Greetings from the Black Hole

OK now three weeks on since Good Thursday. Doesn’t time seem elastic at times? Well it does for me and I’m not even on drugs! It is now five months since I returned from Thailand and it seems I entered a black hole. Well I do have an excuse of sorts. I arrived back in Australia and that perennial question, ‘what next’ raised its head. I don’t like making decisions. Too many what ifs and maybes. I’m a bit like a rabbit in the headlights and often jump at the last moment, which as you know is not the best approach to problem solving. Having said that I am also a bit of an opportunist in as much as I believe opportunities often present themselves for those able to grasp the opportunity with many left on the platform as the train of opportunity pulls away. Ok I’m a contradiction! Anyway that is a deviation that will only leave me on a branch line in terms of this blog.

I arrived home and was looking at university courses, as you do, considering possibilities for 2008 as I knew applications had already closed for 2007. Then surprise, the University of New England had extended application dates and if I was quick I’d be able to enrol for 2007. The blazing lights of opportunity were bearing down on me and yes I jumped directly into their path and enrolled in a postgraduate degree in teaching. The blogging black hole was the freak out period when I realised just how much work this decision was going to entail and my pushing all other concerns aside and became single focused on coming back up to speed as a uni student with my last degree completed over ten years ago. My Arts degree was interesting but it was a fairly simple formulae. Basically read all the texts and regurgitate it all in essay form with statements like, ‘I concur with bloggs statement that..... however Jones takes the view that...... and intertwine it all with a few supported personal views and a concise conclusion and you are home. When I began my first degree I entered as a mature age student with only year ten high school so I enrolled in a short academic writing course through the Learning Assistance Centre that catered for plods like me and I am totally convinced that the couple of days I spent there added around ten to twenty percent on every assignment I did through the course. I didn’t necessary know ten to twenty percent more but the essays read better and that’s enough for a marker with a pile of assignments to mark in front of them.

I finished my arts degree and promptly did what most journalism graduates do and found employment in a totally unrelated position. Yes, I will get back to my time in immigration detention later in this blog sometime. But here in the present I am studying to become a primary school teacher. Secretly I want to regress back to finger painting, making clay snakes and eating peanut butter sandwiches. Oh, and there is also the coincidental appeal of good holidays. Ha. I don’t think teachers are supposed to admit to enjoying extended holidays are they? Where was I? Oh yes, the teaching degree is a little different from my arts degree with far more emphasis on pedagogies, a fancy word for teaching method, than philosophical positions. Hum. As a postgraduate degree this is a two-year course full time. Another hum. Well I am committed to finish the first year at least full time then who knows. I kinda feel it would be good to finish half the course in one hit as the first half is always the hardest with the second half being on the home straight right? Before I move forward I do have to mention the toilet signage at UNE while I was there recently on a residential. Yes, my blog wouldn’t be the same with out some reference to toilets now and again. Now tell me why an Australian university has toilet signage as ‘rest room’? While I was in Canada a few years ago I found that they called there toilets ‘wash rooms’. Ok, I suppose you do wash at some point along with the primary purpose. Later, when I crossed the border into the US I suddenly found all toilets called rest rooms. Now while I can accept that I might wash in a toilet at the end of the equation and consequently not a total misnomer the idea that one might go into the small room for a rest is, well, it stretches the imagine just a little too far. I know people go into the ‘smallest room in the house’ for a range of reasons but I don’t know anyone that would go in there for a rest. I know people who have passed out while there but that is not strictly resting, more like recovering. Am I being a little pedantic to think an Australian university might try and protect us from Americanisms? They seem to be creeping in everywhere. If you are at UNE don’t look for a telephone, its a ‘pay phone’ you’ll need. Like, when don’t you pay? It makes me feel like a Neanderthal when I ask for a pay phone, something like saying eat fridge, sleep room, sit lounge and pay phone. Before moving on there is one little piece of trivia that I am certain you’ll find interesting. Do a google search for ‘coconuts’ and guess how many listing you’ll get? Over two million eight hundred thousand that’s how many! Whoa!

Now although I might have hung my backpack up last November and filed the passport I did make a commitment to myself that any study must involve an interesting interlude and in just thirty five days I’ll pull the backpack off the hock, grab my passport and jump on a plane for London. Yes I am starting to feel like a rabbit again. I’ll spend a short time in London then head back to Bangkok where I’ll sit an exam then head back down to a little more wave therapy in a hammock on Koh Phangan. Well I will be taking some reading with me but it will sure beat freezing in the mountains. There is also another interesting dynamic to this holiday. After my Vygotsky 101 exam in Bangkok I’m heading down to Phuket on the other side of the peninsular where I’ll meet my daughter on June 25 at the airport. Hell you know you have reached middle age when your daughter can fly unaccompanied to a foreign country to meet you. Well she is fourteen but that is still fairly remarkable for me. She is such a brave young thing and didn’t think twice when I offered to buy her a ticket ‘and’ that she would be flying alone! ‘Sure dad that would be so cool’. I have done a lot of travel over many continents yet I have never done it with my daughter before so this is definitely going to be a new experience for me also. One music assignment, 35 days and I am off. Semester 1 down.