Jenny @ The Story Begins Here's Journal
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Below are the 19 most recent journal entries recorded in
Jenny @ The Story Begins Here's LiveJournal:
| Friday, November 1st, 2002 | | 1:36 pm |
Base A begins...
Well, I am now The St. Ambrose Barlow RC High School in East Didsbury. Not really prepared to comment at the moment, as I've only been there three days, but let's put it like this - it's very different from Abe Moss! I've also moved house, which I'm sure everyone in Burnage is really pleased about *cough*.
If you want to catch up with our group, we have a website at http://pgceenglish.faithweb.com
My home e-mail isn't working, so if you need to contact me do it at jhsanders@sociologist.com
Current Mood:  tired | | Friday, October 4th, 2002 | | 1:00 pm |
They've let me loose inside the education community...but I'm solvent!
I did my first two days in school this week, so a big hello to all the staff and students at Abraham Moss High School in North Manchester. Sadly I will be returning next week, and the week after that, and I have to teach you at some point. But hey, it could be worse, I might be a serial killer. Hang on, actually I might be...
I got paid today, so despite being potentially homeless I can now afford to eat. Some wretched little bastards launched an arson attack on my house last Friday, so I smell of smoke and my flat is a suspicious shade of grey, but nothing was damaged (except perhaps my sanity) and I'm leaving as soon as I can anyway. If you know who did it, please tell the police. They really don't care and need a good kick.
I am currently accepting presents of food, money and a new graphics package for my computer, as my ancient copy of PSP4 just doesn't like being installed alongside CoffeeCup 9.3. I would also appreciate someone sending me the $49 registration fee for that program. You know it would only benefit my students in the end!
Current Mood:  pleased | | Friday, August 23rd, 2002 | | 12:59 pm |
A chance to use my favourite expression - BEEN A LONG TIME!
My word, it's been ages since I last wrote in this, in fact it's been ages since I did anything to any of my websites/journals/Internet 'commitments' as life has been just barmy.
I graduated, with a 2:1 Joint Honours BA in Linguistics and Sociology, then went on holiday to all the cities on the River Danube (and returned just in time...), then spent three weeks working as a security guard at the Commonwealth Games Athletes Village, then got served notice on my flat, then found another one, then found I hadn't, and now I'm here, in the computer room, for the first time since about May.
It really is no surprise I'm having indigestion problems :-)
I start a PGCE at Manchester Metropolitan University on September 16th. I think I'll be fine, it's just a pain having to move house at the start of it. My parents are also moving, out of Bedford to Shropshire, so if you're a Bedfordian acquaintence reading this, contact me to find out all the new details.
In the meantime, I'll write more soon...promise...
Current Mood: sleepy | | Friday, May 17th, 2002 | | 5:32 pm |
| | 5:24 pm |
Internally destroying
During my A-levels I became quite ill and I was diagnosed as having a form of paranoid depression. No-one knew why and assumed it was do to with my exams, which anyone who knew me would tell you it clearly wasn't. It ruined two years of my life. I found this on Ceefax this morning:
Agency asked to examine anti-acne drug
Campaigners who believe an anti-acne drug has harmed them or their children are to ask the Medicines Control Agency to investigate its safety.
More the 2,000 people in Britain and Ireland blame Roaccutane for problems of depression or suicide.
Fifteen people in Britain who had been taking the drug have killed themselves.
Manufacturers Roche say no-one has ever proved the drug leads to suicide or causes psychiatric problems.
I'm proof, so a big thank-you to the medical profession and everyone who very kindly abandoned me during that particular hour of need. You obviously thought there was something personal about the fact that I changed from a caring, pleasant person into an ignorant paranoid nutcase, because trustworthy people do that kind of thing.
Not that I'm bitter, you understand.
Current Mood: tired | | Tuesday, April 30th, 2002 | | 1:20 pm |
And now, the end is near...
It's been a while since I updated, so here's a potted account of the last few weeks.
Firstly, my parents are moving soon (I think), so trips to Bedford could be few and far between. I can hear some people breathing out as I speak.
