Day 16a

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I can't teach. I'm just no good at it.

I've gambled everything on gaining one new skill, and I lost everything. My life is crap in pretty much every way - personally, professionally, politically. And because I lost, it's going to stay that way. And because I don't have the courage to end it, it's going to stay that way for a long time.

...

It's so difficult to stop thinking that way. I rode back here on the tube in tears - just couldn't help it.

I've done something wrong in every single lesson so far, and today's was by far the worst. Each time, I've managed to scrape together enough plus points to get a "Standard" rating, but not today.

There's four days to go - three, effectively - and it feels like I shouldn't waste everyone's time bothering.

All I've got to do is write one particularly good lesson plan, and deliver one particularly good lesson, and I'm home and dry. How difficult can it be?

It can be incredibly difficult. I know more grammar than almost any of the other trainees, but when faced with a class to explain it to, get confused. The essays are easy, but the actual teaching...so near and yet so far.

I know what I've got to do. But I do it in fear that it won't be good enough.

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I wrote that at the end of day 15, following a disasterous lesson. I broke down crying several times after writing it. Today, on the sixteenth day, I'm writing (and re-writing) that final lesson.

I've decided that buzzing on coffee wasn't such a good idea, so I've stopped drinking the stuff. It was making me highly awake, but prone to panic, and perhaps emotional.

My hosts have provided me with a bottle of "Kalms" - herbal antidepressants. They're supposed to be quite effective, but have the usual side effect of blunting the intellect, so I think I'll do without them.

For more about what I supposedly have to teach on Thursday, look at the next post.

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