Last week I did an exercise with a student about daily routine. She asked me (in German, of course) what time my working day started and finished. I told her that I left the house at 7.55am for my first job and came home at 9.55pm from my last job. “A long day”, she said!
Today, my 30 day blog challenge is to write about a day in my life, so it’s a good way to explain the long day:
Luckily, my day isn’t always like last week, but it is very hard to describe a typical day. I used to teach full-time at a school, left home at 7.45am, got back at 5pm, then spent the rest of the evening planning or marking.
Now I start teaching any time between 8am and 10am, sometimes even later. Depending on whether I teach at the client’s house or business premises, or at home or via Skype, I may have to travel. Usually I get the chance between jobs to go home, check my emails or procrastinate do important paperwork! Sometimes I even get the chance to go to the allotment. If I still have to teach afterwards I really need to keep watch on the time as it’s very easy to get carried away with all the weeding, sowing or harvesting.
Sometimes I’m out all day with teaching, other times I am at home all day, planning, marking or translating
Sometimes I have a fully booked day and suddenly get cancellations and time to do other things. On other days I have hardly anything on and suddenly I get ask to teach or translate – and all the brilliant non-work ideas I may have had for that day have disappeared (I really, really wanted to clean my windows, but now I have to translate – what a shame ;-))
But I wouldn’t want it any other way (and the windows will get cleaned one day!)