Secondly, I'm not all that well, as my auricular canal seems to be fighting back. It hurts. With any luck it will hold off/clear up until after my exams (which are now my finals). Until then, it's lots of lying down, avoiding reading (as if!) and hoping it goes away.
Thirdly, it's my 21st birthday on Tuesday. Presents - preferably money - to the usual address.
And finally, I hope to see you all in Manchester next year, as I'm staying whether anyone likes it or not!
Current Mood:  drained | | Thursday, March 21st, 2002 | | 5:13 pm |
Oh yes, and...
...it's "paraesthesia of the auricular nerve". So now you know! | | 5:05 pm |
Headaaaaaache!
Well, the last few days have had their ups and downs. On one hand I got my final offer from the Manchester Metropolitan Centre of Excellence (teaching), went to a hockey game that the Storm actually won, bought some cheap hockey cards and watched Survivor.
On the other hand, at said Storm game I missed the chance to buy some of Kevin Brown's used kit (sob!) and no-one will sell me any, I am constantly tired, I have a stack of reading to do and everyone seems to have lost any consideration they ever had for each other.
Current five words, then:
1. Headache
2. Syntax
3. Reading
4. Chomsky
5. Ali G (who I hate. You're not sending up blacks, you prat, you're sending up Asians! You don't even know who you're taking the piss out of!)
My head hurts. Got a new Survivor desktop theme, though :-)
p.s. Who wants to teach me Object Pascal?
Current Mood:  pissed off | | Friday, March 15th, 2002 | | 10:55 am |
Many questions answered (finally!)
Well, a doctor at Manchester Royal Infirmary finally told me what was wrong with me this morning.
The chair leg inflicted damage on my audio-somethingorother canal (the one that goes up the back of your ear and provides blood to your face) and has caused paratalsis - frozen nerves - in said canal. Thus, numbness, headache and loss of balance.
It all makes sense now! Hooray! As I've proper medical diagnosis, can I sue?
On a less positive note, how do I get rid of it? Rest...(oh God, more boredom).
Current Mood: relieved | | Wednesday, March 6th, 2002 | | 1:44 pm |
Today's "five most annoying words"
"You must take time off".
But really...
1. "Politician"
2. "War"
3. "Drugs"
4. "Headache"
5. "Doctor"
Nothing against doctors, but everything against this bloody stupid post-concussion thing. Ended up in A&E on Friday night because I couldn't feel half my face. I certainly shouldn't be here doing this, so I'm going now.
Current Mood: aggravated | | Friday, March 1st, 2002 | | 11:02 am |
Today's "five most annoying words"
"The caller witheld their number".
Okay, that's cheating...
1. "Politician"
2. "Euro"
3. "Offside"
4. "Mobile" (as in, "I'm on my")
5. "Basement" (as in where both Manchester Storm and Leicester City are)
Please feel welcome to contribute your own. Updates every week, you lucky people! | | Friday, February 22nd, 2002 | | 4:22 pm |
What's my name again?
Well, I've been concussed for a third time. Some idiot clobbered me in the back of the head with a table leg and I am now quite ill. Again.
I've written to my doctor, and in the meantime it's headaches galore for the foreseeable future. I'm quite worried.
Any head injury specialists out there? Now would be a good time to say hi. | | Friday, February 15th, 2002 | | 4:35 pm |
Neighbours
We are one hour away from discovering whether Libby Kennedy dies after childbirth.
Please, please, please, please, please LET IT BE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!! | | Tuesday, February 12th, 2002 | | 12:38 pm |
Teatrays and steep hills
I have this obsession with the Winter Olympics. Sadly I seem to be on my own on this one. I was considering staying up until 4:30am to watch the pairs free dance (the best figure skating event EVER) but didn't quite get there. Saw Canada caning Kazakhstan, though. I play that damn sport. Scary. I am currently recreating the ice hockey on a Playstation, but I can't seed the top six. I also forgot to take out Bourque and put in Lemieux, so the whole thing's gone a bit wrong. But hey.
We should have a tutorial now, but the lecturer is ill. Great timing. I need all my lecturers to be ill for the next two weeks, and then I can stay up until 4:30am every night without worrying about getting up in the morning. I seem to function better on three hours sleep than eight. To my knowledge I am not Margaret Thatcher.
