Day 1 of the official start date. We actually started last week and had orientation the week before. I had a frustrating time figuring out what my timetable was. I had to check emails and forum posts until I could find the times for each subject. Honestly, I don't know why they couldn't make it simpler for us. Talk about confusing. Giving us this essential information ahead of time would have been so useful. But I digress. So I'm pushing through task one of CDF (the child development subject). I'm struggling to keep my nerves from overloading. Task 1 of 3, before we even get onto the readings - God! so much to look forward to. We have to make notes for our timeline of childhood, then post a mindmap based on these notes in Teams. Well, I've finally been admitted into Teams. That's a start. The idea of doing a mindmap makes me want to scream - it's safe to do it while gargling since it doesn't disturb anyone. I've only written notes for the first two periods: the medieval child and early modern child. Three more periods to go. I found myself rolling my eyes before I could even attempt the Romantic Child. Spare me! It's going to be a loooong day. And boy am I stressed!

Pre-service Teacher

First week into my course, which is called week 0 - I'm confused, too. And what a fuck-over it's been. Christ, after reading each subject learning guide, which is full of dense officialese language so we know how important this subject pretends to be, my eyes want to bleed. We don't even have a timetable yet - or some subjects do, others don't. My biggest gripe with the subject is task-switching between half-a-dozen platforms: LMS, teams, emails, forums, Zoom, Padlet. I don't even know how to use Padlet; I'd love to see how my assignments look in them haha. One of our readings was a document on the teacher standards, complete with waffly explanations of what a bespectacled technocrat sees our profession as looking like. Here is the Mount Sinai of our vocation. These be laws: Thou shalt deliver differianted teaching techniques in accordance with the diverse learning needs of your students. And so on and so forth. One of the few good things to come out of this is the chat in Zoom. I found out I was not the only one to have entertaining thoughts. I had a chuckle over some of them, including one of a pre-service teacher calling herself the mother of dragons. I've been zipping everwhere on my bike. One day exercise with my physio, another tutoring. I'm getting tired. My naivety and doe-eyedness about the profession has been disabused. Hello cynicism!