My week three wobble

‘I haven’t sat on my sofa all week.’

'I thought it would be week three that you broke down, not day three’. The words of my year 1 colleague and friend, following my day-three breakdown, turned out to have some truth to them. As I entered the third week of September, I was feeling low and questioned whether I could continue on this journey. A life outside of school and coursework seemed like a million miles away, and my life was becoming completely unsustainable. I was living in a state of panic and hurry, and my mind was constantly churning and processing new information. I felt like I was disappearing and morphing into something that I didn’t even recognise. A frightened, out-of-my-depth mess in desperate need of some hair straighteners.

As I stuck the 30th learning objective into a workbook at 6pm, I wondered if this really was the life for me. After leaving work at 6:30pm, I would drag myself to a spin class before eating dinner after 9pm. There was then time for a bit of work before bedtime, and there was certainly no Netflix and chill. I realised the shocking truth that my sofa had become completely redundant from Monday to Thursday. The weight of everything that I had to learn and do weighed heavily on me, and I remember telling my mum that I hated my Monday to Friday

Although I questioned whether this was a life that I could continue living, I felt like I'd come too far to give up on it. Getting onto the Teach First programme involved a lengthy application process, and I then had to endure a group assessment centre, which I hated. I’d completed all the necessary admin, passed Summer Institute (Teach First’s five-week summer training), and secured a place at an outstanding school. I told myself that I had to focus on the amazing goal of getting qualified teacher status, and I had to remember that life wouldn’t always be like this. I was told that the first year of teaching was always the hardest, and the autumn term was always the longest. In combination, these two variables created an extremely challenging September. Thankfully, half-term was in sight, and I knew that Christmas would very quickly follow.

At the end of week three, I chatted with a former Teach First trainee at my school. He was really open about his time on the programme and knew exactly what I was going through. It was such a relief to hear that he'd experienced the same feelings that I was enduring. He said it was completely normal and that everything would get better. I ended my third week feeling a little bit better after that chat. I knew that I’d already made progress, but I was very aware that I still had a long way to go. Every day was a school day. and I was developing my practice and becoming more efficient.

Although my weekends were also a time for work (getting my head around phonics and preparing for my upcoming lectures), timetables were banned, and there was strictly no alarm clock. The weekends had become sacred and a time to slow down and press reset. I enjoyed some much-needed pamper time and began to feel a little bit more like myself. Yet again, I vowed to be kinder to myself. After all, it was only week three.