PGCE Obtained!

Exam results came out this week, and I've got my PGCE! Hooray! 5 years of 'gruelling' study (and arduous procrastination) have finally come to an end, and from now on the only exams I will write will be the ones I create in order to torment students. I still disagree with the examination process, for most subjects. It makes sense for law as you need to memorise stuff for that as a matter of course, but for more understanding-based subjects like art, language and Maths, I don't see the point in doing it under pressure in silence, without resources. It's hardly the real world.

This exam period was the easiest I've ever had, though. Questions given to us before the exam, open-book exams, being able to do them on a computer, and take-home questions that were so personal that it's almost impossible to get them wrong? Piece of cake.

Anyway, in terms of this blog, my PGCE experience has ended. I've tried to keep this blog up to date about that from start to finish, but now I'm moving into a different phase - going from theory and studying to the working world. I've got a job lined up - teaching through Epik in South Korea - and right now I'm enjoying the last long holiday I think I'll have for a while. Two months on a tropical island, then a couple of weeks skiing in France, and then I'm off on a brand new (and terrifying) adventure. I think I'm pretty lucky. :)

Looking back on the PGCE, it's been a hell of a year. It started with us climbing a mountain (and sliding back down, mostly on our bums, in the mud) only to be told that we should try to hike to 4 different waterfalls that afternoon. We walked on tight-rope across yawning chasms (I may be exaggerating slightly) for some disadvantaged kids, tried to learn to speak isiXhosa, planned lessons, planned lessons, planned lessons. There were some great assignments and some awful ones in which the entire class failed, and I'm pretty sure that my mark for one of the sections was sucked from thin air. We had a short-lived English Teachers' drinking club, and got tipsy on champagne at the end of the year with our wonderful lecturers. Not to mention 3 months of teaching in schools. And that was... interesting.

Anyway, it's been great. From this point on, though, the subject matter of this blog is going to change a bit, focusing more on Korea, and becoming a combination of a travel blog, personal updates for my friends, family and stalkers, and anything I think may be interesting to people who are currently teaching English in Korea or who may be planning to.

Here's to 2012. The world didn't end yesterday, but it's definitely changed a bit, for me.