....here I am look!

....here I am look! bet you've been wondering where i've been!? well i've been wondering where i've been too! i can honestly say that i have never worked as hard as i have over the last 3 months! so time for pontificating about life and everything on here has been very limited. let me tell you about it....

the nature of my job now is that there are times during the year when there is simply loads to do! there's nothing complicated of difficult to do - there's just lots of it. there's not the same worry of tension of actually being in social work practice but there's been no break from the relentless nature of lecture prep, placement finding, and marking. i only 'work' 4 days a week now but when you add in working on my day off and working all day sunday and working at least 2 or 3 nights a week..... you feel like a hamster in a wheel....

.....but the benefit is this..... i'm now off for 3 weeks! the rest of the academic year is nowhere near as hectic.... i'll get two weeks off at easter and probably six or seven weeks off in the summer! so, if you were about to feel sympathetic then you might want to hang onto it.

this lecturing lark is a strange business. you are learning your trade while stood in front of a class of (at times) forty students. so when it goes wrong it goes historically wrong (there have been one or two of them) but when it goes right you are left with a massive sense of satisfaction! getting it right takes a lot of prep i'm finding.

my philosophy this semester has been to keep my head down and just keep going.... so that's what i've done and now i sit with this lovely break in front of me to regroup myself and get ready for next semester.

christine has been working soooooo hard and i'm so proud of how much work she is putting into her degree.... nearly every night and all weekend. me being a 'head in a book' type person loves seeing her doing the same! and the other day i got into her car to go somewhere, started the engine, and found she was tuned into radio 4. i beamed with pride! she'll have a degree by summer and that's just fabulous (and means i need to study to make sure i'm better qualified than she is - not that i'm competitive or anything! ;-))

reading: the origins of virtue by matt ridley
watching: last tango in halifax, ripper street, the paradise, (.....and strictly (sssshhhh!))
listening to: the ipod on shuffle