Disappointment

As the description of this blog implies, I am hoping to become a primary school teacher after being made redundant at the beginning of this year. For all of my trans-Atlantic followers (well, both of them), this means I would like to teach children from the ages of 3-11, but specifically between 3 and 6.

I went to an Open Day for my first choice of university about 3 weeks ago. To be perfectly honest, it was my first choice because of its location and the fact that there were still places left, as making an application in the Spring to start in September is pretty late in the day. Also, I want to be able to teach Spanish with it as I did an A Level in it and kind of regret not taking it any further. Hopefully, if I was to teach it I could make some children passionate about languages and different cultures as I think the English are terrible at embracing anything 'different.' A big bonus with teaching Primary with another subject is that once you get a job you get a 'golden hello' once you get a job as they are desperate for people with certain skills. And at this particular university, you get to spend 4 weeks in Spain teaching over there which would be fabulous! Therefore, the university turned out to be pretty damn good (a Grade 1 provider of teacher training) and I was starting to look forward to the whole studying thing again after such an absence.

Now, about 2 weeks ago I found out that they had rejected my application and as you can probably understand I was so disappointed. I didn't even get to the interview stage which I think would have given me more opportunity to show the tutors how much I want this. The problem is, there are so many people coming straight from university into these post-graduate courses because the job market is looking so crap and I bet there are a good few people in my situation who have looked upon this career path as a last resort due to the secure nature of it (and I'm guessing the time off looks good too).

Now, if I had known the incentives and the funding I could get earlier, I would have taken this path a long time ago. It is something I have kept coming back to again and again whenever I have had choices to make, but I never thought I could afford to do it until now. However, I needed a kick up the arse (ass) to help me on my way and unfortunately losing my job was exactly that. And I just know that there are some people who have got places that don't really want to do it and who will quit before the Christmas holidays start.

One other thing that really annoys me about the whole thing is that I could only put down 2 choices on my application form instead of the 4/5 on the under-graduate forms I did when I first went to university. There were 3 spaces to write in, but as I want to do primary teaching I could only choose 2. Go figure. And because I have the requisite number of exam passes in English, Maths and Science the only way they can decide on who they want to interview is from the personal statements - which couldn't be more than 160 lines. Now, I know they have a hell of a lot of applications to get through, but I don't think that's one A4 page which is not enough to push your case. And that's why I really wanted an interview because I've got so much to say that would show them how sincere I am.

So now that I have finally made a decision about what I want to do with my life, I have to rely on the decisions of other people on whether or not I can actually do it. Which is stressing me out as you can imagine. Everything seems to have slotted in to place for me to do it this year (work contract ends on 31st August, mortgage payments have been reduced etc.) so I don't know if I can wait another year to start my training. If I don't get a place at this last choice, I don't know what the options are if I do want to train this year - but that's something I don't want to think about just yet...