Life on the CELTA course

The first step on my road to Teaching in Thailand (TiT) was a scary one. For the sake of my CELTA I'd travelled from the picture postcard corner of Somerset which I called home, right the way across country to the relative hustle and academic bustle of Oxford and moved into the box room I was renting, nestled right on the canal in the fashionably studenty suburb of Jericho - Radiohead used to play there dontcha' know.

I arrived a good twenty minutes early, only to find half a dozen people already there and that's when I realised that deep down, I was actually incredibly nervous. Everybody, bar one, was older than my twenty two years (and she was only younger than me by a month), everybody was dressed better than I was and nobody looked impressed by my skinny jeaned swagger. Gulp. It made me wonder, and not for the first time, whether I had enough substance to be an English language teacher or if I was, as my favourite teacher at school had described me, ‘All mouth and no bollocks.' And that was the one who liked me.

Other than one lovely chap who was studying for a PHD, I was the freshest out of university and I'd hoped my degree in English Literature would stand me in good stead. After all, wasn't literature, when it all boiled down to it, just the assembling of English Language into something florid? Not only could I do English language, I could do it with flair and I'd seen a spate of my work published recently which had lent me the earlier mentioned swagger. But on the very first day when I realised I had no idea what ‘collocation' meant, I was forced to re-evaluate exactly how much of a doddle the CELTA would be.

You'll have to forgive me - whilst most of my blogs will be dealing specifically, as would make sense, with Thailand and the run up to the move, I can't help but want to begin at the beginning and the CELTA, in October 2011, was just that. And that day was the beginning of the beginning.

I assume if you're reading this then you've either got yourself a TEFL qualification of some description or are hoping to get one before committing to a move to the LOS - if the former then you have my whole hearted congratulations. The CELTA was by far the hardest thing I've ever done academically, to the point that when I returned home during the first weekend for my mum's fiftieth birthday party, I considered locking myself in the bathroom and not coming out until they promised they wouldn't make me go back.

But the reason I did (albeit somewhat reluctantly) go back was the reason I envy you guys in the second camp - the CELTA, and I can only assume the majority of other intensive TEFL courses, provided me with some incredibly treasured memories and a couple of very good friends.

You're going to laugh more than you've ever laughed and you're going to spend a minimum of nine hours a day with a group of ten or so other people who'll you come to, at the very least, respect for the way they get through the week and at most love. My final night in Oxford, admittedly with the help of a great deal of wine, I repeatedly told two of my fellow Celtites that I loved them like they were my own brother and sister.

And that's what you need to look for when you embark upon your training course, especially if you're a long way from home as I was; the sort of people who'll do just about anything to help you settle in and feel at home, up to and including having you round to their house for a cracking Sunday roast. And so my main piece of advice for anyone thinking about doing the CELTA is this - the friends you make will, by the end of the month, be worth more to you than the piece of paper your certificate is printed on. Make them, keep them, and treasure them.

I'd love to hear how other people got on with their CELTAs (or TESOLs, or what have you) and specifically if they agree with my friends theory? Could you have made it through the CELTA if you'd been doing it alone, without anyone to compare notes with (or moan at) in the pub after work? And do the experienced teachers already in country feel like they have that sort of relationship with their colleagues, or is it restricted to when you're all trainee teachers in the same fifty hour a week boat of endless lesson planning and essay writing?

Endless except for the wine, of course. That's my other piece of advice - this is a month of socially acceptable, post work, Friday night binge drinking, during which nobody will judge you, even if you drink so many glasses of white that you end up, oh so accidentally, slipping into the Jericho canal.