A New Change

My name is Trevor
This year is already full of change

I’m going back to university.

There are a number of prompts that I received for this. 

I’m still not healthy enough to go to most work roles. This has been plaguing me quite a lot lately. My lack of purpose has been a struggle. 

The timing is apparently perfect. Back when I started the degree, I was still young(ish) and completely unfocussed and undisciplined. As it turns out though, there is a certain amount of time that you have between starting the degree to when it needs to be finished. As it so happens, I have two years left on my degree and they have told me that I have two years left to finish it. This means that if I don’t stuff up, everything that I have done up until this point will count towards my degree.

I am going to be a primary school teacher. 

When I have mentioned this to people, the majority get a spark in their eyes and say something like “that’s perfect for you,” or “you’d be a great teacher.” An essence of Trevor that a lot of people encounter lead them to see me in this role with ease. This is both a wonderful blessing and an cautious pressure.  

 

I have some fond memories of the last time that I was at university. Some of them even surprised me upon their recollections.

I remember realising that my reflex comment is often what I believe to be comical. I know for a lot of people that know me will be unsurprised by this statement, but back then, I was still coming to terms with it. We were sitting down at a table studying (upon reflection, I did far more study than I actually led myself to believe) when we someone told us the news of Steve Irwin’s death (yes, that long ago) and of course, my first comment was “Crikey!” It was a simple exclamation that helped to reinforce a powerful belief that I was developing. My first instinct was “Make them laugh.” This has since grown, but also been tempered somewhat.

I remember walking through one of the grassy areas with a couple of people that I was beginning to befriend. One of them, while eating a sausage roll that they didn’t like and complaining about, noticed something on the ground. She picked it up and then fastened the paperclip to the left collar of my Hawaiian shirt, telling me it was lucky.

I kept that paperclip there for years, and went so far as to put other paperclips on other Hawaiian shirts. They were all in a way lucky and also they were not. They were a link to a nice memory. What was funny though, was when I had a moment of inspiration and did the same thing with my work shirts, not because they were lucky, but because they were useful. There were a number of occasions where I had to teach or help people with pinning miniatures, a task for which a paperclip had the perfect thickness of metal, and I would just slip the paperclip off my shirt to use for them. I would always remember to replace it later.

I remembered one of my favourite pieces of assessment was a group presentation. It was for a children’s literacy subject that was being taught for the first time. We each had to read a book and collaborate on an hour long presentation on a topic. There were a whole heap of different topics and we decided on War and Conflict. We were given a fairly wide scope for the assignment and a large list of books to choose from. My choice was War of the Worlds, a book that I had not read before and one that genuinely scared the bejeebers out of me.

We all decided that we were busy people and didn’t need to have meetings three times a week to micromanage the project and each other (as most groups were doing). We decided to set aside a public holiday where we would gather to do the assignment. The only stipulation that we had on this was that we had all read our books and came with a couple of discussion points.

We all did. We spent the day together (roughly six hours’ worth of work) and wrote the assignment, decided upon activities, themed it and even had costume ideas to set the room up. We were the first group to do the assignment and we blew the lecturer (who also happened to be the tutor) out of the water. We were highly praised for a job well done.

I remember sitting in the library on the morning that the maths assignment was due and teaching at least five people how to use the program that was needed to the final question of the assignment and the odd fellowship that forms when two thirds of a class is putting the finishing touches on an assignment and printing it out when it was finished.

All of these memories and many more came flooding back to me when I put some serious thought into the fact that I was returning to university. I thought about how close we grew as a group over the course of two years.

I also thought about how I turned my back on all that.

When I was last at university, I was very busy. In addition to studying full time, including going to schools for prac, I was also working three jobs. I was too busy to do what was right by all of them. Influenced by the people closest to me at the time, I made the decision to drop all but one of those four activities. When I was offered a full time position with Games Workshop, I took it. I did not return to university, I left my job as an outside school hours carer for the PCYC and I stopped doing contract work as a roof truss estimator for Trussmasters.

A small part of me regrets that decision to this day.

The majority of me accepts it and sees that it helped to make me, me. The trials and successes that I had while with Games Workshop, the people that I met during this time, the skills that I learned as a result. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t made the decisions that I did.

So instead of lament over what could have been, I’m going back to uni to finish my degree.

My name is Trevor
I’m going back to university
A new chapter is beginning