As some of you know, I've recently moved country for the second time in a matter of months. After several years trying to teach bemused Asian children the difference between "these" and "those", I decided that a career in education was not for me. Following a pleasant summer in Belfast doing nothing in particular, I am now ensonced in the English city of Nottingham studying to be a newspaper journalist.
I've no idea whether the ambition of writng for a living will ever be realised. My incurablly pessimistic portion (about 92% last time I checked) thinks it'll never happen but still, life is rather too short for regrets, so I thought I'd give it a go anyway. A lifetime in the classroom is, for me at least, too depressing to contemplate.
During my time in Korea, my fellow teachers and I would often comment on how quickly time passed, how weeks would fly by, how swiftly one went from newcomer to gnarly veteran of the English teaching scene. For me at least, the rapid passage of time on the peninsula was attributable to the repetitive and idiotic "teaching" which I was expected to carry out. With every working day essentially the same, weeks, even months, shot by.
I'm glad to report that in my new life as a student, time passes very slowly indeed. Each day brings something new, an unfamiliar face or a fresh challenge, such that the eighteen days I've spent in this country seems more like a month. Of course, this happy state of affairs won't last, novelty is by its very nature fleeting. However, for the moment, I'm feeling strangely fine.
After years of being mentally under-stimulated, it is a delight just to be studying again, to have a regular outlet for my intellectual curiosity. My course at Nottingham Trent University is quite demanding but, even at the end of a long day's studying, I come home happy because I've been doing something I love. Physical tiredness (exacerbated by my old foe insomnia) is a small price to pay for such satisfaction.
I offer these few vignettes of my time in England thus far:
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A word about my course first. I am studying an MA in Newspaper Journalism. There are about thirty of us on the course but we also have some lectures with the Radio and Television Journalism students, taking the number up to around sixty eager young hacks. This term's modules include newspaper skills, media law, IT , journalistic ethics (yes, they do exist) and shorthand. Some of these topics are a little outside my area of expertise so it's tough going at times. However there are other aspects of the course which are right up my alley. In a few weeks for instance, we'll be studying the use of puns. Nott bad!
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I'm living in student accommodation with 21 others. We live in four terraced houses with a communal garden connecting them. So far I've found this arrangement to my liking, we are always in and out of each other's living rooms, to the point that I sometimes forget which person lives in which house. Most of my commune-mates (if you will) are freshers, full of optimism and alcopops. Mostly I get on OK with these bright young things, though sometimes the eight-year age difference takes its toll. For instance, a while ago I was talking about the famous 1989 Liverpool/Arsenal title decider with a fellow Gunner commune-mate. She had no memory of this momentous occasion. She was three at the time.
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Each week as part of the course I have to write a short article about my "patch" of Nottingham, the suburb of Mapperley. Thankfully, I've arranged to work with another student on my turf. I'd be lost without her, she has lived in this fair city for a few years and thus has contacts (which, I'm swiftly learning, are the key to journalism). We went out last Saturday and got a couple of stories based on her sources.
What a great (though slightly daunting) feeling it was to wander around, notebook in hand, asking people questions. Immediately I felt a surge of excitement to finally be at the coalface, mixed with a sense of guilt at disturbing people going about their business. But I will have to get used to it. I will also have to learn to become more of an extrovert. Andrew Marr has called this period in a young journalist's life as "scrubbing off the last vestiges of shyness". Or words to that effect. If I was a real hack, I'd go check that quote. In any case, I still need to do a little scrubbing.
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For years I resisted the lure of Albion, wanting at all costs to avoid becoming part of the Irish in England. But here I am, after twenty-six years, living among the enemy. So far, football matches aside, it has been a trouble-free relationship. I long ago learnt that your average Sassenach knows little of Eireann and cares considerably less, so I don't initiate any discussions about Irish politics. The only time my homeland comes up in conversation is when one of my commune-mates attempts to mimic my Belfast twang. Impressions so far have ranged from piss-poor to very piss-poor.
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I could go on with vignettes all day but that'll do for now.