Originally posted 16 August 2017.
I was having a conversation today about how quickly time is going. It's actually ridiculous! This time a year ago, I was starting the last semester for my teaching degree. Fast forward and so much has changed since.
We're a healthy 8 months into the year and I've got a solid list (literally) of a bunch of stuff I've done. I can easily look at time and think, "Wow, look what's happened. Time is not just passing me by. I'm actually doing amazing-cool-sometimes-hard things."
So, it is my pleasure today, to again, invite you into a little bit of my world and tell you all about number fourteen on that list... take my department interview.
I had a couple of ideas when posed with the incessantly asked question, "What to you want to be when you grow up?" I was pretty fixed on being an author, a fashion designer, a wife and mum, or a journalist. Once I hit high school I was just as undecided.
I wasn't particularly passionate about any of those 'career' options. They were generally nice ideas, and that's where they stopped. Subject selection for year 8 electives appeared. Choices were to be made, and little did I know how it was going to be such a determiner for what I'd do with my life. I chose childcare and photography.
I was a little double-minded. The idea of getting to take home that electronic baby totally sold me on childcare. That was a no brainer. I'd chosen photography as my second preference, with Drama as a third - don't even ask about the fourth because I have NO idea.
I started getting cold feet about photography so I asked if it could be switched with Drama. Then again, changed my mind and asked it to be changed back to photography. Lo, and behold... I ended up in Childcare and Drama.
I was a socially anxious and awkward kid in high school. I think I kind of knew a little about who I was, but because I was super tall and pretty overweight, I didn't walk around seriously comfortable with myself. I lacked a lot of confidence in who I was.
It's interesting as I talk to people who have never taken a drama class in their life, and they find a way to sum up drama as a subject or art where people pretend to be someone else. I've even had someone go as far as to say you spend the whole time 'deceiving people' (let's just leave that there and make no further comment).
Funny enough, drama became a place where I could explore and find myself. And, no, I didn't spend the time 'pretending to be someone else' or trying on personalities until I found one that fit. Drama is so much more than that. It created a safe haven where I could express myself in ways that made me nervous, but wouldn't attack me for it.
In fact, it asked and expected me to. I could make mistakes and laugh and think, "okay, that didn't work, let's try something different." I learned that life -and myself - is deep and beautiful and scary and sad and wonderful and worth exploring and loving and thinking and talking about. Once I'd had that experience, I didn't ever want to be without it.
I spent every single one of my remaining years at high school studying Drama. It's become such a huge part of me that sometimes I forget that only through some miraculous intervention that I ended up in that class instead of in front of a camera.
My (ever so brilliant) drama teacher once mentioned the idea of me teaching and I gave it a little thought, but that was about it. I went onto University looking to see if there was something within the Drama world that I could love and do. I was actually pretty keen to see the backstage side of things. I loved performing and I was good at it, but preferred to be behind the hustle and bustle. I found that the courses that I really wanted weren't on offer. So I gradually warmed to teaching.
I am now a fully qualified high school teacher. That was the official back up plan. The funny thing is that I was never 100% sure of the actual plan, and now that I'm here, I can't imagine ever doing anything else.
So... now to my interview. The process roughly goes like this:
Get yourself into a university degree that offers a pretty piece of paper that says you can teach.
Take and pass a relatively terrifying but not too difficult test that disregards the fact that you're learning at university level to check if you can cover basic literacy and numeracy.
Jump onto a website and apply for an application to get a teaching number and send away what feels like a jabillion certified papers.
Wait for the number to come back and then apply for an interview with the department, sending a second lot of jabillion certified papers.
Choose an interview date and kill at it.
So having to do the interview seems like a pretty inevitable thing, yes? So why put it on the list? Well, I had a good year before I absolutely had to have it done and I was getting a little sick of that nagging feeling that comes from procrastination.
You know exactly what I'm talking about right? I bet you just thought of something you still haven't done, eh? It's okay. We're not alone.
It was a rainy morning, that ol' June 9th, that I woke up and prepared to be deemed 'suitable'. That's right. I'd spent the last two years getting my study on and getting really good at it - Hello pretty GPA - but still needed to be double checked. Policy is policy.
I got all jazzed up, rocking the same pinky-purple scarf that I just so happen to be wearing right now. Isn't that nice, but totally irrelevant? The super interesting thing, and a first, was that I wasn't nervous. Nay, EXCITED! It was a totally surreal experience thanks to my hype with affirmations.
I'm not here to say I absolutely shocked and amazed in that interview, because I don't exactly know that I did. I mean - SPOILER ALERT - I was deemed suitable and really that's all that matters, but the more important part of the experience was the presence of that excitement.
It was a result of positive affirmations that focused on my abilities, strengths and the potential for good to happen. What resulted from that excitement was a clearer mind and actual enjoyment. Yes, I actually enjoyed the interview experience. I felt more okay to stop and pause or take a drink. I got to connect with the person interviewing me and see them as a proper living, breathing person with a life and hobbies and thoughts, instead of seeing them as the robot that asked questions and decided my suitability. And that was pretty cool.
I was able to let the amazing parts of me that I don't always see or acknowledge in anxious situations shine. BUT, the best part, was being able to walk away and not replay and analyse every single moment of it over and over and over in my mind. So nice life lesson and memo to self: always be on the hype with affirmations. They are so much more than nice sentences. They literally make things happen.
Before my last semester had even finished there were people in my class getting jobs. Once the course work was officially done and the new school year started, even more of those people were working while I was happily taking some time off. I needed a break and it felt like the right thing to do. It got close to when I had considered starting to work and it all came to me pretty easily. Literally!
People were asking me to work. I didn't have to do a single resume drop. MAJOR blessing! I'm now continuing on the casual teaching circuit and it's exactly where I want to be. Work some days and other days not.
There are a lot of ups and downs to casual teaching and teaching full stop. I was talking to a friend the other day and thinking that I should actually start keeping a journal of all the funny moments. Like that time a girl called out during the middle of me taking the roll to say, "Miss, I LOVE your eyebrows." Or when right after introducing myself as Mrs Smith, a guy asked if I was married or not. I love the teacher part of me because it very much feels to me like Drama did. I don't always teach Drama, but whatever I teach I get to be me in a very comfortable way and I think kids respond to that.
Just two days ago, I had a student tell me that he thinks I'm a 'very enthusiastic teacher'. I chuckled a little when another student followed up with, "Is that because you're new?"
It is the most amazing experience to be in an influential position over these kids. I may only be with them for one hour of a single day, but I love the opportunities I get to be inspiring some goodness in their world. It is ridiculous to have kids say hello to you randomly in the corridor or in the playground when you've had them as a casual cover just once. It's just as incredible when kids come up to you and ask if they have you as a teacher today - this happened to me twice just today.
I'm not saying all this to toot my own horn or because I think I am the greatest teacher that ever lived. I am super green on the teaching front and I know I have a mass to learn. We all have a place for creating good in our world, other people's world and the world at large! This is what matters.
You do that in who you are and what you put out into the world. Affirmations are powerful. Positivity is powerful. Treating people with kindness and love is magical. I have had on more than one occasion the case of difficult student in the class who persists on being the number one annoyance in the room, who after being treated with kindness and love, turns around another day and expresses excitement when they see that I'm covering their class. Actual magic.
So go out into the world armed with the brilliance of who you are and let that sparkle into the lives of everyone around you. You and I both have an amazing purpose in being on this planet. Let's go fulfill it!
