Duke, Stop Fucking Around and Pay Attention!

I've never been diagnosed as having ADHD but working with a number of pupils who have I find myself coming to the conclusion that I show many of the symptoms.

It affects me in a variety of ways. I get bored quickly and often find myself being distracted by anything other than what I should actually be doing.

I have great plans for my blog. I think of running jokes or thematic posts that I feel would be hilarious. Look at the manifesto post. Sure, it's a bit overlong and somewhat wordy but I thought it was quite funny. I then thought I'd run a series of posts based on a fictional parliamentary candidate getting into all kinds of amusing scrapes. Once again, plenty of room for cringe-worthy humour. Then I got bored writing about it. After ONE post.

I've done it before. I wrote a political profile on Lord Mandelson which I thought would turn into a series of satirical pokes at major British politicians. Didn't do it. How about the teaching advice posts that you promised us, Duke? Meh, other stuff happened.

How about my grand scheme to report the news in the style of a 1920s old time imperialist ("Today in the colonies there was some shooting. No white people were hurt.")? Or my plan to use literary critical theories to deconstruct the lyrics of modern pop songs (a Marxist reading of 'Single Ladies [Put A Ring On It]' anyone?) None of it happened. None of it will happen. As such my blog drifts aimlessly between personal mewlings and social commentary without any form of overall structure.

And it's not just on my blog. I can pretty much get any class I teach to be absolutely silent and working away like happy little things. That's great. Some teachers can't. The trouble is that I get bored so quickly that I start to wind the kids up. Stealing their pencil cases and hiding them. Pulling faces. Singing a nice song (currently my number one choice is 'Free Nelson Mandela' - I know not why). The other day I made a shadow puppet of a dog on the projector screen and pretended that it was throwing up the words on the PowerPoint I was using (yes, with sound effects). The kids generally ignore it or tell me to go away. One pupil once told me to 'grow up man-child'. Fair play.

This mucking around can occasionally turn a peaceful classroom into something approaching Brixton circa 1981. I then have to battle to get them quiet again.

Why do I do this? What possible use could it serve?

And when I have to complete work on my own I procrastinate like a mother fucker. If I have an 'absolute-must-finish' job I will spend twenty minutes working for every forty-five minutes of fucking about. This could be checking my blog, walking to the other side of the school to tell someone something (rather than send an email), try to improve my juggling, researching technical rugby moves that I will never pull off or even just staring at the light reflecting off the white board onto my ceiling. Sure, it looks pretty but I don't need it in my life.

It means that I'm 'okay' at a number of things (playing guitar, cooking, writing) but don't have the attention span to learn properly. Most of the computer games I buy are half finished. I listen to a CD non-stop for a week then put it away for the next twelve months.

There are however, some advantages. For instance, I have a knowledge about a lot of things. You could ask me a question on Roman civilisation, Russian literature or science and I'm usually pretty good at giving a half-decent response. I know, for example, that light can function as both a particle and a wave, that it is based on probability and can be in two places at once. That sounds impressive but that is the limit for me. I can't draw the equation that shows this for two reasons - I suck at maths and if I sat down, determined to get better, I would get distracted by a bee or something.

Anyway, I'm getting bored writing this. I'm off to play in my last match of the season. Have I told you about rugby?

Oh man rugby's great! So are 'Tool'! Dude, you've gotta listen to 'Tool'. They rock! Oh, have you ever eaten scallops? What about proper homemade jam? Do you watch 'Lost'? Yeah, I got bored too. How about 'The Wire'? It's great!

Ooh, look. A bee.