What would I say to myself? Post University.

 I am of an age where I... want to speak to my younger self. What might I have done differently? 

1) What would I say to myself upon leaving university? What would I say about those first steps? 

2) What would I say to myself in my PGCE? 

3) What would I say to myself in St Augustine's school? As I prepared my classes. As I ground out the teaching? 

4) What would I say to myself in Beijing? In that first posting? 

5) Would would I say to myself in Dubai? 

6) What would I say to myself in Manila? In those initial years?  


Time is not experienced in a linear fashion. Past traumas bubble frequently from the swamp, while happy victories flex their spine whenever challenges call. I might be almost 44, but I feel my past echoing in the meat of my torso. 

What would I say to myself upon leaving university? What might have I done differently? Firstly, I had no money and was hugely in debt thanks to an ill-fated trip with a poor choice of travelling companion. There was no way I could live anywhere other than the poor Northern town of my university days. To have moved away required money that I did not possess. 

You took a job teaching in one of the hardest schools in the UK. Your energy and courage drove you through this horror. There was little guidance from others, with your father having abandoned the family, that fateful phonecall coming that he had disappeared, likely moving abroad with no note.

The lack of leadership in your first school dragged you down, condemning to follow the same dysfunctional youth from classroom to classroom, witnessing the hourly crimes, often violent and unfunny. That leadership is now in the UAE, advising schools on how to improve themselves. 

My first response is to deride, knowing that her standards and leadership bordered on abuse. My talents were abused, and I was dropped into a desperate environment, vulnerable, no training to help me, and my choices destroying my educational approach in weeks. 

But my ire does not settle or harden. I note that they must have been struggling tooo. This leadership was trying their best. Their naked best seemed to help them at least, to promote their career from dingy Doncaster to glam Dubai. 

You managed to find a way out; life has never seemed so hard since. 

Appreciated that.