I HAVE been teaching in a well-known Gold Coast primary school for four years and I’m starting to think I’ve chosen the wrong career.

The way I feel about biggest part of my life — my career — has become my biggest secret.

Studying education was great — the other students were all really fun and I thought it would be this way when we were working too. I thought teaching would be easy, and I was lucky enough to land a job straight out of university.

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CONFESSION OF A GC PARTY ANIMAL

I woke to my alarm on my first day with a nervous, sick feeling that my mum said would go away — but it hasn’t. I worry every day that I have wasted these years of my life.

media_camera Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz starred comedy film Bad Teacher — but a local primary school teacher feels her career is no laughing matter

My stomach is in knots thinking about these last short weeks of the school holidays and the prospect of facing another four terms with 30 children to take care of.

Teachers are not supposed to feel this way, but it’s not what I expected.

I pictured myself at the front of a classroom, reading Roald Dahl books to a roomful of attentive, wide-eyed kids who would hang off my every word and think back on me, over the years, as their favourite teacher.

But these small humans never seem interested in doing what I tell them to do — even when I shout at them.

They ask too many questions, they want to go to the bathroom all the time and they whinge, whinge, whinge. It’s suffocating.

My job makes me feel so anxious I have been calling in sick more and more often.

It took me almost all of last year to learn all my students’ names. It’s exhausting — especially when they’re all apparently named after Game of Thrones characters or exotic cheeses.

media_camera This Gold Coast confessor isn’t a fan of teaching, and neither was Cameron Diaz’s character in comedy movie Bad Teacher (AP Photo/Columbia Pictures — Sony, Gemma LaMana)

The redhead ones were easy to remember, and the naughty and loud ones — but the rest kind of blurred together into a forgettable blob.

I don’t understand children and I’m realising that I don’t even want to. When I have children myself I’m going to make sure they have normal names and are capable of sitting quietly and behaving themselves.

I haven’t smiled in months. Not for real anyway.

I grin through my teeth at the needy parents who are just as bad as the little people they have spawned.

“My son is being bullied!”

“My daughter needs more help with her reading!”

“My daughter needs to take this medicine at the same time each day!”

No sir, your son is not being bullied, he’s a sook; your daughter is an idiot; and I’m not a bloody doctor. That’s what I really want to say but can’t. I’m only 23 and my life is a lie.

The other teachers don’t seem to have these problems, so I can’t talk about this with anyone. People get so sensitive when you speak negatively about their children.

Parents always think their child is the smartest and best person ever created when everybody knows that all kids are really pretty much the same.

I just don’t know what to do as my parents are so proud that I have become a teacher like them. I don’t want to disappoint them.

Despite my feelings, I know I am a wonderful teacher and carry on in the hope that one day my students will realise this and be more grateful.

Also, I feel sure that I will eventually be promoted to principal or some other more important administrative role where I don’t have to be around children all the time — I guess I just have to hang in there.

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