graculus

So, September. What is time anyway?

Since last post (in May, sorry about that for anyone who's actually still reading these things - hello out there!), I've guesstimated some exam grades for people, then done pretty much nothing except eat, sleep, read books and watch TV. I fell heavily down the rabbit hole that is Chinese and Korean drama despite the many many long episodes of both and boy, there's some good stuff at the bottom there.

I'm currently watching Nirvana in Fire, long after fandom found it, and have so many shows lined up I had to start a proper list (on a very helpful website called MyDramaList) to keep track of them all. Historical costume drama is my main bag, to be honest, mostly because of the excellent hats - somehow a lot of the modern day stuff just doesn't have the same pull unless it's something utterly ridiculous like Guardian.

Lots of comfort eating and not much exercise over the past few months - sadly, no stabbing people since March! - mean I've put on a good bit of weight and feel like a tub of lard. My knees dislike running, even if I didn't think it utterly pointless anyway, and I only managed to finally get hold of a bike a few weeks back. The gym has reopened, at least, but it's feeling a bit of a struggle at the moment. One of my fencing clubs has reopened partially but I haven't even dared try on my breeches, since I know they're not going to do up, so I'm not there yet.

That's another source of annoyance. The club I'm on the committee of, I have to restrain my usual impulse to be the boss of everything and everyone but some of the other people are all so vague about everything. We just found out our usual venue won't be re-opening till at least January, so not only are we vaguely thinking about how we can re-open at all (in line with both government guidance and our NGB's rules, so we're covered by insurance), we're now vaguely thinking about somewhere else to do it. *headdesk*

Anyway, work is also looming. I'm currently doing assessments for new learners, which is fine, but when actual classes start it's all still a bit up in the air. My usual classes are 12-14 people but the size of our rooms = 5-6 + me as a maximum number. Which means, I don't know, alternate weeks in class? Online stuff and paper-based stuff for people to do at home? Some learners are going to be fine with this, others I really worry about, and I have the privilege of teaching the people who are the most able in terms of their English. Meanwhile our processes around getting funding from the government, showing learner progress and putting people in for exams are all still very paper-based with signatures from me and them - already a nightmare if people call in sick, how much worse if we know people aren't going to be in every week? Watch this space for more incoherent flailing...

Other than that? How was lockdown, I was asked the other day - well, I live on my own, so that but for much longer, was my reply.

Still at work, despite lots of places going to work-from-home, as teaching doesn't really work for that as well - at least not at short notice and not without a lot of investment in infrastructure that has never happened for us. We also had the pleasure of getting a visit from OFSTED (education inspectors, for those outside the UK) even though we're in the middle of a pandemic and people are choosing to prioritise their own and their families' welfare over coming to class. These are adults I teach, after all, so they have lots of competing demands on their time.

For me, we have theoretically another week of classes, then exams and then close for Easter till w/b 20th April. We're currently taking bets on whether we'll manage to do that - my money is on an announcement this Friday afternoon that we're closing for a month (and I stand to win 2 creme eggs if I'm right!). Classes and exams are now cancelled, no creme eggs for me!

It's a bit vexing because it takes ages to get these bloody exams organised in the first place, to the point where a couple of people have asked if they can just do the exam next week if we're still open. For some of them, we can but there are technical difficulties with rearranging the others.

Over here, schools are still open but the general feeling is that this is mainly to support healthcare workers etc. who have school-age children, as a lot of people are keeping their children home from school for whatever reason and the schools also have seen a trickle of teachers calling in sick. A lot of folks with underlying medical conditions that make them higher risk or who have family members who do, so it's not clear how long the schools will be able to stay open.

If it comes down to it, I've got enough food to keep me going, but this is not particularly abnormal. There were a few things I needed to stock up on but I usually have plenty of cans and frozen stuff at home anyway (partly because I hate shopping). My main concern was what 2 weeks worth of cheese looks like - I love cheese, I eat loads of it, so I end up buying it quite regularly and struggled to visualise how much might be enough!

Fencing shut down this week too, both clubs - I expect at least a month shutdown but it could be longer. There were a bunch of competitions scheduled for the next few weeks too, so some of those will (hopefully) take place later in the year. Don't know what life is going to be like without this, though - this is the first time I've missed more than a couple of weeks because of holidays and I know I'm going to be twitchy as hell!

We're pretty much at the end of the academic year and I suddenly realised that I haven't posted for 2 months, so here goes. Not that there's much to say, to be perfectly honest - life revolves around work, fencing and not a great deal else.

