On outdated words and job hunting

Matt from TEFL as I imagine him.

I received my first reply from my TEFL teacher today, who called the responses I'd given to my worksheet 'pertinent and interesting', and that he was 'very impressed', which makes me feel pretty bad-ass. Also, I love the word 'pertinent' for being such a Jane Austen word, I've never heard anyone use it outside of her books. Well, not everyone can boast having a tutor from Regency times, so I guess I should feel pretty cool about that. The course so far is pretty interesting, and it seems serious too. When I started I was a little bit apprehensive about how good an online internet course could be in terms of teaching me to be a teacher and just figured I'd get the certificate and then... I don't know, wing it, but the more I come in contact with it I feel pretty confident that it's going to give me a good platform to stand on. I try to be thoughtful of what it's like to learn a new language and how scary it is to try to use it, to be able to help out and actually be of use to anyone. It makes me think of when my brother was learning French in school in Canada: "If I have to learn this shitty language, I might as well learn it properly." If you do things properly, you won't have to worry in the long run.
Speaking of doing things properly, I should really get cracking with writing applications for jobs. It's weird how it's something that's so stressful to me, yet I never get fucking anything done. I know I'd be in a much happier position if I would just send out the applications, finish up anything that needs doing and could just concentrate on doing the TEFL to the best of my ability so I can score a good grade and go on to be the bad-ass I've always known myself to be, but it's hard to start. I will start though.

Pictured: My coping skills.

Jobs are scary though. I work hard, and I'm serious when I put my mind to doing something, but I don't know if it's school or life that's done this to me, but I have a hard time convincing myself that I can do... well, anything.

The cold hard truth.

I'm a little afraid of the prospect of looking for internships as well, because I feel like I know so little. I'm nowhere near confident enough in my abilities, mainly in architecture but also in things in general. While I know I'm smart, my social anxiety makes me nervous and leads to mistakes, which I then take way too hard, making me even more nervous. I know myself, and it's one of those things that will pass as soon as I get comfortable in my situation, but before I've found a job and feel settled, I'm really nervous about stuff. Also, the economy's complete shit, but it's complete shit for everyone, so whatever.

I'm just happy I know myself well enough to not freak out over stuff like this. Yeah, I should make more of an effort sometimes, but all in all I know that things will come together for me in the end. Now, time to sort through these 50 pages of study material and millions of job applications, and hopefully the gods of bureaucracy will have mercy on me.