, year 8 pupils at a school in East Sussex had a discussion about whether a person can identify as a cat and one of them filmed part of the discussion and put it on TikTok. This went viral and the right-wing media jumped on it and politicians start...

In which I discuss this year's Oscar contenders... It's become something of a tradition for me to write about the films that are nominated for best picture at the Oscars. Once again I've managed to see all ten nominees so I can discuss them properly. I'll also include where you can watch each nominee in the UK should you be interested, though cinema listings for most are limited. All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix) A rare non-English language nominee, this is a German production that has proved hugely popular on Netflix. The German novel of the same name has been adapted into films several times before, including the 1930 film which itself won best picture. This version is by far the most technologically advanced with some incredible scenes depicting the life of a First World War soldier (it's not one for the squeamish). It does change some plot details from the book though which turns its purpose from a thoughtful inspection of the life of a soldier to a more ...

In which I discuss the media's views on neurodiversity... In the past month or so there have been various articles and think-pieces in the British media about the increase in diagnoses of ADHD and other neurodiverse conditions (that's things like autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia, the latter of which I myself have). Most of these have been pretty unpleasant, describing having ADHD as something which is fashionable. One Sunday Times journalist said "celebrities have convinced us that we all need an 'illness identity'". This is, to put it politely, nonsense.  Diagnosis can be and often is life-changing for many neurodiverse people. Until then, you feel like you don't quite fit in like there's something fundamentally wrong with you. It's difficult enough as an adult but usually, you've had enough life experience to manage the majority of the challenges neurodiversity brings to you. When you are at school and still trying to understand who you are and...

In which I have a breakthrough... The familiar golden arches welcome me through the door. Like thousands of other people every day I'm sitting down to enjoy a treat from McDonald's. My friend Louise and her kids are with me and I'm holding down a table whilst they organise what they are going to order. This particular McDonald's holds many memories. Here I've been drunk, hungover, poor, excited, exuberant and exhausted. But above all these, there is one moment which is particularly clear in my memories... <WISTFUL HARP MUSIC> March, 2014. I'm broken. The most challenging thing I've ever done has come to an end in the worst possible way. For the last eleven weeks I've been on teaching practice, the final one I needed to overcome after three and a half years at university to gain a teaching qualification. For the entire eleven weeks, I'd been repeatedly told how shit I was and had received helpful advice from the people that were supposed to supp...

In which I reflect on things... Hello, I hope you are well. October half term has arrived and I'm excited to have my first proper Autumnal holiday in my flat. I often find that the start of the holidays for me are a time I can slow down and reflect on things so that's really what this post is about- abstraction is the "state of being lost in thought" This time last year I had the dreaded Covid a year on I can reflect that it was one of the very worst weeks of my life. It definitely changed me in some ways, not least with the fact I haven't spent a day just sat in my flat since because I can't face that cabin fever ever again. I've also tried to avoid the isolation I left and have reconnected with old friends and regularly attended social events in a way I haven't done many years.  I'm somehow already 25% of the way through my teaching course. Whilst I'm still ultra-cautious about what lies ahead, I'm amazed at just how brilliantly things ha...