This year has been one of the best years of my life.
January
Let's start with January. January was a pretty bad month for me in terms of work. I got into a big argument with someone at my work that made me decide to hand in my notice, despite loving the place I was working at. I was in a bad place as I was still recovering from COVID from the year before and was struggling to get back into the swing of things. Despite this punch-up, deciding to move on ended up being one of the best decisions I've made (more later).
February
In February this year, I decided to start looking into developing my teaching skills to be more digital. I began to build my slideshow engine in February which is now a key part of my day-to-day teaching. I also began to build my embeddable tools, which are a major part of this. I also began developing an interactive worksheet system that uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript to power it.
March and April
In March I applied for a job in one of the two schools I had always wanted. I knew after the interview that I wouldn't get the job and indeed I was correct. I also sat my driving test for the first time since 2016 (things had at last begun to settle down again and I found the time to do it). Unfortunately, I got one major fault (although, once again, no minors) and failed as a result. This was upsetting news but I decided I would persevere and try it again. Two fails in one week.
I also could not forget to mention the big change that came to ZPE and that was the inclusion of passing by value and reference.
May
May was perhaps the best month of the year. First of all, I resat my driving test and passed it at last! A week later, the other school I had always wanted to work at posted a job and so I applied. I went through the interview process but didn't think my interview went too well, but later in the day was offered the job! Both of these were within one week of each other too (it was the reverse of March).
ZPE also got another big update with strong typing now being available in parameters. This was another huge update.
In terms of my house, I finally got my garden done.
June and July
In June I went to see my new school and it was exactly as I remembered it. I also met my line manager who is the most awesome guy ever, although I had known that he was a nice guy from when I did volunteer work at the school way back in 2016. Over the next few months, I began to work hard on improving my slideshow engine, creating webpages for my class worksheets and making more digital tools for use in education.
I went to York with my mum for the first time in 11 years and this was quite an enjoyable experience, especially compared with my usual Scottish getaways that I do year upon year (I'm just meaning it was a big change, not that it was better).
I also turned 31 years old.
August, September and October
I started my new job at my new school at last. My first few weeks were awesome! The saying the grass isn't always greener on the other side applies whenever you are applying for a new job, but in this case, the grass was greener. I'm very happy in my new job. Further, in September I got an award for settling into the school quickly and well. I love where I work.
Once again, this was a big month for ZPE when it was compiled to a native binary for the first time, seeing huge performance gains over the JDK version.
At the end of the first half-term, I knew that I had made the right choice with my new school.
November and December
Not sure what to say about these two months, but they have been really lovely. The first few weeks of December were pretty tough as I got a cold and bunged up thing that just refused to go away - it lasted a total of four weeks before it cleared up completely.
I spent a lot of time with my family in December after having several months of not speaking to my dad, and then of course Christmas was a lovely day at my parent's house, despite me originally not planning on going. On the 30th of the month I decided to go and buy a car. At last. I put down the deposit to get my self an MG4 EV. What a nice end to the year.
