Your favourite blogs
I don’t know that I have any particular favourite blogs, more that I enjoy reading whatever appears on my feed, usually thematically – travel, languages, history.
I do try to check out Realm of History and Dr Jennifer Wagner’s Blog on ielanguages.
e x
Thoughts on Education
We’ve been here before on this topic!
I believe in education as a means to progress, to move forward and upward – stepping out of the cave and into the light. But I also believe in education for education’s sake. The reduction of learning to testing and scoring and grading really defeats the point of education. We’re supposed to learn so we know, not memorise to get an A. And I’m speaking as someone who rarely gets As, even now in my masters… I don’t really care. I’ve long since accepted that there are people who just get the system and know how to ‘hack’ their work to fit what is asked for, and I’ve seen myself work my arse off doing what I believe to be the right thing only for it to be handed back with a limp grade and red pen marks telling me I didn’t get it…
Education shouldn’t be elitist and exclusionary, but it is. Education should be for everyone, should be free and easy to access in whatever form is most suitable for a person. Not everyone can up sticks and move across the country to attend a uni for five years to earn their degree, more needs to be done online and more accessible online… that includes the fees and making the internet far cheaper, if not free. Let everyone have a chance.
Hell, make it as easy to get into education as it is to apply for Big Brother. Open the floodgates, let the people learn!
e x
Where will you be in 5 years?
Well this is an interesting one, for the first time in my whole life I don’t really have any forward plan other than the next few months. Right now it’s all dependent on different outcomes, other people, and to what extent I can keep myself working.
I hope that in 5 years I will be comfortable, happy and doing what I enjoy – whether I’m in Glasgow or abroad.
e x
Most Embarrassing Moment
Um. It’s hard to say, most of the moments I can think of are more humiliating than just embarrassing.
I would probably say the time in fifth year of high school when I blacked out at the end of lunch and fell into the one puddle in the middle of the courtyard. It was June, but Scotland, hence there still being a puddle. I woke to find the whole school crowded around me waiting to see if I was dead or not, then the eruption of laughter as they realised I wasn’t dead… I was confused, I thought I was home watching Hollyoaks and couldn’t remember falling at all.
I got called Puddle Girl for a month.
What’s in your closet
Clothes, a surplus of handbags and messenger bags I never get to use, crochet projects, and some skeletons.
Your hidden talent
When I’m tippled/drunk, I can pick out the Italian/Italian speaker in the whole crowd.
Your Biggest Regret
While it’s not good to have regrets about things we can’t change… what I do regret is all the times in my life where I took the passive route instead of being more actively involved in my own life.
Times where I left early to go home and nap (I do love to nap btw), or missed out on opportunities because I couldn’t be bothered or didn’t feel like it. How often do we have to do things we don’t feel like doing because we must? Therefore when there’s the chance to do something fun but we’re not quite feeling up to it, then surely the right answer is just to do it anyway.
A lot of my regrets are linked to choices I made or didn’t make related to school, college, and uni. I wish at school I could have been more involved and invested in what school represented instead of being distracted by stupid arguments and dramas I can’t even remember anymore. If only I hadn’t taken the easy route, I could have gained a load of highers in fifth year instead of running out on the classes I did well on simply because I couldn’t face another year with said teachers. This is how I ended up being a fifth year with a free period (because I dropped music class), left Int 2 Maths instead of trying to work at it, and taking Int 2 ART in sixth year. What the hell! I wish I hadn’t drifted so much, school wasn’t a means to an end, it was just clocking time until my real life began. (It hasn’t really, yet.)
College the first year was great, I picked a bunch of subjects I was really excited about but then even though I had more free time than I did at school (but with an hour’s travel each way) I still looked to skin more time for myself, which meant leaving at lunchtime instead of spending time with friends – this could have solidified relationships more, gave me more time to study, made me feel less guilty about not studying at home. By the second year, I chose to resit classes I did in high school simply because it meant I’d already completed the course assessments and effectively would have more time to study for the final exam. That’s how I failed higher geography twice, upgraded my higher French and Biology from Cs to Bs… not that anyone bothered telling me they wouldn’t count. Not that anyone ever bothered informing me that four years of highers did nothing for me but kill time and make me realise I never wanted to study Psychology again. Le sigh.
In terms of Uni, I’m still in a love/hate relationship with Spanish. I really wanted to study Italian and preferably in Glasgow… yet every uni in Scotland that offered Italian to degree level all flipped me off and that’s how I ended up doing Spanish at Aberdeen. My consolation to myself was that at least Spanish was a language, it was related to Italian and it was better than doing a degree in something I had little interest in. And again, we come back to the same problems I did at college and school. I buried my head when things got tough and I coasted instead of facing and owning up to the challenges I experienced. I was taking 25 hours of classes a week, working 25 hours a week, travelling to-and-from work for around 12 hours a week and living in student accommodation where I was only allowed to sleep for about 4 or fewer hours a night. Thanks to all this effort just to make ends meet and maintain my place at uni, there wasn’t a lot of time to study… not that I usually had the energy left to study… it was difficult to keep up my great grades and I passed well enough, but it only made subsequent years harder as Spanish got harder and the dreaded year abroad loomed closer.
When I started second year, I had my adviser meeting on the first day of freshers where my tutor (who was also my Spanish teacher) asked me if I was still happy doing Spanish. I said yes without hesitating, and honestly that moment has haunted me ever since…
