The distinction of analytical philosophy and personal complex discourse (eh??)

Can somebody please switch my brain off for me? It's starting to hurt my head!

My first week in the post of Higher Learning Teaching Assistant is drawing to a close and it's left me feeling shattered. Not only is it the constant energy exerted in every lesson when working with young people - which I'm used to from being a TA - but it's the jump in the work load; all of the planning and preparation that's needed before the lesson is knackering because once you start thinking about what you need to organise and do for a lesson, and then start thinking about the next lesson, and the one after, then all of next week, and so it quickly snowballs into the enormity of what you need to get done between now and Christmas and it becomes impossible to turn off.

I try my best to leave work at work, but as I'm chopping my vegetables and tossing the spaghetti I find thoughts of innovative and exciting ways of how to teach verbs and clauses to a class of struggling students, creep into my mind. There is no off button. It's constant. Even when I did try and turn my mind to more sociable and relaxed thoughts last night, it wasn't long before I was engaged in a deep conversation about the finer points of media semiotics, structuralism and the effects on wider cultural ideology with a teacher-friend of mine for a lesson she needed to plan for today. Not exactly what you'd discuss in leisure time. My first thought this morning was also about work; about a fun mix and match sentence game I'd dreamt up and whether I'd have time to quickly put it together before the start of the lesson. Unfortunately I didn't.

Now why can't I be this creative when I'm trying to conjure up pitches for articles?!

Teaching has aged me. Only two weeks into the job and I already feel like I've added on five years. There's clear evidence of this too, as I sit here typing while listening to Radio 4 and I got way too excited today about getting 100% brushed cotton pillow cases and a bed sheet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you're average 25 year old gets excited about such trivial things and I literally have no excuse or explanation about the abomination that is being under the age of 40 and choosing to listen to Radio 4!

 It's definitely hard to be young when you're working in education and the people you're working with are literally half your age or less.

However, the weekend is near and I shall make it my aim to both switch off - banning all thoughts of teaching and strategies from my mind - and reaffirm my youthful gaiety and complete lack of responsibility and disregard all respect for authority. In short, I plan to regress. Of course I plan to do it in the most mature way possible (at a wedding reception) and taking full advantage of all of the benefits of being an adult (propping up the bar).

*Sigh* Just one more day to get through, and now it's time for me to head off and fall asleep dreaming of verbs, nouns and complex sentences, or perhaps if I nod off to Radio 4 as they discuss philosophy, religion, cultural discourse and the death of God through analytical philosophical rhtoric (or something?) I may subconsciously pick up some extraordinary knowledge with which to bamboozle people.

Night all.
RoseC -x-