Day 356 - Three Days From Hell

Wednesday April 7th

Three days when the shiny new life lost its lustre and I got a little pissed off with the whole GTP thing.

Nothing major - I have managed to leave my career, move my family back to the UK, buy a house, get settled and tackle pretty much everything in front of me without faltering. My potential nemesis was the dreaded GTP assignment - 4000 paltry words on a subject of my choice with a 6 month deadline. How hard can that be?

It very nearly did for me as, amazingly, I left it until the week of the deadline. It played to all my weaknesses - preparation, in depth research, time management, and I tried to cram it all into 3 days of my holiday which built up a huge level of resentment in me, Mrs N, the kids and probably the cat. I was irritable, irrational, self-pitying for 3 days...all for 4000 words.

I chose to write about internal school websites and the role they can play in enhancing independent learning. It is actually an interesting subject...for a casual read and debate over a pint. The reality is that I haven't done anything like this since university. As I quipped to my mentor, I would get my PA or team to write anything like this in my old life!

I got it done in the end (I was counting every word in the bottom right hand corner) but it was definitely not my finest moment and the resentment still burns deep inside - resentment that I had to do it at all (isn't it hard enough to be thrown in teaching from Day 1?), resentment that I gave up half my holiday worrying about it and 3 days writing it) and resentment that it was so bad.