OneAndOneIs2

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

So runs part of the advice in Mary Schmich's infamous "commencement address" article, which was subsequently put to music by Baz Luhrmann and released as "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)"

Yesterday.. was a tough day. Having only just started to really get into proper teaching of classes, I had a bit of an "in at the deep end" time after I was told to take the toughest class I'm with, and to disregard the existing lesson plan.

In other words, make up a completely new lesson to deliver to a class that really isn't interested. And I did my best. It was, to put it succinctly, a disaster.

Okay, I did get everything I'd wanted to done. So it was, technically, a success. But it had been one long, difficult battle, and I knew even as I was giving it that I was doing a lot of things wrong. The teacher gave me a big, long list of feedback, told me that I'd been handicapped by not being able to confer with her about what I had planned, and then told me to plan & take the whole lesson the next day.

NNnnng...

I could say a lot more on the whole situation, but given that this isn't an anonymous blog, I shan't..

I got home from school around 4pm. After showering, eating, and so forth, I got on with lesson planning. At half ten, I finally packed away. I woke up around 4am, worrying about the fact that I was taking two lessons from start to finish, and had severe doubts about both of them.

All in all, not a happy time. Most people I know on this course have mentioned being "that close" to quitting it already, and this was about as close as I'd come to being one of them...

Managed to doze off a bit for a while, then got up and got on with the usual routine. The lack of ability to have a lie-in meant I was a bit ahead of time, so I logged on and took a look at Facebook, amongst other places. I had a message waiting.

A week ago, I received an out-of-the-blue message from my best friend from school, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to in around 14 years. We're now in the slightly odd process of catching up on what changes over a decade has wrought in us both.

Anyway, the whole point being, I'd mentioned that life was, shall we say, throwing me some major ups and downs right now. (Or downs and further downs..?) and his reply (quoted verbatim) was:

I reckon you'll be fine tho, you always seemed to be so cheery in our younger days - i can honestly say i don;t think i ever saw u get mad once!?! you'll haveta tell me the secret of your innate calm!

Just as Ms. Schmich said, sometimes you really do need other people to remind you who you were. In all the upheavals of recent life, I'd almost forgotten that there was a time when I was like that. It was an amazing timely reminder, and by remembering that calm and relaxed way of thinking, I managed to regain at least some of it.

So I took the class and although it was still full of my screwups, they didn't get to me like they had the day before. I'm still a student, only just starting out, of course I'm making lots of mistakes. That's almost the whole point. Mistakes should only worry me if I don't learn from them. And today was, although not great, a definite improvement on yesterday, and that's what counts.

And the payoff? I went to hunt down one of my fellow students at lunchtime to sort out an admin. issue, and as I crossed the playing fields, I got yelled at by a couple of the girls from that class. They wanted to know if I'd be taking their next class as well, because they preferred my lessons to the normal teacher's.

And that, it must be said, was nice.