'Fergus Sings The Blues' was on Never Mind The Buzzcocks last night, about twenty minutes after I listened to it. How odd.
I have nothing to do. This is immediately obvious.
Current Mood: tired | | Tuesday, February 5th, 2002 | | 2:24 pm |
Empirical proof that universities are run like businesses...and that I have no faith in myself.
At school I was always chosen as the one to take visitors around. Prospective students, new students, teachers from other schools, important people, they were all mine (in a manner of speaking). It seems to be something I excel at, and staff seemed to know. I remember once being sent by a teacher to meet some guy who had come to see him and arrived in the middle of one of my lessons. When I returned, visitor in tow, we were deep in conversation and sharing some joke over something, despite the fact I barely even knew his name and it wasn't me he'd come to visit. I was just good at welcoming people.
You can probably imagine my amusement this morning when I had a phone call from my Faculty office, telling me that the Comms department were short of representatives to take prospective students around the campus. Apparently, someone burst in asking if they knew anyone who'd do it. They chose to ring me.
Now, I work for the Faculty, but so do a lot of others. However, they chose me to offer the job to first. Evidently I have lost none of my charm.
But the really funny thing is, I'm being paid to do it. I enjoy these things so much that I'd just do it out of the kindness of my heart, but no, they're paying me, and quite a bit considering. Are they mad? Do they need to shell out to find students who'll show a few people around? I've often said that this isn't a university, it's a PLC. But this surely is totally barmy. I'm inclined to refuse the money, but the woman was so adamant that I should be paid that she made a point of it.
It seems funny to think that I've been chosen for these tasks since I was God knows how young. And yet I have a real problem with being 'noticed'. I walk down streets hoping that no-one will see me, or look at me, or judge me. But still, even now, I get chosen as an ambassador for my institution. Sometimes I really wonder what's wrong with my self-image. I worry like hell about people thinking bad things of me, but they fairly obviously don't. Even after working this out, I'll still be the same.
I'd make such a shit Prime Minister. Or lawyer. Or anything. And yet I wouldn't, because everyone else would think I was good, just not me. I've gone through life with such a low opinion of myself that I know that I've missed the praise (and maybe even friendship) of people who actually think I'm great.
What a way to go on.
Current Mood:  curious | | Tuesday, January 29th, 2002 | | 2:15 pm |
I think the term is "sucked in..."
Grr. I rescued a friend today from a disreputable company. We went to a meeting today about, allegedly, teaching in the USA. The details we'd been given sounded sketchy and I was suspicious, so I thought I'd go.
If I suspected hard-sell, we got it. Teaching my backside. It was a publishing company, wanting students to 'start their own businesses' in the USA. I assume selling their books, as we never got that far. In fact, we didn't get through the door, because the 'presentation' took 90 minutes (which we didn't have) and they - rather oddly - only had space for four people. MR6 is a big room. We fitted 50 in it last time I was in there.
Now, I know that people get dragged into all sorts of things under false pretenses, but I thought that disguising selling as teaching was a bit much. Apparently they claimed that you got �2,500 after expenses, but I bet you only got it if you sold enough stuff. I feel like reporting them.
That was really boring, wasn't it? So much for this journal being full of insight and art. Ho ho. You're not seeing what I'm really writing :-) | | Friday, January 25th, 2002 | | 4:50 pm |
I can't believe I wrote the note
I was thinking last night about life at school. I went back on a placement for a few days before Christmas, and needless to say it raised a few issues. This is the one that sticks with me most.
I was suicidal at 14. I got so close to actually doing it that I wrote the note. I even wrote a will. I was 14, and writing my will. I didn't do it because I couldn't decide how to.
I became suicidal again at 17. I spent about three months of my life not looking when I crossed the road so that something would hit me and everyone would say it was a tragic accident.
I spent my A-level period hoping a bus would hit me. The universe chose not to grant my wish.
This is NOT the way to live.
