With my love life turning out amazing, it was great to know that my work life was turning out just as equally as amazing after my ten days of isolation. Couldn’t be better actually.
As the new face of Covid, I found many privileges coming my way : people in work consciously choosing longer routes so as not to make any contact with me, regular violations from the nurse in my throat (I mean usually you have to at least take me on a date to get access to such a sought after area) and my probation period – which was meant to come to an end the week of my return – being extended.
Why would me having Covid extend my probation, I hear you ask? Lets just say…it’s complicated. Complicated as in, I would still like to keep my job so I’m not going to get into it.
Anyway, when life hands you lemons you obviously cry. That’s the saying, right?
Having been a teacher for three full years in the Promised Land of Scotland and having passed all my placements with flying colours (toot toot of my own horn there), it was tough to swallow the fact that the same experience had not been replicated in Dubai. And it was also just generally tough to swallow due to the amount of sticks that had been shoved into my mouth…
It’s not only your own personal pain and sadness from not succeeding that you have to deal with but it’s also the immense feeling of shame from the embarrassment of failure. From the embarrassment of not managing to achieve what so many had managed before you. And from the embarrassment of not having succeeded in the new life that you were trying to create for yourself.
Would I pass? Would I be able to remain in this city that seemed to sparkle opportunity in every grain of sand that surrounded it?
Or would I fail at this final lifeline? Would the plug be pulled out from my life support machine forcing me back on to the gloomy streets of Scotland, where the rain clouds would forever hang over my head?
I would love to say that my situation was unique. That for the vast majority of teachers moving to the private education sector in the UAE it was easy. However, I would also like to say that as soon as you land you begin to instantly shit out cash and drive a Lamborghini. But, as I currently scrape the mold off my bread to make it edible again, I’m afraid that just wouldn’t be the truth…
And the truth is that the private education sector in the UAE can be ruthless. Dog eat dog, where one dog is a rottweiler and the other is a chihuahua. A world where, if you don’t have thick skin you better seek out a dermatologist quick before the cracks begin to show.
Therefore, when thrust into a difficult situation there really is only one question that you need to answer: What are you going to do about it? Your family are millions of miles away. The laws and regulations that you are accustomed to are no longer relevant. It’s only you that can control the outcome of whatever shitty situation you have been flung into.
Would I allow the rottweiler to bully me out of my home or, would I embrace my inner small dog syndrome and bark back as good as I get?
Being a reflective practitioner – there’s a line for the CV if ever I saw one – I thought long and hard about the circumstances I had been placed into. It was true I was disappointed. Deflated. Beaten. And it was also true that my professional self felt embarrassed, no longer certain of my abilities. However, I had come from the Scottish curriculum – a curriculum which is extremely different from the English curriculum or IB. I had also started at the beginning of term three, unlike the majority of people who start in August and have the proper systems in place to ensure an easing in to the Wall Street world of private education.
With all this in mind, and the lemons now gone to stop the tears, it suddenly clicked. This didn’t need to be a Shakespearian tragedy. My Dubai self didn’t have to die alongside the majority of other characters in my story – because if I’m going down, trust me, I’m taking everyone down with me….
What this was, in fact, was an opportunity. An opportunity to finally get the support that everyone else had received before me. An opportunity to develop my practice and, most importantly, an opportunity to show them who I really was.
And that isn’t someone that takes lemons and makes some mediocre lemonade. No, no, no. Girl, I am someone that takes lemons and makes a meringue pie that even Gordon Ramsey would be blown away by.
So, with my decision made, it seemed like there was only one last thing to do – someone get me a cook book so I can figure out how to fucking make lemon meringue pie!
