So after three months on placement (thats forty six days in the classroom) I have finally finished! It's scary and exciting to think that the next time I stand in front of a class they will be my own. I still don't know where or when that will be, but the job hunt commences after I've had a well deserved few days off for Easter :) It's so great to see so many people have already been successful in getting a job.. even if I am a little jealous :P I know that I'm probably going to be one of the last people to get a job because I'm holding out for the perfect job for me, which could be a really brilliant or really stupid idea in the current employment climate!!
There is only a month left of University after my Easter break which is INSANE. How can this be happening!? The last three years have gone so darn quickly.. maybe that's a sign of my age? It's time to grow up and enter the proper adult world at the grand old age of twenty one. Though, I have noticed weird stuff starts happening once you get into your twenties and this article from hellogiggles.com has hit the nail on the head. As much as you can deny it, you are already letting out signs that you're a proper grown up now. Last weekend I went shopping with Tom and we ended up in Marks and Spencers looking at homeware and we ENJOYED IT.
Now I'm not getting my pipe and slippers ready just yet, I still have my WHOLE life ahead of me. It might be scary diving into the unknown waters of adulthood but there is so much that I'm excited about too! Obviously in the near future I hope to go down the traditional teaching route and complete my NQT (newly qualified teacher) year but deep down I know I want to travel and teach in a more unconventional sense. I'd love to get involved in a project abroad or work with charities to deliver educational workshops.
The one thing that is a MASSIVE pro about getting old is having your own place. After living in three different student houses it is going to be so much fun finally getting to decorate. I have a home-ware board on Pinterest full of inspiration, just waiting for the day I finally get set loose on my own property :) I can just imagine filling it full of beautiful finds from charity shops or all my future travels (hopefully). I don't know where I'll be living or who I'll be living with yet but I'm sure it will be awesome!
I'm not sure what the next big step is for me; there are loads of things like bills, mortages and having children that scare the living bejeebies out of me but I think I'm finally feeling somewhat prepared for being thrown into the big wide world! All I know is that I'm determined to live life by doing what makes me happy :) happiness is not the destination, it's the journey!
"If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try"
I am really bored of Winter now. I am totally sick of the snow. I'm fed up of wearing boots and I LOVE boots. I'm tired of layering up. I've forgotten what it was like not to be pale. I just want it to be Spring already! I'm starting to wilt like both my houseplants thanks to this rotten temperature and lack of sunshine on my skin. I'm definitely verging on SAD... seasonal affective disorder. This time last year I had finished my second year placement and I was out celebrating in a very summery playsuit. Now I've been searching for things to cheer me up while there is the ever impending threat of MORE snow. Let me know if you have any more ideas of what I can do in between surviving my final week of placement :)
Drink lots of cups of tea. You know this is the magic cure for everything right?
Look at pictures of animals dressed as other animals. Very distracting but smiling is inevitable!
Listen to this song, no other explanation needed...
Laugh at the many faces of Nick Miller.
Go out in the snow anyway! It's no good for you to stay inside all of the time. Just do as the Red Panda at Chester zoo did :) pandas are very wise you know...
...unless they are McFly all dressed up for their Earth Hour performance :) I did watch and sing along gleefully for the entire hour.
Do NOTHING for two minutes and listen to the sound of the waves. It's a lot harder than you think when you are a technology addicted as I am.
Choose all the things you want to buy for Spring now by doing some internet shopping. This could backfire though because I just want them now and I won't be able to wear them.
Watch dirty dancing a few times. You can sing along, laugh and maybe copy some of Baby's moves.
Turn the heating up so you are lovely and warm and then dig into some ice cream rather than a hot chocolate.
Watch the diet coke advert.I'm sorry but this will only cheer you up if you like really hot guys doing the gardening.
Search for geeky stuff on tumblr and pinterest. Obviously my geeky sense of humour might not match yours :P
This poem is on the wall in the toilet on placement. I always smile when I see it and I'm magically in a good mood. Just smile and pass it it :)
A month ago I wrote one of those 25 facts about me posts heeeeeeeeeere. Now these things are supposed to be fifty facts long but the current trend in the blogosphere is to split them into two parts rather than do all fifty at once :) so, here is the second half of the facts about me.
26. I'd like to introduce you to the Davison clan. I chose a picture where we are all dressed up nicely and not doing our usual weird thaaaang. Please meet Geoff (Padre), Debz (Madre) and Nikki. Yes me and Nikki are related, depsite us looking NOTHING alike.
27. I really love adverts. I missed them so much when I didn't have a TV during Freshers, and now with all this fastforwarding and on demand TV we miss all the good stuff. My favourite ever advert is the Barclaycard slide. I still listen to the song if I need a pick me up.
