Younger days; and a new venture
Feb. 5th, 2004 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI now believe my life can be reduced to one sentence.
"It'll look good on your UCAS form!"
Sigh. Now I've got that out of the way, I didn't have a bad day. Admittedly, it didn't start well. I slept straight through my alarm. If you know me, you might remember my ability to sleep through things is rapidly becoming legendary. I apparently did turn my alarm off, which means I must have somehow got out of bed and walked to the other side of the room and back again without quite reaching consciousness.
That's besides the point, really, as I woke up eventually and tried to make myself believe going to school was a good idea. But as it happened, my journey into school wasn't as traumatic as it usually is. The weather has turned, and my mood with it. Perhaps I have some mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I doubt it - it was just the sight of the sky. The sun was out, but that wasn't the point. It was the huge expanse of bright blue sky that made the difference.
So I walked to school in mild, bright weather (I've spent too much time talking about the weather now) and unfortunately, walked straight into Mr Evans in full-flow. Today's rant is Tony Blair's "I didn't know" forty-five-minute WMD claim. If I hear the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" again, I shall have to kill someonw, probably Mr Evans, which is probably totally unfair. He's a good teacher, just apt to go off on tangents. As am I, now I come to think of it.
I thought today was the last of the "Cooking on a Budget" module, but it wasn't. It was "cook anything", which I interpreted as "don't cook" and didn't bother with the ingredients. I helped Bev with her chocolate brownies, which did not go well. Firstly, brownies never work. Never. Maybe you have to be on American soil before the forces of the universe will allow sugar, eggs and butter to become squidgy chocolate things as opposed to dry crumbly brown things.
Bev's brownies, then. The first thing that transpired was her forgetting to grab an electric whisk, so off she went to the store cupboard, and yelled something about "Iona, measure out the cocoa!"
So I did. I looked at the recipe, read "125g cocoa powder", took the scales off the shelf, opened the cocoa tin (Cadbury's, what else?) and prepared to measure it out. And then realised the tin actually contained 125g of cocoa, so dumped the whole lot in the bowl. Bev came back after that bearing an electric whisk. Which she turned on, and then put in the bowl with the eggs and sugar. I jumped backwards in time. The stuff was gooey and messy but rather nice. In the meantime, Mrs Phillips had handed me a digital camera. "Seeing as you're not doing anything..."
They wanted pictures for the open evening. So I took random pictures of people around me. Something happens to Becca within a camera lens - the first shot is of her holding a scrubbing brush and a bottle of Fairy liquid, gesturing wildly. There's a few normal shots - Julie cutting peppers, Jacinta greasing a baking tin - then Becca again, this time miming scenes from Psycho with Jacinta and a carving knife. I kept all the pictures. Should give the Home Econonmics teachers a bit of a giggle when they come to look at them.
Bev's brownies eventually turned out well. She left the mixture too long in the pan, though, so it started baking in there. To save her having to scrub the stuff off (really!) I got out a teaspoon and ate it off. Gorgeous, and especially nice as I never saw the finished brownies. I had to go to Maths-for-Science, which is where I had the aforementioned blue sky revelations. The Physics lab is positioned so you can see the sky curving from horizon to horizon. I stared out there while all around me people did standard deviation. Following that I went down to a Drama Festival rehearsal, but didn't think I was needed at all, so I went to the library out of reflex.
Found Nichola, back from Aston and at that moment playing a truly hypnotic Yahoo! game on the computers. She ended up playing draughts again, while I sat back on the cushions and tried to be helpful. While I was sitting there, Mrs Dodds came in looking demonic. Really. "Why are you being evil?"
"I am not!" she said, but she was. Within seconds, she'd unloaded a handful of photos onto the table all over the draughts board. I picked them up in wonder. It seems Mrs Dodds has been hanging onto all the pictures ever taken in school for time immemorial, and today, she'd decided to embarrass the sixth form. The picture she gave me has Meg, Helena and me in it. I'm staring up at the camera with my eyes wide; I look absolutely terrified. I also look about nine, which was annoying at the time as I was a third. Mrs Colvin said later that I haven't a changed a bit. Why, thank you. Everyone else I showed the picture to shrieked a lot. "Oh my god! Were we ever so young?"
Sadly, the answer is a resounding yes. And the really worrying thing is our teachers remember us clearly. Apparently I was a very quiet child, who asked a lot of questions and had a "high cuteness factor." I have to return the picture tomorrow. No-one else is seeing it, methinks.
And that is all, really; nothing else of note has happened, apart from my having had an idea. My job-hunting is not going well at all, as may have been gathered. No-one in Formby wants to give me a job. So I've had another idea. In a nutshell, tution. I'm pretty sure I could tutor primary school children in Maths and English and basic science, given the material and some time to prepare. I've done it for a lot of my cousins - I taught Nupur to read - and even though I don't like kids, I do like teaching. Pedar did something similar when he was my age.
