I friggin love sunflowers.

I’m beginning to realize that studying education at the graduate level is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Half the time I just do not give one solitary shit about what is being discussed. Maybe actually all of the time I do not give one solitary shit about it, but about 50% of the time I have genuinely no idea what anyone is talking about. At first I thought it was the accents. “Oh, don’t worry,” I thought to myself, “these people have trouble pronouncing the letter ‘R’ so of course you don’t understand it when they say things like ‘zone of proximal development.’” But now that I’m nearing the end of my program, I’m beginning to realize the flaw with that statement.

No, as it turns out, 50% of the time I don’t give a shit and the other 50% of the time I’m too stupid even to figure out if a shit is indeed given. What these statistics mean is that I’ve spent about 100% of my time during lectures and classes absent-mindedly drawing hand turkey after hand turkey. When people in America ask me what I learned over in England, I’m going to have to tell them that I learned only two things: 1) Public transportation is fabulous in Europe, and 2) My fingers are so fat they look like lumpy sausages when traced onto paper.

In my future as a teacher I’m not entirely sure where these two facts are going to help me. And I suppose that’s been my problem with this course; I don’t particularly want abstract knowledge about education—no, I want abstract knowledge about religion and theology, but when it comes to education I just want you to tell me quickly and simply how I can get the kids not to resort to cannibalism during my lessons. Instead of providing this information, however, the university forces us to sit through lecture after pointless lecture on how data is recorded, or how newly qualified teachers feel their learning is shaped, or different theories of education and whatnot.

Now let’s take a trip back to my classroom. See, I still have literally not a single clue what to do when a child asks me if they can go to the bathroom. I quite honestly worry about getting asked for bathroom permission during every lesson, because my hair falls out as I panic over whether or not the child asking me genuinely has to pee or if they are just trying to go off and do drugs in the toilet or run around in oncoming traffic or whatever it is children do when they leave classes when they’re not supposed to. And if they do genuinely have to pee, what if my not allowing them to results in a burst kidney and death or—even worse—wet pants? That would destroy the child’s social credibility, and I would probably feel so guilty that I’d develop such a bad drinking problem that even British people would think it was a drinking problem. SO PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME IF YOU CAN GO TO THE LOO, ENGLISH CHILD, BECAUSE I CANNOT HANDLE THIS LEVEL OF RESPONSIBILITY!!!

But no. No one tells me how to handle my students’ requests to use the restroom. Instead they give me endless metaphors about how I will feel during my NQT year, all of them involving sunflowers.

Today during our lecture I descended into depths of boredom not seen since my university biology lectures. After briefly considering resorting once more to forming yet another assembly-line-of-one for the production of hand turkeys, I realized that I could have much more fun during lecture by pretending to enjoy myself.

So instead of reclining in my seat to the point where my ass was nearly off the edge, I sat up straight, leaned forward, and tried to maintain a level of eye contact with the lecturer that suggested that I was sexually attracted to him. With every sentence he read in a monotone voice off his boring-ass slides, I nodded enthusiastically with a Disney princess smile on my face. Had he been right in front of me and not separated by about 20 rows of students, I would have reached out, grabbed him, and sung into his face, “PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE SOURCES TO WHICH NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS ATTRIBUTE THEIR LEARNING!” Then there’d be a key change, the music would swell, and then I’d sing, “I AM SO ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT LEARNING ABOUT WHAT MAKES A GOOD CONTEXT FOR LEARNING AS A NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHER!”

As it was, I was in the very last row of the lecture theater. And so I had to resort to swooning with delight with every word, and rushing to capture with my pen every single one of his many gems. He clicked his Powerpoint presentation and yet another picture of a sunflower popped up. “GASP!” I said, grabbing my desk for support. I fucking love sunflowers! I love learning about NQT feelings!!!

I wish that I hadn’t felt slightly sick to my stomach at the end of the presentation. I would have loved to have given him a standing ovation.