U.K. PARURESIS TRUST: Re: Classroom Experience

Hello again everybody,

So today was my first day of what is really like work experience, and for the most part it went quite well, I was quite anxious at first but that soon went away. I think the reason for this is purely the fact that I already sort of know some of the teachers from my time at the school, then just the novelty of 'being on the other side'. So that was all right and I am definitely feeling better about my second day especially compared to how I felt on days leading up until today. So 'background anxiety' as I like to call it, should continue dropping off.

So just a general account of my first day I guess.

The toilet situation, well there are a few individual unisex cubicles. Sort of like disabled toilets, but not. If you get my drift. But what I did was a got there early this morning, well before I was supposed to meet my supervising teacher, just so I could calm down a little bit and visit the toilet for 3-5 minutes just to sort of get used to it, and just fake it, if I needed to pee, I'd pee but I didn't have any real urgency so that was that really.

So after I met my teacher and just spoke about what I'd be doing during the 2 weeks, I got some news which might cause an issue for me. Essentially because the School hasn't done a CRB check (Not really worth it for them, for just 2 weeks) and I'm working with children, I pretty much have to be supervised during my time there. This means I can't leave classes early. But for the first day I was mainly scheduled to just shadow lab technicians and sit in on classes when I could.

Within an hour or two when I had some urgency which was still during class, I made a trip to a different staff toilet which was closer to where I was working, obviously I checked about that was OK first. Either way these were just a standard layout or toilet really and as expected I was completely fine.

During lunch when I was sat in the staffroom I had some mild urgency and thinking I might not get a crack at using the bathrooms for another 2 hours or so I decided to take a crack at peeing, I made 2 attempts within a 30 minute period but to no real avail. I had a relatively low urgency but I still felt slightly nervous both times. It was one of those weird scenarios where despite the fact that its a completely enclosed cubicle with a fan, you can still sort of hear noise which is sort of off-putting.

Regarding my point of if I feel the need to leave during a lesson to use the bathroom, well after a class at the end of school when I was just discussing the overall lesson, and the fact that there was a staff meeting I had been asked to attend, she just sort of randomly said that all the teachers will now be in the staffroom drinking loads of water before they start planning lessons, or rushing to the bathroom. Because its actually the case that some just drink less in the afternoon because they know they can't go and pee for another 2 hours. This I found to be a little random, but made me think that I wasn't the only person who thought about such trivial things are actually thinking on my next chance to use the bathroom.

Either way I am definitely feeling fine about tomorrow, I'm scheduled to be in classes all day which is a little daunting (I observed 3 today). But I am feeling a little better about the toilet situation now I know the layouts and everything, and I am obviously just going to brush of the 2 half-misfires just due to the fact that my urgency was nowhere near the sweet spot of 6-8 not to mention the fact that there things just happen, especially in such new and different situations.

I might even try listening to some music, since I clearly have the time and the opportunity to.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my general update, I might even post these daily just to allow me to go over everything from the day properly and reflect in a positive manner.