I'm not sure how to go about it. Any ideas? I was thinking about advertising in the Southport Visiter and perhaps in newsagent windows in the village. Exactly what to say in the advert will be a problem, as I'll have to make clear I'm not an adult, but have some academic aptitude, and also, I'd better not teach kids older than about eight. Above that age, they start getting into the whole eleven-plus minefield, and parents go nuts about tution at that age. My mother did. She had me working harder for my eleven-plus/Merchants' entrance than I did for my GCSEs.
Also, what to charge? I thought maybe seven quid an hour... any thoughts?
Besides "It'll look good on your UCAS form!"
"It'll look good on your UCAS form!"
Sigh. Now I've got that out of the way, I didn't have a bad day. Admittedly, it didn't start well. I slept straight through my alarm. If you know me, you might remember my ability to sleep through things is rapidly becoming legendary. I apparently did turn my alarm off, which means I must have somehow got out of bed and walked to the other side of the room and back again without quite reaching consciousness.
That's besides the point, really, as I woke up eventually and tried to make myself believe going to school was a good idea. But as it happened, my journey into school wasn't as traumatic as it usually is. The weather has turned, and my mood with it. Perhaps I have some mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I doubt it - it was just the sight of the sky. The sun was out, but that wasn't the point. It was the huge expanse of bright blue sky that made the difference.
So I walked to school in mild, bright weather (I've spent too much time talking about the weather now) and unfortunately, walked straight into Mr Evans in full-flow. Today's rant is Tony Blair's "I didn't know" forty-five-minute WMD claim. If I hear the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" again, I shall have to kill someonw, probably Mr Evans, which is probably totally unfair. He's a good teacher, just apt to go off on tangents. As am I, now I come to think of it.
I thought today was the last of the "Cooking on a Budget" module, but it wasn't. It was "cook anything", which I interpreted as "don't cook" and didn't bother with the ingredients. I helped Bev with her chocolate brownies, which did not go well. Firstly, brownies never work. Never. Maybe you have to be on American soil before the forces of the universe will allow sugar, eggs and butter to become squidgy chocolate things as opposed to dry crumbly brown things.
Bev's brownies, then. The first thing that transpired was her forgetting to grab an electric whisk, so off she went to the store cupboard, and yelled something about "Iona, measure out the cocoa!"
So I did. I looked at the recipe, read "125g cocoa powder", took the scales off the shelf, opened the cocoa tin (Cadbury's, what else?) and prepared to measure it out. And then realised the tin actually contained 125g of cocoa, so dumped the whole lot in the bowl. Bev came back after that bearing an electric whisk. Which she turned on, and then put in the bowl with the eggs and sugar. I jumped backwards in time. The stuff was gooey and messy but rather nice. In the meantime, Mrs Phillips had handed me a digital camera. "Seeing as you're not doing anything..."
They wanted pictures for the open evening. So I took random pictures of people around me. Something happens to Becca within a camera lens - the first shot is of her holding a scrubbing brush and a bottle of Fairy liquid, gesturing wildly. There's a few normal shots - Julie cutting peppers, Jacinta greasing a baking tin - then Becca again, this time miming scenes from Psycho with Jacinta and a carving knife. I kept all the pictures. Should give the Home Econonmics teachers a bit of a giggle when they come to look at them.
Bev's brownies eventually turned out well. She left the mixture too long in the pan, though, so it started baking in there. To save her having to scrub the stuff off (really!) I got out a teaspoon and ate it off. Gorgeous, and especially nice as I never saw the finished brownies. I had to go to Maths-for-Science, which is where I had the aforementioned blue sky revelations. The Physics lab is positioned so you can see the sky curving from horizon to horizon. I stared out there while all around me people did standard deviation. Following that I went down to a Drama Festival rehearsal, but didn't think I was needed at all, so I went to the library out of reflex.
Found Nichola, back from Aston and at that moment playing a truly hypnotic Yahoo! game on the computers. She ended up playing draughts again, while I sat back on the cushions and tried to be helpful. While I was sitting there, Mrs Dodds came in looking demonic. Really. "Why are you being evil?"
"I am not!" she said, but she was. Within seconds, she'd unloaded a handful of photos onto the table all over the draughts board. I picked them up in wonder. It seems Mrs Dodds has been hanging onto all the pictures ever taken in school for time immemorial, and today, she'd decided to embarrass the sixth form. The picture she gave me has Meg, Helena and me in it. I'm staring up at the camera with my eyes wide; I look absolutely terrified. I also look about nine, which was annoying at the time as I was a third. Mrs Colvin said later that I haven't a changed a bit. Why, thank you. Everyone else I showed the picture to shrieked a lot. "Oh my god! Were we ever so young?"
