So. I now live in
Northern Ireland.
I moved to England to go
to university in 2002 and became one of those people who didn’t come back.
Until I did…
I’ve been back for eleven
weeks: the longest amount of time I have spent in NI in ten years.
It’s weird.
Don’t get me wrong: I
don’t regret my decisions (‘regret’ is a very strong word…) but it’s rapidly
becoming clear to me that I have underestimated quite how unsettling the
transition from London-living lawyer to country-dwelling trainee teacher would
be…
I knew people would query
my life-changing decisions because few people were privy to the months of
agonizing and soul-searching that preceded them. Nevertheless, I am nonplussed
by some of the responses my news has provoked. The questions I have been asked
range from the incredulous (‘You did what?!’), via the pointed (‘So you didn’t
manage to get a man while you were over there?’), to the disconcerting (‘Do you
think you’ve committed emotional suicide by moving back to NI?’) and back
again. There have been times when the clinical anonymity of London seems
preferable to having to continually offer an account of my choices.
If I had been pinning my
hopes of stability on my return to full-time education (and I had), I was to be
somewhat disappointed... Last week was Induction Week on my PGCE course. It
entailed a series of introductory sessions and was the first time all 140 of us
were in the same room together. The actual lectures were very interesting (if a
little overwhelming) and I’ve already become attached to the rather swish
university library. What I wasn’t
expecting, however, was to be regarded with something approaching suspicion by
many of the other students. Yes, I’m approximately
eight years older than many of them; yes, I haven’t previously attended the
university I do now; yes, I have spent the last ten years in England and yes, I
have already tried a different career, but I wasn’t expecting to feel quite so…
detached. Admittedly, there is a chance that this says more about me than it
does about them, but it’s a feeling that I wasn’t expecting to encounter.
For the moment, I’m
seeking solace in my first week of lectures (while simultaneously being
incredibly nervous about my first English Methods classes on Wednesday…) and
subsuming my emotions with exhausting gym workouts (while I still have the
time) and generally hoping that it will all settle down before I have to deal
with my first eleven-week block of teaching practice…
Oh, and did I mention I’m
living with my parents…?
