I quit my day job! (sort of...)
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Don't worry mum - I haven't quit my day job. Not as such. I recently went from full time to 3 days a week though.
It's great.
One of my students mentioned this week in passing that I must be busy, working full time somewhere else, and also running Japanese courses. I realised that I haven't told a lot of my students that I no longer have a full time day job.
I now work three days a week in the offices of a community interpreting agency, here in sunny Brighton.
And I teach Japanese three nights a week, to lovely people with language-related goals and dreams. I get to share in my students' successes and triumphs, and hopefully help them through the tough bits too.
Life is more balanced now that I don't work elsewhere full time. I'm less "bad-busy" and more "good-busy".
And I get to feel part of two things - the interpreting charity, and my own little language school. That sense of community is really important to me.
Do you have a day job, and do something else on the side? If you have more than one job, how do you balance your time? I'd love to know what tips you can share. Let me know in the comments 😃
Like many people in the UK, I studied French in school. I liked French. I thought it was really fun to speak another language, to talk with people, and to try and listen to what was going on in a new country. (Still do!)
When I was 14 we went on a school exchange to the city of Reims, in northeastern France. I was paired with a boy, which I’m sure some 14-year-olds would find very exciting but which I found unbearably awkward. He was very sweet and we completely ignored each other.
That was nearly 20 years ago, and I didn’t learn or use any more French until, at some point in lockdown, I decided on a whim to take some one-to-one lessons with online teachers. Here are some things I learned about French, about language learning, and about myself.