Work is going pretty well, though I've been very annoyed to have an observation which included our new quality assurance manager. She's full of all the usual QA buzz words and little else, from what I can see. Apparently they were happy with my lesson but still handed me a 16-point action plan, so I'm not sure I'm convinced. My manager also teaches one class and has been observed too, with apparent expectations that she's going to receive something similar from what she told me.

I'm teaching 3 classes, two at the same level and one supposedly the level below. Sadly the folks in the lower level are really only just at that level and not very strong at all, so it's a lot slower progress than it would otherwise be. Most of this term has been about boosting their confidence so they will try stuff that's harder as we go along and it takes a lot of energy on my part to do that. You also get folks who have hit a bit of a natural plateau and it's hard to see how to get them past that, especially if they can see they're stuck too.

This is going to be my last academic year of teaching Saturdays, as it's had too much of an impact on the competitions I want to do and I've done it for 4 years. I've also been teaching a class that's 12.30-3, so I have to have lunch at about 11.30 or starve, then another from 6-8.30, which means a late dinner. I very much like having a day off in the week, though I've not been very good at actually using it properly to do stuff. Maybe if I get my weekends back properly I can do something about that?

Fencing is going pretty well - I'm settled into a routine of fencing twice a week and have my competitions planned for the season. I'm currently comfortably in the top 200 in the country but you lose the points from the previous season after 12 months, so I need to do well in the next couple of competitions to maintain or even improve that. Another attempted routine thing is going to the gym to help with this. I was fencing a teenage lad last night and, while I could push him hard for a while at the beginning (and boy, he really didn't enjoy that!), I just didn't have the stamina to keep that level of intensity going for an entire fight.

Other than that, I've been reading a lot and watching a bunch of TV shows, while wondering how people manage to keep up with everything. Nothing that sparks any fannish desires, though. On Netflix, I'm currently watching a French show called Black Spot (Zone Blanche is the original title), where police procedures are just things that happen to other people, and a couple of Korean shows: Tunnel, about a detective who travels to the future to try and catch a serial killer, and Prison Playbook, about a baseball player who ends up in prison. The only downside with Korean shows is that each episode is movie-length and they usually have loads of them, partly because the pacing is quite slow compared to shows from the US or the UK.

I'll have to do a proper end of year post about TV shows, I think - there's been some really good stuff this year, with the highlights probably being Russian Doll (weird black comedy) and Kingdom (another Korean show, this time a historical one with zombies).

We're in the last throes of the academic year, with exams to mark and just 2 more classes to teach then that's it for the summer. We're supposed to be doing mandatory CPD stuff next week but I have already reached my hours for the year and also there's absolutely nothing being organised that is of any interest or relevance to me - there's stuff via the internet I can log which will be much more useful in the longer term, I'm sure.

I have my timetable for September onwards, so I've been able to start planning exactly what I'm doing in terms of both work and generally. I'm still teaching on Saturdays but have told my boss this is the last year for me, as this will be my 4th year and it feels like it's someone else's turn to do that. It's also been a bit of a pain to try and organise around competitions, as any Saturday I book off is just added onto the end and we also have weekends we're not allowed to do for various reasons - it's technically possible to get cover but I like things done the way I want, so I've never even tried to do that. I'm still in the good books though, as I've agreed to take on an evening class (another thing many people don't want to do).

I still have planning to do for September and really want to at least make a start on it this month so I can have August off completely. However, as I am the queen of procrastination, it might not happen! At least I've organised my trip to Ireland, with WorldCon in Dublin and then a week on the west coast, which I'm really looking forward to. At the moment I'm not taking any books for signing as I don't think anyone I want to fangirl at is going to be there except for people I've already done that with. This makes the weight limit on the flight much easier to achieve!

Had another good survey at Easter, with fantastic weather every day - makes spotting much easier if the seas are calm and you don't have rain blowing into your face! Some great sightings, including minke whales closer than I've seen before, but one of the highlights for me was on the way back into port when a white-tailed eagle flew right across in front of us. I'd seen them at a distance but never really thought about how bloody huge they are till I saw one about 15 feet away lumbering across the Sound of Mull. Taking a break that way was definitely the right decision.

It did mean I missed the regional championships, which was a bit annoying, as it was also a qualifier for one of the national competitions. Next year, then! However, I did fence quite well at the British veterans nationals and am now really working towards the new season from September. Unexpectedly, this weekend I got a call-up to the regional squad for a long-running national team competition and got my regional badge (which you can only get by being selected). This competition is often dominated by folks in their teens and twenties but we lost a few fencers to a national achievement camp so I got asked this week if I was available. We did really well as a region, considering the panicky last-minute nature of the call-ups, finishing 4th out of 11 teams overall. I only ended up fighting 4 bouts and just managed to win 3 of those 12 fights but they were all against people ranked higher than me, including one woman who's just been called up for the GB veterans world championship team. :P

So now I've sewn my regional badge on to my jacket as I continue to prepare for the veteran's version of the same competition, which is in September - I've already been called up for that one and had thought that was the only one of these I'd ever get to do, since it's a bit more self-selecting!

