My Normal Friday

I thought it would be quite fun if I will show you what I do in a normal Friday. So yesterday I have took notes and photos of different things that happened during the day. I hope you will like it.

Mornings always start around 6 – 6:30 while I have my placement. Most of the time, it takes me ages to get out of bed, but yesterday was not completely bad. I am going to skip the morning routine obviously… I am not a breakfast person, I would totally skip this meal, but because at school I don’t really have time to eat randomly I have tried to get used to eating something small every morning. I will normally go for cereals and coconut milk, but yesterday I had strawberries and Greek yogurt. By 7:45 I am dressed and ready to get out of the house.

Sometimes I take the bus to school, just depends on my mood and the weather. But since sunny days are not often in Scotland and yesterday was not that bad, I decided to walk. I am always shocked by how many people are on the street at 8 am. After 20-25 minutes I arrived at the school, registered at the reception, changed my shoes and got started.

On Fridays I don’t teach much, it is mostly a day when I have to organize things for next week. Normally I have just 2 classes, which is sometimes very relaxing. From 8:40 to 9:34 I had an S2 class (12 years old) and together with the class teacher I got them organised in groups for a project on financial maths. Quite excited to see how things are going to turn up with this project. After this class I had a couple of hours of, so called, free time. During this hours I got organised for the following week.

Getting organised for me means the following activities: checking I know absolutely every topic I have to do with each class for the next week, start writing lesson plans ( as much as possible ), finish some reflections for the week that just passed, answer emails, prepare revision questions and deal with any other things that pop up. In addition to all this, yesterday I had to solve 4 practice tests that I will do with some classes next week. At the moment I prefer doing the tests myself and then check the answers because this way I revise all the materials myself and I also learn how to mark papers by marking my own work.

At 12:30 is lunch time. With all the things that happen in a day, this is the time I don’t do school work at all. I try to eat peacefully and do something which makes me feel better. At the moment during lunch I like to take a look in the book “Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities” by Ian Stewart. I found the book in the school and I have been loving it. Most of the time I try to solve the problems before reading the answers and it makes me feel great when I get the answers right.

Immediately after the lunch break (13:15) I had another class to teach, but it wasn’t something very special because we just did revision for a future test. All I did was give them the exercises and we had to go through as much as possible. I like spotting the children that have very good solutions for questions and ask them to go and write them at the board and explain to classmates how they did it or answer questions on the problem. After this class, there was  another full hour of finishing things for next week and also preparing and checking some homework for my tutoring sessions. By 15:00, my head started to hurt a little and I was wanting a clean and relaxing bed, but that had to wait a while. School time finishes at 15:00, so I changed my shoes, took all the things I needed for the weekend with me, signed out of the school and left the building.

Next on my time-table was some tutoring at 16:30, so I had time to think and organize more on my flat rent and contract for the summer, then get to my tutoring session. For some reason yesterday I felt the need to walk instead of taking the bus, which is a little unusual for me, but it turned out to be not a bad idea. On the way I had to buy a cinnamon swirl, which turned up to be incredibly good. Friday 16:30 – 18:30 is mostly tutoring session, when I tutor a girl for Higher mathematics exam. Yesterday we did some calculus – integration time – and I was quite excited for it. I am quite happy when I have to explain why we need calculus in our lives and present some examples of where it is used in general.

By 18:30, my head was almost exploding and I started to feel a little bad. It always happens on a Friday evening, I almost never feel good. I am always very tired, sleepy, start to be a little depressed and just not excited for things. Yesterday was a little to much for me, so for the first time in months I decided to walk home: a full one hour walking. I think I just needed some time to randomly think at what happened in the last period, to put my thoughts into place and take deep breaths. The one hour walk became a one hour and 30 – 45 minutes – I really took my time with this – and by the time I was home it started to be quite cold outside. But at 20:00 I was proudly eating my dinner: a light green salad.

So, 20:30 and the day was not finished. On my to-do list there was written big: PROOF READ a project. I am not very good at this, but if someone dear me asks for help I try my best. So, the next hour was spent on reading psychology: stereotype, priming and vanguard female (quite interesting things I have to say). After proof reading, I started checking my LThMath social media things. I normally spend way more time on this daily, but yesterday I was not in my best mood ever so I quickly checked my  Facebook,  Tumblr,  Twitter and  Instagram, decided on some future posts and scheduled things quickly. On Friday night it is mostly email and blog reading. Starting from 22:00 until I fell asleep I answered emails, read blog posts from the blogs I follow (they get to more than 50 blog posts I want to read). Also, I always try to make lists of articles that made a great impact on me and I would like to read more on those topics or articles that could be used as inspiration for future blog posts.

At around 1:00 in the morning, I closed my laptop, did my night routine and went to bed completely smashed.  But in the end it was quite a productive day. Before going to sleep I listened to 5 minutes of relaxation from the app Calm and chose a relaxing tune that I scheduled to stop singing in 30 minutes (way after I was fast asleep).

Hope you enjoyed this small pick in my daily life. Let me know if you would like to see more things like this. It was quite interesting to write it. Have a great day. You can find me on Facebook,  Tumblr,  Google+,  Twitter,  Instagram  and  WeHeartIt. I will try to post there as often as possible.

Don’t forget that maths is everywhere! Enjoy! ~LThMath