Thursday, July 19, 2007

Drivelling

I do not know whether this word exists but I'm taking a gamble, without unleashing my nerdy side and checking on the merriam-webster web dictionary. I think it means rambling on stupidly and not making much sense. Tonight I was a bit tense and I drivelled a lot. I started talking on and on about ects and credits and study units and sikstifajfpersent and oners and all this stuff in front of my mum, to whom all this is simply greek. This made my mum feel even more confused and even more SILENTLY convinced that I'm messing up my life by doing a B.A. in English. The thing about my mother's silent convictions is that they are impossible to ignore. She expresses them in her morose tone of voice, her sighs of resignation and the sense of inevitable doom that oozes out of her every pore. Oh God why does she have to be so stubborn? She keeps telling me to rethink it and rethink it when I've been thinking it over and over again for almost six months now. And for once in my life I am decided about something, so much so that I do not even feel the need of relying on others' opinion. I know this is what I want. I just know. The only thing that upsets me is that my mother is the kind of person who worries herself till she's well and truly miserable about even the smallest things. And I do not want her to be upset. I know that for her jobs and settling down is one big big deal. Yet maybe seeing me happy will put a smile on her face, and maybe one day I will make her proud :-D. Pity that I do not yet have a clue whether I'll be accepted into second year of the Honours course. And slowly slowly the prospect is seeming even more unrealistic than ever.

On a more joyous and chirpy note, I finish work tomorrow and MENO MALE i say too! Dear me, these past two days have been a confirmation of the complete mess that language schools in Malta are. The lack of resources is a joke- One CD player to be shared by some 40 classes, not to mention the scarcity of a thing as basic as whiteboard markers!!! Moreover I realised why I hate teaching so much. Teaching just disturbs you from your purpose. It is just a distraction. It jolts you awake from your mental meanderings, the freedom of your inner life, and it throws you in an alien environment where you have to cope with strangers and engage in that evil thing called practicality. I know I am painting it in a very evil way but that is how it is for me. I am sure it is very fulfilling for those wonderful people who do it so well- those who were born teachers like my mum or my uncle- but for me it is just bleak and something to get over and done with as soon as possible. Even when I can see that the students are wonderful people with great potential, it is still a chore for me. Maybe you might say that I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but it is something that I have noticed and endlessly thought about. It's one of the things I share with my sister. We repel the career our family has made a living from. Something like half my relatives are teachers. What warms me up is my father's understanding. He taught for something like forty years without ANY promotions whatsoever so I think he silently encourages my determination to break away.

Ok now I am making it sound like some Ridley Scott epic of escape and revolution, which it definitely is not. (It's just a change of course for God's sake!) But this is the way I am- I romanticize every single thing. Must be the symptom of a sheltered life. And before anyone who reads this blog is reduced to a suicidal wreck wondering when or if this rambling will end, I will bid you farewell..

Take care,
Lizzy
xxxx

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