In other news, I've been working my way through the Hugo bundle and reading all sorts of stuff. There's nothing fannish which has particularly grabbed me lately, although I recently binged my way through the 3 seasons of Versailles, which I missed first time around. I was dragged into it by Tumblr, I must confess, with the promise of an OT3 which very much lived up to what I wanted from it and therefore does not generate fic ideas at all. Boy, that theme music is massively annoying though, with the whiny vocals. *shudders*

I've also been getting back into podcasts, even though I don't really drive as far as I used to - there's some really excellent ones out there and I think I'll do a separate post on them in the next couple of weeks, in the hopes this account doesn't get left to lie fallow all summer. No promises, though!

Plenty going on, most of it not particularly fannish. It kind of breaks into three categories: stuff to do with my house, work and fencing.

First off, the house. When I bought it, I didn't quite realise the extent to which the previous owner was a devotee of the concept of bodge-it-yourself. I think people ought to do things themselves, if they know what they're doing, but in this case a) he didn't and b) he has caused further problems for me. A case in point has been my ongoing struggles with the central heating system and the discovery recently that the (plastic) overflow pipe from the cold water tank in the attic (whence comes all the water to feed the system, rather than from the mains) was held together by basically nothing. So when the ballcock started playing up and the tank overfilled, the water that was supposed to be diverted through a pipe to outside instead went into the ceiling of the room below. I've now fixed that problem myself but am well aware that it's just a temporary fix - in my near future is the expensive replacement of the heating boiler and the removal of all the tanks connected to it, which will doubtless end up costing me more as my plumber discovers all the other things that have been half-arsed along the way.

Fortunately, at the same time, work is fine. I've had something new to do this term, which is assessing folks for placement and that's been interesting. We take people into classes until Easter usually, so I'm signed up to keep assessing till Christmas at least. I got tripped up by some paperwork issues at the end of last academic year, so I'm trying to keep on top of everything as I go this time around - so far, so good.

I've had a very up and down time with fencing, having entered another competition and done the absolute worst I've ever done. I've finished last before but there's a difference between finishing last because everyone else was better than you and finishing last (like this time) because you sucked. I've been describing it as a 'frustration death spiral' - I fenced badly, so I got frustrated, then I fenced even worse. Then I had some really good fights in practice last week, as well as practice last night where I had two fights back-to-back at one point, the second of which I won against a woman who usually beats me fairly comfortably. After that competition, I was left wondering if I was kidding myself about how well I can fence but results like that one make my head spin again. Anyway, another competition in a couple of weeks, so we'll see if I can get my head together and actually fence as well as I think I can.

To be honest, I had a bit of a mental health wobble the morning after the competition and felt very low. That seemed to lift as I was at work throughout the day, so it's probably a good thing I now work straight after the weekend and don't have yet more time to mope. ;)

Whoops, where did January and February go?

So, an update on a few things, first off the current situation around fencing. A quick explanation of how competitions work, for those folks who don't know (as this will be pertinent to the title of this post) - you usually start off with a poule round (or rounds), where you fence 5 or 6 other people for 3 minutes or first to 5 hits to decide your ranking for the direct elimination (DE) fights which are up to 15 hits, over three 3 minute periods with a minute break between them. The better you do in the poule(s), the lower ranked person you fight next. Some competitions are closed, meaning you have to meet certain criteria to fence in them (e.g. regionals or beginners) and some are open, meaning literally anyone can enter them if they have the right licence.

Since I started doing competitions, I've been setting myself realistic goals, in increasing levels of difficulty:

Not finish last in an open competition

Get points off every opponent in my poule in an open competition

Get at least 7 points in a DE fight in an open competition

Win a poule fight in an open competition

Win a DE fight in an open competition

After this weekend, I now have only the last (and most difficult) to achieve. I was in a competition where, because of the weather, only 9 fencers made it so our second round was what we call a poule unique - I fenced all 8, having already fenced 4 of them in the first round. One of the fencers is in the top 30 in the country and she absolutely slaughtered me 5-0 in the first round but I beat her 5-4 in the second! Achievement unlocked! I also beat two other people but they'd both not been fencing long so I was feeling a bit uncertain as to whether I'd actually achieved my goal or not till this particular fight...

