Stuck in the Middle..

There seems to be a current fashion in conversation for discussing age and religion: these two topics really seem to be following me around at the moment. No matter who I'm talking to, they've come up in one form or another eventually.

I went to a Carol Service last night and all my conversations revolved around these two subjects until I was desperately looknig for an escape route out of one of the stained glass windows. I got talking to a young lad whose name I never heard, who commented that early 20s is quite an awkward age. Yep, I'm with you there. Staff night out on Friday ended up in an 80s club, where I knew a grand total of two songs - Madness and Blue Monday. Nothing like asking “what is this?” ten seconds into every song to make you feel out of place and make everyone think you're a complete idiot (normally I wouldn’t ask, but the alcohol and curiosity overruled any attempt to ‘fit in’). In the workplace, we’re not quite qualified, but with no previous employment record either so no point pretending you’ve got ‘life experience’ when your primary experiences since leaving school have been downing Malibu by the bucketload and writhing to Pendulum five nights a week.


On the other hand though, we don’t quite fit into the student groups either. Even on my course, where we're supposedly all students, only two of us are straight out of university. Whilst most are contented to discuss their previous jobs, their mortgages, their 2.4 children and dogs, E and I discuss our hair, our diets, our shoes and our love of chocolate. We're in no rush to grow up, thanks.
And PGCE students do not really fit the normal criteria of 'student', given that our study days fit normal working hours; we have colleagues, not mates; someone actually checks that you’re bothering to work and finally, it's impossible to class oneself as a student when a glass of red at night has become a luxury, not a standard (and also a single glass, not a bottle). Working in a school allows little time for going out at night, even sober - I’ve tried, and you do regret it when you realise you’ve failed to plan something exciting and subsequently feel like you’re letting all your kids down. Additionally, being sober and spending the night watching your beloved friends morph into complete idiots is not that great.

I think the trick is to enjoy the best of both worlds. Kids always want to be older, older people always want to be younger. At this stage you've got access to everything: young enough to make mistakes and have a good time, old enough to know what you want and how to get it.