Those who can, do

Those who can’t….

The circle finally seems round. After a detour in Ghent, I moved back to Leuven, where I’m originally from. Sorta, kinda. At least it’s where my longtime friends live, and I feel at home there. In an equally big change, I started teaching at the local college, which is the one I attended myself, teaching programming and coaching internships. It all feels a bit strange. A lot of my collegues used to be my teachers, and a lot of the students remind me of my then-collegues. And my self. It’s can be weird being on the other side, and I try to not create that divide where I can. My collegues told me that, when I was a student I already wanted to become a teacher. Which I had totally forgot. I had to dig up my transcripts for something unrelated (more about that later). And it was painful. I always tell my students that I always got all 10’s and one 20 on my courses, but that’s not accurate at all. I flunked plenty of courses each year, about a third of them. Including some very embarrassing ones, such as math. It’s a small miracle that I managed to get my degree in the minimal three years. Those years, I remember being very focused on my friends. I remember few nights we wouldn’t seek each other’s company, either at the same dive, or at someone’s room when they managed to save up for a decent amount of beers. The night were long, the morning woozy at best. Now that I’ve moved back, and everything seems different. I get woken early by an armada of cargo bikes trying to get on cycling path outside my window. I try to go to bed early. I meet my friends every Wednesday evening, after they are done cycling in their lycra uniforms. I don’t join them for their mountain bike trips, I prefer riding my city bike, but I walk in nature and started running in the park. I obediently following the schedule an app made for me. I quit smoking. It sounds bleak, and an early version of me would have dismissed it as a ‘soft version of dying’, but it feels pretty good. Probably because I’m in week 6 of my holidays, a glorious perk of working in educations. Just as then, work has a tendency to be a stressful chaos. And it probably has been for all the jobs I’ve been in. Something for another post maybe.

PS My go to teacher joke is : “My classes aren’t mandatory; but I’ll try and be here as often as I can”