To be honest, I haven't been working as hard as I could have - I've been dodging going to the gym and haven't got around to asking for lessons yet either. It's about 5 weeks to my next competition so I will get on with that properly, as I really want to make a go of this, or at least as far as is possible given my age starting.

In other news, I'm now just one observation and one module away from my course being over, so the finishing line is in sight. I can't wait. I don't have my teaching schedule for next academic year yet but I hope to be able to continue to have some flexibility around competing and teaching, like this year, assuming I'm even working Saturdays again. It's been a real mixture this year, with one very good class, one not quite so good (nothing like as confident as the previous class at the same level, which was a learning experience) and one where both attendance and numbers have been an issue. That one's closing at Easter so I'll be picking up other stuff to complete my hours for the year and trying not to take it personally.

I also unexpectedly got 2 days off this past week, as we had a lot of snow (for UK definitions of 'a lot of') and the centres where I teach were closed - to be honest, we could have gone in on Saturday as the extra snow which was forecast didn't arrive after all, but I can understand why they didn't take the risk. That just means I have to tack on that missed class to the end before we finish, as I already got paid for it.

I've always thought of myself as the queen of not wanting to be told what to do but I've recently met my match, in fact I may have been replaced!

One of the places where I work, there's a particular teacher who always does too much, all the time. She's absolutely outdone herself this time around though, as she was in hospital last week for an operation, following which she came back to work yesterday. Not only that, but because she's been told she can't drive, she caught the bus from her house to the central bus station and then walked from there to our centre (2 miles) and from there to another place for a meeting (at least another mile). Oh, and she's back in for another operation next week!

When asked why she'd come back to work, she said she was bored at home. When asked why she'd walked all over the place instead of a) catching the bus that stops right next to our centre, or b) getting a lift off someone, she said she had to keep up with her steps. WTAF?

*head desk*

We're almost at the stage of finalising my classes for September - it always seems a little odd to be thinking that I'll know my routine through to well past this time next year that far in advance, but it's the only way to do it, so there we are. From preliminary discussions, it's looking very much like a re-run of this year, two weekday mornings, two weekday afternoons and a Saturday morning class but less of them so I can enter some fencing competitions and have room to manoeuvre dates as required.

I'm starting to get disorganised in my head, because we're really on the home stretch now and I can almost taste the end of term. One more week and then it's half term and, at the moment, I don't have as many commitments in terms of invigilation as usual - I'm not quite so stretched for money and am teaching more hour, so I didn't offer as much availability as usual. At the moment I only have 3 exams for the actual half term week where previously I've worked all day pretty much every day, but I also have a bunch of stuff I need to get finished for my college course so there's plenty of reasons why I'm not so worried about that.

I also just picked up another, short-term, class through to mid-July but that's relatively stress-free as I've been given the okay to do without exams and it's easy for me to just re-use material I already have for a new audience. It's also extra money on top of my existing hours, so that's nice and will go a good way to paying for my expensive Finland trip. Of course, I made that trip (hello, WorldCon!) more expensive than it needed to be by adding on a hiking expedition beforehand and some time in Turku too, but I figure I may well never visit again so why not?

The only problem is that I also made the mistake of watching a documentary series about the Hebrides so now I want to go back and am wondering if I can squeeze a week in Scotland in there too before I start work again in September, though I may have to skip a potential competition to do it. I need to have a look at the dates and figure it out.

Okay, what's been going on since my last post way back in September? Well, the weasel is still alive, though I swear he gets scrawnier every time I look at him - still, as long as his quality of life is okay, I'm not going to complain.

In work news, we got a bizarre email last week going 'oh, btw, you should have got a pay rise 18 months ago but we forgot, so you're getting it and your resultant back pay in the next pay packet' which led to a few raised eyebrows. I'm still teaching 3 courses, though the second of my 6-month courses (which is due to start in February) may well end up being whatever level is needed for demand. I'm also hoping to negotiate a slight time change so that I get more than a 30 minute turnaround to get one lot of learners out, shove some lunch down my neck and be ready for the next lot to come in the door. Fortunately that only happens one day a week but it's a real pain.

I also got my first plagiarism of the academic year this past week. I'd asked for my folks to write something about an interesting place they'd been, only for one of them to give me something that was very obviously culled from Wikipedia. So I made a few choice comments to the group as a whole and also gave her some written feedback and hopefully that won't recur. Full marks for trying, though!

