Work related boredom, and how to kill it

I used to have a very boring job working in a shop. On the busy days I got to run around dealing with the great unwashed, and hours would fly by. On slow days (so… any day that wasn’t Saturday) I would waste hours just standing still.

Really… once I stood totally still for two hours without moving.

I’d gone through the phase of wandering the shop floor learning where the stock was, then progressed through the phase of “let’s unpack a delivery and take three hours”, off into the “let’s see how quickly I can unpack a delivery” and right on past “clean every square inch of the shop”. I seriously had nothing to do but look after my (deserted) section of the shop.

It gave me quite a while to reflect on things (mostly “why is the clock going backwards?”) and decide that on the whole, being paid £5 an hour to stand still wasn’t really worth it.

Now, since it’s a week and a half before we break up for summer at school (different job, much more interesting) I’ve suddenly found lots of free time. And I’m getting a tad bored again. So bored that I’m planning what I will be doing next September. I have a cunning plan to work out all my lessons for the coming school year so that I don’t have to do much during next school year except zoo keep and teach If I had a list of kids, I could even write my reports

So far I’ve made a nice little Gantt-style chart that’s neatly (and colourfully) organised all the units of work. From this I’ve started to list the lessons and brief ideas for them. There’s even the required 5 weeks ‘fudge’ time for when things kick my plans in the balls.

Hopefully I can get my planning done so that the holidays are mine and I don’t have to work after school planning stuff either. Next year looks more straight forward, I’ve taught all the stuff before so will scrape the bits together and make them better.

Tags: blog365, Boredom, lesson planning, school, Teaching, Work