GRUWN

A professionally unproductive weekend, a late-night work binge, a hasty application and then a morning bombshell have left me tired and rattled at it is only Monday.

I had a lot of tasks hanging over me over the weekend, which I thought I could do at various times. This did not happen as expected and there I was last night, typing for my life till midnight. Then came the expectedly unexpected shock to the system. I arrived to the staffroom at 7:30am after an early wake-up and commute over to Newmarket to find my associate teacher talking to the AP (associate principal) and she told me as I headed towards the toilets, "I have two pieces of good news for you". "OK..." I very warily replied, but she insisted I attend to my bladder first before she told me. Of course, I thought it was going to something far from good news, because there wasn't much that could make things better than the already above-average this practicum has been scoring... other than one particular student being found to be an alien, and had been seized by government scientists for study.

When I returned she said something to the effect of: "I'm going to the UK for two weeks this Thursday." A pin dropped loudly in the background. The reason was completely understandable. Her partner's father was literally on death's door knocking, and so hasty arrangements were quickly made. My practicum doesn't technically require her, but it makes the whole operation a whole lot more difficult.

But then again there are some positive points too if I wasn't so much on the backfoot. I can take extra control earlier and also establish things my way. But I don't feel like I will enter that phase on the front foot. I am behind in my grasp of some of the programmes. And I have received another unit to do on statistics.

Ah well.