Phew, Made It Through That!

Yesterday (Monday), I had my interview for a PGCE in Primary Education at the Univ. of Leeds.

And I think it went at least ok! So yay!

It was very nerve-wracking the night before and the morning of! I had so much nervous energy, I could hardly sit still for breakfast. I wanted to get going and make sure I was there with plenty of time to spare.

Thankfully, my stress was lessened a little because I went down on the Sunday night to my friend, Andy's flat, and he was a student at Leeds for a little while so knows the campus. So at least I didn't have to know where I was going.

I got into the waiting room and it was full... with, like, actual adults.

Ok, that sounds stupid because yeah, we were all there to get onto a postgraduate course but for some reason I had imagined the other interviewees to look, well, younger. This might be partly to do with the fact I don't feel or look 23, so I think other 23 year olds also look only about 20... Either way, it was slightly intimidating.

But I got talking to some of the other interviewees and, of course, they were all lovely and northern. After the obligatory introductions, including where we were from and what degree we had done, and where we did it, we went and did the maths and English tests.

Well. Thank god I had relearnt how to work fractions! I reckon at least half the questions were fraction based... Things like:

Express 17/25 as a percentage.

Or

What is 3/4 + 2/3 + 4/6? Express it in it's simplest form. 

If you'd have asked me how to do that like two weeks ago,  I would have been very stuck.

I thought it went well, anyway. The English test was a test of our spelling, punctuation and grammar, as well as whether we had legible handwriting and could write at a masters level. It was very short so hopefully that was ok too.

The second part of the interview day was something we could prepare for. We were to give a little lesson to the other interviewees in our group. It could be on anything at all. I chose the BSL manual alphabet. So, there was me thinking that surely the chance of someone else choosing that is low, but lo and behold, one of the four others in my group had also chosen the BSL alphabet. I was before her so it didn't affect my lesson, but it definitely stole her thunder a bit and she was struggling to fill the allotted time. I felt a bit bad. She must have felt horrible once she knew what I was planning to do! Thankfully the interviewers understood so, even though I am technically fighting her for a place, it shouldn't affect her overall performance. Anyway, I think my lesson went ok, though probably nerves showed through a bit. But what can you do...

Finally, it was the individual interview. Being interviewed is not my strong suit. I mostly come across as both too honest, and too blasé about whatever I'm being interviewed for. But I think I managed to avoid too many interview pitfalls, and didn't have any horrible moments where I couldn't think of an answer. And the interviewers were very friendly and made me feel pretty relaxed considering.

After that was finished, and some admin was completed, that was my interview day over! It could have gone a whole hell of a lot worse so I'm cautiously hopeful. If I don't get in... well, it'll be back to square one probably. But let's not think about that!

Plus, I would really like to go to Leeds. It's a really nice city (though the driving is confusing!) and the uni has a Harry Potter society!!! Done and done!

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