--
What was worse was that I got that close and nobody believed there was anything wrong. I found out who my friends were that year. I felt like I was living in the back of my own mind, watching as my life was ruined; and I couldn't do anything about it. You would think that by going from 'happy, intelligent Jenny' to 'what the hell's wrong with her?' would have made someone twig. Instead they all took it personally. Everybody was thinking about themselves, not me. And yet I was expected to think of others all day, every day, which I was still doing. Do you understand, so-called 'friends'? I was still thinking of you. I just had no way of showing it.
I was as ill as hell. Another guy in my year took that final step and I broke down during the assembly when they told us, right next to the Headmaster. It could have been my name they were reading out. And I get the feeling that somebody would have laughed.
Don't let yourself go that far. I'll probably talk about this more at some point in the future.
Current Mood: uncomfortable | | Thursday, January 24th, 2002 | | 12:13 pm |
Personality tests
I never do these either. An IQ test once told me I was 158. If that's true...wow. As if.
However, things change, so I did this one (it seems popular):
I feel that I may have already known this. One is particularly obvious - you're all out to get me, you ******s! | | 11:41 am |
Introduction (13th January)
I rarely make New Year's resolutions. This is partly because it strikes me as a tacky American thing to do, and partly because January has never really felt like the new year. There may also be the slight element that I never bother to keep them.
This year is different. I feel the need for direction. The bestselling novel which has been on the go for five years has run out of Air Miles; the bestselling album has reinvented itself more times than Madonna; the bestselling poetry compilation is thinner than the Beds on Sunday at Christmas (and probably contains as much crap). I'm just not writing enough.
I've never liked writing diaries; I've managed the odd sporadic three or four weeks and then forgot about it. I think I've been put off writing diaries since about five, as my Mum always used to make me write one in the school holidays outlining what I'd done every day. It's only now that I've twigged that a diary doesn't need to be a minute-by-minute, historically accurate version of my life's events. Hence, there will be no, "Today I went to the zoo. It was sunny. We saw lots of animals. I nearly choked on my own boredom", etc., etc.. Instead I want to go where my thinking leads me. Less fact, more philosophy. I do reflection, speculation and prediction a hell of a lot better than I do accuracy.
I will be writing something, of some description, every day. On top of this, I will also write fictional sports reports (of NHL 2001 seasons), more poetry, and - no, I will - In A Room. I don't have an excuse anymore. I momentarily caught a writer on Blue Peter saying that she had written three novels by the time she was eighteen and got her fourth published at twenty-four. There is no valid reason why I shouldn't manage step two with my first. I read an article today in the Mail on Sunday saying that there no longer original plots; only original ways of telling them. As this was my intention from the start, it looks like I have been heading in the right direction.
This 'diary' (there must be a better name for it) will be produced for an Internet audience, even if it never makes it that far. The section of my website is set up for content, but I suspect that a large amount of this will be too personal to be uploaded. Nevertheless, anything which can be edited into a printable document will be prepared and featured. There seems little point in not sharing the odd anecdote or six. As a large amount of content has had to be pulled for copyrighting and security reasons, it seems sensible to replace it with the less important stuff.
So, I would like to welcome myself - and anybody reading this - into my own personal world. As I set up my new brainstorm whiteboard, drink lots of non-carbonated, caffeine-free drinks and listen that much more carefully to Deacon Blue, consider a new beginning to a life that has, by my own admission, got a bit too studenty for its own good. I have every intention of turning it all back around for the better.
Every intention. Furthermore, I will not be looking back on this and thinking, "Christ, that's a load of crap", and editing it to high heaven. What I write, I write. Not everything turns out like a masterpiece. With any luck, the more I write the better it'll get anyway. There will be bad entries; there will be outstanding entries. It happens in everything.
And so, onwards with the Great Project(s). This time, it's for real.
(Remember - every intention.)
[Additional note to LiveJournal readers: some of you may mind my writing style witty, intelligent and observant; others will just find it brusque, sarcastic and occasionally offensive. I just do what I do and let people draw their own conclusions. I also can't resist the odd dig about men, although I sometimes have the odd dig about women too. I'm not big on society's gender conventions and it won't take some of you long to work out that I'm not exactly straight.
I might also make occasional comments about the South of England. It's nothing personal.]
Current Mood: hopeful |
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