My original timetable suggested a week of half days which made me mightily relieved as my dad is still in hospital and my childcare arrangements (mum) were well out of the window. However, the timetable was only a timetable of welcomes. The real timetable began after 10.30am.
A quarter of a century on from my last first day when a tiny speck of a man uttered a few inaudible words in a large lecture theatre we now have an all singing all dancing audio visual presentation from the “I’m a perfectionist” Dean. A speech that terrified the staff never mind the students who walked in late when he was discussing the lack of professionalism in those who turned up late.
More speeches,more audio visual presnetations (a power point presentation by any other name)and then finally into our subject groups.
Our course leader is a former English teacher with 29 years experience including a day when he fell asleep in the classroom during a particularly dull reading of a not so engaging novel.
And then the pleasantries were over. We were handed stacks of paper, booklets, calendars and reminded of the tereminable to-do list which will dominate our every waking thought until July next year.
We have to book our QTS tests in literacy, numeracy and ICT. We have to audit our skills, we have to prepare for our first tutorial and we have our first assignment looming in the next few weeks. We also have to read a novel for a lecture for next week,four Shaekspeare plays and reams of professional documentation and much much more.
As we left the lecture theatre early (at 3.30pm) I heard a (young) fellow student says she was “shattered”. I didn’t hear what she planned to do for the rest of the day as I stil lhad to get home,feed my family and take my mum to the hospital to visit dad.
Interesting times lie ahead.
