Friday 1 May 2015

TEFL

It seems like I'm always saying things are scary. It reveals a lot about the character, doesn't it? Apparently all this anxiety was inherited at a very young age, and now will plague until eternity. Imagine all the conscious effort required to get anything done at all! Yes, this is the diary of a rampant coward, so fear will be ever present but hopefully often overcome.

Returning to the theme, I haven't been to class in a while, so any kind of course is scary. Will it go alright, or will it end up in a stark repetition of all my recent interviews and end in disaster, with the rusty tongue clucking away in total gibberish and undermining any attempt to look intelligent? Should a paid class even inspire such worries, when the onus is on the teacher and organisation to make it worthwhile for the money? Why even sign up for a TEFL course to begin with? Why?

There are many mild reasons for a TEFL course. For one, it could be nice to teach English overseas, and break up this pattern of endless failure. It could be good to try out new places, and make some money while making an arguable difference to people's lives. It could even be good to continue the quest to find a place whose food is as good as it is here. Every country I've been to so far has had a decidedly lopsided supply of food as compared to the crazy diversity of the United Kingdom. Are these good reasons? Perhaps. It would also be nice to successfully teach something, and have an insurance job in the deal, and try to beat off the essential loneliness of recent times.

Enough of that, for my recent DVD experiences have led to 'The Wild Wild West', which is proving astonishingly entertaining and watchable. It's a gorgeous show, even in its monochrome first season. Along with 'The Adventures of Brisco County jr' it may prove to be a minor renaissance in my archive television search. How lovely it is to find new things, from whatever age, and things anyone can watch. Now, in anticipation of a busy weekend and twenty hours of TEFL in two days, it's time to get back to Conan Doyle and some of his fine short stories. Rest, fine world, rest!

O.

2 comments:

  1. This seems a very natural choice indeed: travel + teaching + love of wor(l)ds... Where would you go, France, Spain, Argentina, Mexico? No worries about communicating - you would be a marvellous language instructor - no pasarĂ¡n! I.

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    1. I don't know where I would go, enigmatic I. Actually it all put me off a little!

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