It had to happen sooner or later. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long. Anyone who knows me will know that I am a champion procrastinator and may also be frustrated by the fact that I usually get away with it. Most times I manage to sort myself out and get done what needs to be done – maybe not quite when it needs to be done, but near enough.

Not this time, though. I had put off and put off writing my reports. Mostly because I’d been a bit slack at keeping records of the students’ grades. I’ve been doing some really interesting stuff with them this year – in my opinion – and formative assessment is going well. However, the summative stuff, the grades for which I need for my report grade, was marked, kind of, but the recording of my grades has been somewhat erratic. We don’t have a system at school for this – an online gradebook – so we each keep our own records. This is really dumb. And annoying. And for slack arses like me, somewhat dangerous.

I’d been using one method and decided to change but had not quite got around to transferring grades across. So I had to re-build my gradebook before I could write the reports, and this took longer than expected. I did get my reports done, but not on time, and I was extremely stressed out by this, and even lost sleep.

The other problem with this is that I’m railing against it. Whilst I was planning all my interesting project-based stuff, which the kids are doing really well with, I’m having to write exams.  Grrrrrr. It’s so annoying and goes against everything that I’m trying to do. The kids spend hours trying to memorise new vocabulary, rather than working on how to use the new vocabulary and understanding the words in context.

So I am trying to turn over a new leaf. It’s pretty hard to change something which I have been perfecting for over 50 years, but it really did come back and bit me on the bum last week, and I don’t want to go through that again.

The signs are pretty good so far – but like most resolutions, being resolute is the difficulty. I have, however, got on with stuff that I wanted to, such as the passion project / genius hour programme at school. I have even written my own blog posts and produced my proposal to model to the kids. Kudos to me.

I have also been organizing our exchange trip to New York, which I’m very excited about. The best thing about it is that the kids will be staying with host families and be at school during half of the day, so the pressure on me won’t be so great. Even better is the fact that I get to stay in a hotel so I will have a bolt hole to escape to. I’m looking forward to seeing the Leman Manhattan school and maybe sowing some seeds so that Stephen and I can transfer there – or one of the other Meritas schools in the US, at least. Some of them are IB schools, which would suit us. We both fancy spending some time Stateside.

Doing stuff has never been the problem, though. I don’t think I’m essentially lazy. And counter to the procrastination thing, I’m actually quite impulsive – particularly when it comes to big things. I remember my decision to sell my flat in London and go traveling – a fairly life-changing decision – was made quickly, and within the day, my flat was on the market and, essentially, I embarked on the journey which led me here within a very short space of time, with no procrastination at all.

And what winds me up about the procrastination thing, is I know I’m going to have to, eventually, do the thing I’m putting off. And it’s probably not even an unpleasurable task. So why don’t I just do it? I’m the same with the marking I do for the IB – I always leave it to the last minute and then it’s a huge stress and rush to get it done, and I always end up sending the scripts back late. OK, so marking is a pain in the arse and I can understand why I put it off, but still. The whole experience wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse if I just got on with it. But every year it’s the same.

Prime case in point: for the last 18 months I’ve been saying that I’m going to learn Chinese. I want to learn Chinese. I will enjoy learning Chinese. Speaking Chinese will make my life here easier and more fun. But I haven’t got around to it.  It’s ridiculous.

So that’s the next thing that’s on the list – I WILL start Chinese lessons. Just as soon as we return from Chinese New Year.