28. My eyes change colour. Sometimes they are brown and sometimes they are green. I think they change with my mood, kinda like the hulk.
29. I think that my Dad is like Mr Bean. I can see it, Nikki can see it, Mum can see it...but he still denies it.
30. To this day, the cutest Valentine I have received was a card, pretend rose and some chocolate left in my porch at home. I hate to admit it but I still have the rose! You know who you are :)
31. I never really understood the fascination with Prom but I ended up going anyway. I'd been to Silverstone Racetrack at the weekend with my boyfriend at the time, because he was really into cars, and got really bad sunburn. So for Prom, my sister ended up putting make-up on my back to cover up the burns.
32. I have always been really tall for a girl, I finally stopped growing at a statuesque 5ft 9 :) I used to be on the back bench of class photos and I sometimes got picked on for my height at secondary school; once I was called a banana? Strangely enough my housemates are both taller than me, I like to say we live in York's next top model house haha.
33. I used to be really quiet and shy. My Mum used to tell me off for being rude when her friends would talk to me in the street. I'm not sure what happened but now I talk too much and far too quickly.
34. I am doing the MFL (Modern Foreign Languages) specialism at Uni even though I don't speak another language well at ALL. I did get a free trip to Paris though!
35. If I really need a good cry, I will either watch 'The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants' or I'll listen to 'If You Leave' by Nada Surf.
36. I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with Katy Perry. She is just amazing isn't she?
37. I have done the whole long-distance relationship thing. My ex-boyfriend went to Uni in Southampton so we had to do a 5 hour train journey across the country to see each other. Going to Uni really magnified our differences and after 2 years we decided we had just become friends :) It's a good job really, I don't know how he handles the party life! They say Northerners are hard, I didn't even make it out on the Southampton Carnage!
38. I used to be quite stroppy with my family sometimes. We now look back at old photos and there will always be someone that says "oh remember this day, you know, when Jenny had a strop."
39. I was a Brownie and I loved it. I was the Sixer of the gnomes and everyone wanted to be in my six ;) I still know my Brownie Guide promise and law.
40. Last week I was driving to placement and the weather lady on the radio said there was fog on the Tyne. The first thing I did when I got to school was text my Dad really excitedly about singing The Fog on the Tyne to myself. I fully blame my Father for how damaged me and my sister are.
41. I describe myself as musically impaired because I can't sing or play instruments AT ALL. I am also rubbish at remembering lyrics and which band sings what.
42. I have been told on a few occasions that I look like Marissa from the OC. This Summer one of the French group leaders said it and a guy I used to fancy at school nicknamed me Marissa when I was in year eleven :P I personally don't see it but hey I'm not complaining.
43. When I was at school and sixth form I used to work on the checkouts in Iceland. I used to get chatted up by old guys and chavs all the time but the weirdest thing I ever received was a Christmas card. Inside the card, it read; Dear Jenny, you served me last Saturday. I paid using £20 worth of love to shop vouchers. I would like to meet you and get to know you better. Here is my email/phone/fax/etc, love from Bal. To this day I still don't know who Bal is.
44. I wasn't a bridesmaid until I was fourteen and I haven't been one since.
45. As a teenager I was in love with Dougie from Mcfly. I used to daydream about becoming a Journalist, interviewing him and us falling madly in love. When I split up with my first ever boyfriend, I thought that Mcfly had written 'I'll be Okay' just for me and I listened to it on repeat.
46. I hate modern music, dubstep just gives me headache. I'm really sad and still listen to bands everyone else is bored of; Stereophonics, Blink 182, RHCP, Snow Patrol, Foo Fighters, etc.
47. I have to really like a TV series for me to consider buying it on DVD. My TV series collection includes Friends, Big Bang Theory, New Girl, The OC and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
48. I met one of my favourite people Dalinder Sall when we both got sent to another school to do Geography A level. We bonded over being complete loners and total weirdos. We spend weeks and weeks apart while we are at Uni but we then sit for HOURS and catch up when we see each other.
49. I was once a really bad friend and introduced her to Sambuca shots shortly after her 18th birthday. I also didn't stop her buying a 90% rum cocktail when she was in York, then watched her puke it up for the entire next day....
50. On Friday night I donated £10 to Comic Relief by accident instead of a pound. I have very mixed emotions towards this mistake.
