Busy, busy, busy

2004-12-03 at 11:28 p.m.

Monday...I managed to arrive on time, dog-tired because I'm not used to getting up so early. The place I had to go to was off Commercial Road, down in Tower Hamlets proper, near Limehouse. Now fortunately I had a job interview near there once and went to that SI conference there too, so I knew the area a little. Its very poor and rather delapidated, but the college is wonderful. There are some advantages to being in a deprived area, they've evidently been given shedloads of money to play with, and consequently have a lovely shiny new college. With food that tastes like shit. But hey. We were in a little building to the right of Tower Hamlets Community College, which is more or less part of it. We get to register with them, though the guy who makes the passes was away so we didn't actually get passes. Because its a horrible area we couldn't technically get into the college itself. Our instructor was called Peter, and we spent the first day filling in forms, mainly. There were ten of us there, not including myself, although we lost one guy later. All of us long term unemployed and between 18 and 24. The day was immensely boring as we were just filling out forms with the nasty cheap pens we were given. Oh, and taking a literacy and numeracy test. I've never taken something so easy before - the literacy test was geared to the level of an eight year-old.

Tuesday....Joy of joys, it was my birthday. And I was still stuck in Tower Hamlets! We had a "motivational speaker" called Chris in. He made us play the catch game - where you throw a ball to another person in the group and say their name. Which was corny, but had its advantages. I can now name the whole group: Ahmed, Imran, Imem, Kadiza, Sam, Sabrina, Dale, Khadra, Taslina. And they all know my name too. Ahmed caused a fair bit of trouble (again), I think he thinks of himself as a bit of a joker but is actually rather irritating. I've never met anyone before with a full face-veil, but Taslina has one, and its true that you can tell if someone is smiling even if you can't see their mouth.
Its strange, I felt like an outsider the whole week, as my situation is entirely different to everyone else's. I have a good education, whereas from what everyone says the most anyone else has is a few E grades at GCSE. Half weren't in school or were intermittently at school. Some have NVQs. But I'm the only one with a degree. I'm also the one with the highest literacy, probably because I read more. Also, only Sam, Sabrina, Dale and I are native speakers of English, because we had a few issues with Ahmed calling someone an old woman in Bengali, and speaking in his own language a lot. Not that that bothered me, but Chris didn't like it. Though I think they all undersold themselves as their English was quite good - I could understand everyone, so that's more than just "basic" English, which is what I saw several people putting on their forms.
We played a version of musical chairs as well, which was a bit weird. Well, actually I've come across that sort of motivational/team-work exercise before, teachers are keen on them. Chris is a lot better than most about it, probably because he does that all the time and was an actor too. Not too bad a day, and certainly I got to know the rest of the class better.
Afterwards I had to hare up to Birkbeck for a biology practical. We were working with enzymes, mixing them with hydrogen peroxide, and measuring the reactions. It meant the room was boiling because we were using water heaters. It was quite fun really, and I had a good chat with Suzy, one of the new lecturers. She seems nice. Perhaps not quite what I'd want to do on my birthday but it was quite nice to be back studying, as I feel rather odd on the Tower Hamlets course.

Wednesday...Back to the college. I was nearly late because I got back from Birkbeck late as usual, and I had to get up quite early again. But I was on time. We were working on CVs. Peter gave us some model paragraphs for the sort of general statement about yourself that you make, and we came up with buzzwords to write in (like 'dynamic', 'enthusiastic' etc). We worked on the computers writing a CV - fortunately I already have one so I was able to do it all quite quickly. I now have a fancy one-page CV which I actually quite like - the format is nicer than my normal CV. We also got some examples of speculative and general covering letters which was very useful as I never know what to write in those. I did a couple of examples of those and they've saved them. You see I have to keep going back to this place to do jobsearches - for the next sixteen weeks - so they keep all these things. I type fast so I finished early and was able to get home by two o'clock. Which was nice. After that I went off to the physics course.
This wasn't so good. Another practical, this time doing things with electric circuits. That went well - though for some strange reason most of the class weren't there. About half way through Jim, the demonstrator guy came over and was talking to me and asked how I was finding the maths. Which I thought nothing of at the time and just said I found it a bit difficult but was managing, then he came round later with our assignments - I only got 44%. Its still a 'good pass' but its nowhere near what I need to be getting. I'm worried that I've arsed my distinction with this mark as it pulls my overall percentage mark right down. What's really irritating is that I spent ages on it, used all my books and tried really hard, only to find that I get a worse mark than I got for the one I didn't try so hard at! I spent the rest of the time staring at the wall, trying not to panic/get depressed at the mark, I'm afraid. Now I have to finish writing up the practical. To be honest, my reaction to one bad mark was too extreme - I nearly walked out in a fit of despair. It passed, but worried me at the time, with having so recently come off my medication. I need to concentrate more on the upside - that I am still doing well, that it is a minor problem with trigonometry that I think is holding me back, that its not the end of the world. Next week I'm going to see if they can explain where I went wrong and work on it, I will be positive, and not just come over fatalistic about this, and I won't give up. I hope. I'm seeing my doctor about my medications next week anyway.

Thursday...We had mock interviews with Chris. He pretended he'd never met us before and filmed our responses to some set questions about a particular job we had chosen. I generally do ok in interviews I think so I wasn't too stressed - though not pleased at having to do mine near the end! Anyway, it was ok and we went off to lunch before watching them. Now that, no one liked doing, none of us wanted to watch ourselves on camera! But we had to watch as each person was interviewed and come up with a positive and a negative thing about their performance. Everyone did pretty well, really. Poor Imran froze up a little in his interview, he'd never had one before! We all weighed in with good things he could talk about though - which he can, the guy is captain of his football team and coaches two teams of adolescents! CV gold, that is! Everyone said I was good, which was excellent, though apparently I, in an effort not to seem nervous, come over as unenthusiastic instead, which I need to work on. Also I lean to one side a lot, and never really noticed before. They liked my voice too - useful having a trace of an accent, perhaps. After we'd watched them we went home and didn't need to come in again today as Peter was going on a course.

So, overall the course wasn't all that useful to me, just because it wasn't really intended for people like me. It was nice to meet other people though and I did get something out of it. Now I just have to go in twice a week for jobsearches and thats it. Though I need to figure out when I can leave over Christmas and also I need to get some work experience in a hospital before going for my university interview.

I am disappointed about that physics mark, and increasingly worried that I might get depressed again, but I suppose I'll either go back on the medication or sort it out, and seeing my doctor will be useful for that next week. As for now though I have quite a lot of work to do as I couldn't work in the evenings as I was too tired this week. Including another physics assignment! Still, I can but try.

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