I've also just started at a new gym, which is based in my local high school. It's not open all day but the location and not having to pay parking charges makes up for that. I've had a year's free membership with the council gym but wasn't going to any classes other than Pilates once a week, which I want to continue, so I've saved money from not paying parking and just the sheer aggravation of driving into town. I'm a little annoyed that the people who're supposed to be supporting me from the council scheme apparently forgot I exist a few months back and I'd had nothing to say what should happen next, so I think a terse email will be heading their way next week. I didn't really need it, but I hope other people who need more support than me get a better service!

In college news, it's all a bit tedious at the moment, interspersed with the people who know the least about teaching apparently being the ones with the most opinions on the subject. Naturally, when faced with the prospect of a 2,500 word assignment, my response as a fic writer was only 2,500? - I've started work on it and it's already past that but I figured cutting it back would be easier.

Finally, I'm still making progress with the fencing lessons. Passed Grade 1 Foil a few weeks back and I understand the coach is keen to get those of us who're currently having lessons through Grade 2 before Christmas so he can then take on a new lot of learners in January and use us as examples as and when required. Or something like that. I have a continuous set of bruises on my leading thigh but am about to order proper fencing breeches (thanks, unexpected back pay!) which I hope may reduce that a little. My only regret is that, because of their location, I can't show off my bruises to the folks at work! :P

Okay, that sounds much more dramatic than is actually the case, but it's as good a title as any so we'll go with it! Yes, it's the summer holidays (so that, in the UK at least, means torrential rain alternating with days which are quite nice) and I have 3 weeks left before I have to actually start trying to teach something to someone. Which means schemes of work and lesson plans - slightly complicated by the fact that for one course I need a scheme of work for the entire year and have never taught a course that lasted more than two terms, and for the other I'm teaching at a level I've not taught before.

I'd had a couple of speculative enquiries from the firm where I temped last year as to my availability (both over the summer and in the autumn term) but was uncharacteristically realistic with myself in terms of what I already have going on. Sure, money is great but so is not losing the plot because you're trying to do too much! And then there's the little matter of starting at college myself too, which I'd pretty much forgotten till I looked at my calendar for September and saw a not about enrolment. *headdesk*

For the courses I've taught before, a new issue also arises in the form of returning students. How it works in my particular subject is that folks need to pass three exams (Speaking & Listening, Reading and Writing) before they can move on to the next level courses and it usually takes people a year to do all three. Sometimes a little longer if they're really struggling with one of the units - usually Writing is the hardest of the three, though occasionally we get people who can write grammatically but then the tenses fly out of their head when talking. Because I just finished teaching two Entry 2 classes which were less than a year, I now have the pleasure of at least 3 learners in my Entry 2 class who've already been through some of the material I'd normally use and in recent months to boot. Which means finding other stuff I can use so that I don't make life too easy for them!

In other work-related news, one of my former students who messed me about a lot (not turning up and then insisting he was better than he actually was) pestered his way into doing a Speaking & Listening exam while I was away - I'd put him in for it then he promptly disappeared, having attended less than 30% of the classes, only to state he'd 'missed a few'. Is it wrong of me to have laughed like a drain when I discovered that he failed it?

In non-work news, after just about recovering from bronchitis, I then went to Nine Worlds and got con crud, so I've been living on cold relief stuff again since getting back last week. At least I got to do what I wanted there, which was as much catch up with people (including some fan-girling of two particular authors) as go to panels. It's hard sometimes to balance the 'oh, we've already discussed this to death in fandom' aspect with other people's enthusiasm for what is new-to-them and so some panels I might have gone to ended up being ones I knew I could quite competently do and so avoided. The panels I went to were interesting though, so I didn't feel like I'd missed out too much - this year the location meant they were much closer together and I only missed out on one I wanted to go to because I arrived too late to get in.

Next year, of course, is WorldCon in Helsinki so it's fairly unlikely I'll be going to Nine Worlds as well (since it's the weekend before) as if I'm going to Finland, I want to get a chance to see more than just the capital. Now I have my timetable, I know that I'm finishing classes earlier this coming year and so I could go out before the con for a couple of weeks, but that's still a decision to be made - I need to have a look at where I want to go and get some costings, as it might be cheaper (in terms of flights and hotels) to finish with WorldCon than have it be the start of my trip. Helsinki! \o/

Other than that, stopped writing a while back and have been too lazy to get my arse in gear since - once I broke my streak on 750Words I didn't get myself going again. Knowing the way my brain operates though, I fully expect that once I'm back in a routine and at all under the cosh in terms of time, my creative side will suddenly start wanting an outlet. That's usually what happens, never when it's convenient of course! :P