Haha get it? Yarm... farming... Yarming? Never mind :P
This weekend I took a day off being in crazy busy/organised teacher mode so I could go and visit Sam in Yarm. She has been blabbering on about it since I met her in first year and all I've ever done is mimic how she says it in her Northern accent. What a bad friend ey!? So two years later I finally got round to visiting :) For tea we went to an Italian restaurant called Da Vinci's and I had the spaghetti pollo verdi. It was gorgeous and with the addition of wine, it only came to £15 ish, bargain! We then went for cocktails before ending up in the infamous Keys. I had heard many a story about this place and I wasn't sure what to expect... I still don't think I really know what to think of it now I've been there. It was still a fab night and it was great to just relax with the girls and switch off from placement!
After nursing our poor heads with cups of tea and toasted french stick, Sam took me to her boyfriend Richard's farm. I like being outdoors and learning about stuff so it was fun being a farmer for an hour.. not that I did any farming, I just cuddled the animals and said awh a lot :P There were plenty of little lambs and piglets for me to ogle at, as well as two new alpacas!
Sam wanted to me have a go at driving the tractor but I decided to keep that for when I visit again. Which I DEFINITELY will over the Summer :D After all the fun and games I now have a to do list as long as my arm ! My Sunday will probably not be as relaxed as I'd hope it to be but my Yarm adventure was worth it. I'm now going to finish off my Yarmy goodness with a picture of some beautiful alpacas... see if you can spot whats wrong hahahaha
In other News
We only have 14 days left of placement. Two weeks and four days. Wowzas!
Last Sunday after the posting of my blog, I got chatted up by a 40 year old bloke in Starbucks. He gave me his business card. Romantic...
Our class caterpillar Cedric is now all cocooned up ready for his changes.
I have a lesson observation/interview for a teaching job on Tuesday!! It is actually at my placement school from last year which was lovely so please keep your fingers crossed for me guys :)
The Diet Coke man is back. Just sayin'
Talking of adverts... you MUST watch this if you haven't already. Fleetwood Mac plus a dancing pony. I pretty much guffaw every time he does that stupid little smile... pahahahahaha
...by love I mean really yummy food and not a baby. Just to make that really clear :) I am such a rubbish student because if I have to choose between food and alcohol, food would win every time. I know people that go out three times a week but they live on freezer food or the student specialty beans on toast. If I had to live on typical student food I reckon I would have had a mini-breakdown and moved back home months ago! Most people know that I love healthy food and I'm not a fast food type of girl; it's been about a year since I've even set foot inside a McDonald's.
I do love all sorts of healthy foods and I'll try anything once, but I am such an awkward dinner date. I don't really eat much meat so I always like there to be a vegetarian option... then they always have some form of cheese or cream in and I have to take my minimal dairy allowance into consideration. Such a bummer! I'm going to Yarm next weekend to visit Sam and she was pestering me to choose somewhere to go out to eat because she doesn't understand my taste in food. So this week's blog is a bit of a 'what's in my trolley?' type thing :)
I always start by filling in my weekly meal planner (because it stops me making so many impulse buys). You can buy similar ones to mine from paperchase. So this is quite a standard shop for me apart from the mushroom tortellini that I thought I'd try :) I had a yummy mushroom pasta at Jamie's Italian during half term so I'm trying to recreate it on the cheap.
Smoothies - I would usually get innocent smoothies but they aren't on offer this week :( I feel like a traitor, especially as they are my buddy on twitter!
Soya yogurts - dairy free doesn't mean you have to give up what you like, I wish they did more flavours though :'(
Fruit & veg - bananas and avocados are my absolute faves, always a shopping staple!! Avocado is so good for you and it's easy to chuck into any meal :) I'm having mine on the ryvita for my lunches this week
Rice - I love to add rice or couscous to my main dishes, and there's usually some left over for lunch the following day. I usually have an uncle bens on a Thursday or Friday because I stay at school late on Wednesday and Thursday so I don't really have chance to prepare lunch
Salad box - have you ever been to Morrissons salad bar? AMAZING! I always treat myself on shopping day, I am so gross though because I get a bit of everything. I love the couscous and minted bean salad.
I might not be a burger and chips kinda gal but I do have a super sweet tooth. My weekly shop aaaaaalways has a few treats; especially when I am on placement and need the extra sugar fix :P I knoooow I'm not supposed to have dairy but I make bargains with myself... No cheese with dinner and you can buy a kitkat... I do buy dark chocolate versions of things though so it's not too bad ;)
The wine is a necessity for the weekend!! Every Saturday I enjoy a glass or two (whole bottle... Cough). I am enjoying my Shiraz right now as I write... On an iPad!!! My placement school lent it to to test out the apps... The Internet is an app though right???
I'm also listening to Shania Twain, but let's not judge what I do on a Saturday night after a long day of planning and job applications :D
