What have I done??
Ever stopped and said to yourself, “What have I done?”
I did that yesterday – not once but a number of times. In a complete turn around of events I went and enrolled in full-time study for the next two years.
Yikes – what have I done?
It all happened like this. My dear wife found out from a friend that Tabor College in Adelaide (about 50 minutes drive from home) is offering a full-time one-year study in TESOL, which stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. This will then give her the qualifications to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) which she has been doing for nearly a year now. (Through our church we have been giving ESL lessons to a group of migrant Chinese workers living in our town. They need basic English in order to gain residency.) Many times she asked herself the same question: “What have I done?” as the waves of terror threatened to swamp her. It has been so long since she last did any serious study.
On another visit to the college last week she picked up a booklet outlining another course offered at the same college. She gave it to me to look at. It gave details of their creative writing courses. Within the hour I had almost decided to do the Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing. Our theory was: if she was going to mess up a year studying full-time, I might as well join her and do a proper job of our lifestyle (“What lifestyle?” says the little voice in my head).
So yesterday we went to the College again. The head of the Humanities Department and one of the lecturers interviewed me for two and a half hours! I left with my head spinning. I had enrolled to do a full-time two-year course to do their Master of Arts in Creative Writing. What I didn’t realise before speaking to them was that I would be given credit for all of my previous tertiary studies, plus 35 years of teaching plus consideration given for my vast body of writing already achieved.
Wow!
I didn’t know that I could do it. So for the next two years it will be head down and tail up. Fitting all this in with our many other interests and responsibilities will be a major juggling act. It will mean lifting my game as far as writing is concerned. Add to that a considerable amount of reading plus plenty of extra travel. I hope we are up to it.
Good writing.