Sadly, the answer is a resounding yes. And the really worrying thing is our teachers remember us clearly. Apparently I was a very quiet child, who asked a lot of questions and had a "high cuteness factor." I have to return the picture tomorrow. No-one else is seeing it, methinks.
And that is all, really; nothing else of note has happened, apart from my having had an idea. My job-hunting is not going well at all, as may have been gathered. No-one in Formby wants to give me a job. So I've had another idea. In a nutshell, tution. I'm pretty sure I could tutor primary school children in Maths and English and basic science, given the material and some time to prepare. I've done it for a lot of my cousins - I taught Nupur to read - and even though I don't like kids, I do like teaching. Pedar did something similar when he was my age.
I'm not sure how to go about it. Any ideas? I was thinking about advertising in the Southport Visiter and perhaps in newsagent windows in the village. Exactly what to say in the advert will be a problem, as I'll have to make clear I'm not an adult, but have some academic aptitude, and also, I'd better not teach kids older than about eight. Above that age, they start getting into the whole eleven-plus minefield, and parents go nuts about tution at that age. My mother did. She had me working harder for my eleven-plus/Merchants' entrance than I did for my GCSEs.
Also, what to charge? I thought maybe seven quid an hour... any thoughts?
Besides "It'll look good on your UCAS form!"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2004-02-05 10:00 am (UTC)My aunt in England used to be a teacher and after she stopped working she did private tuition and she asked £15 for an hour. She stopped doing it when she was 80 and that's 10 years ago. So if I were you, I'd ask about the same.
I want chocolate brownies now.
no subject
on 2004-02-05 10:03 am (UTC)I also want brownies now.
no subject
on 2004-02-05 12:24 pm (UTC)"It'll look good on your UCAS form!"
You see, I knew there had to be some essential similarity between your education system and ours, and now we've found it. This is so familiar, though I'm not perfectly clear on what UCAS is.
Re:
on 2004-02-06 02:48 pm (UTC)Re:
on 2004-02-06 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-02-05 01:23 pm (UTC)On the other hand, though, I say go for it. And I agree with the 8+ thing too. The 11+ exam, to me, still sounds barbaric and cruel (okay, I'm biased, I come from a lineage that failed it) and parents will, understandably, panic. And parents do the same over SATs. Mum and Dad are royally freaking over Megan's SATs this year, too. (*coughignoringmyALevels*) Not sure how you'll get kids under 8 - parents tend to be wonderfully laissez-faire at that age. "S/he's just a late developer! Really!" Promote the aspect that you can help kids 'gain valuable reading and writing skills, as well as basic maths, which will set them up for life in the busy and competitive world of today!'
Or something to that effect.
So I say look into the laws (pesky things!) and go from there. Price sounds about right too.
Re:
on 2004-02-06 02:58 pm (UTC)The eleven-plus - madness. I took it for no particular reason and found it much more difficult than Merchant's entrance. Don't want to teach for it. Under-eights - well, I agree with you up to a point, but then, you have met my parents, I believe? They were insane when I was under eight (still are, but besides the point) and if I can be blatantly employing of stereotypes for a moment, I bet I could get Indian children.
Am typing flyers. Wish me luck!
no subject
on 2004-02-05 02:15 pm (UTC)I understand the process works quite well in Amsterdam.
As to the tutoring rate, I am hampered by an incredibly poor knowledge of math(s) -- in fact, dyscalculia -- and a total ignorance of the current exchange rate, so I couldn't even begin to give you an estimate. But don't sell yourself short. If brains were money, you could buy and sell Rupert Murdoch ten times over.
Re:
on 2004-02-06 03:02 pm (UTC)And I would give a great deal to be able to remove Rupert Murdoch from the face of the earth.
no subject
on 2004-02-06 05:03 am (UTC)I HATED UCAS
AND THEIR CRAPPY FORMS!
BAH!
*sulk*
xx
Re:
on 2004-02-06 02:43 pm (UTC)Wow. Shouting does actually make you feel better.
no subject
on 2004-02-06 02:31 pm (UTC)"It'll look good on your UCAS form!"
Oh, do I ever sympathize.
Tutoring is a great idea. And it is good from a uni admissions standpoint. I know it's a sad thing to have to live your life with admissions in mind, but it is rather unavoidable. I did volunteer tutoring over the summer, and while I do not at all like children, either, it was strangely...fulfilling, in a sense. And I was insanely glad to have that to put on applications. ;)
no subject
on 2004-02-06 02:39 pm (UTC)