Acquire knowledge because its acquisition is fear of God, search for it is worship, its study is praise, search for it is jihad, teaching it to him who does not know is alms giving, imparting it to those who are worthy is meritorious. It is friend in journey, companion in solitude, guide to religion and light to them in happiness and misfortune, bosom friend to a stranger and beacon to the path of Paradise. Through it, God exalts a nation, makes them leaders and guides of good. Seeing them, others also become guides to good and the people to follow them. The angels urge them to work. Everything dry and fresh seeks forgiveness for them. Knowledge gives life to a dead heart, it is a light for the eyes in darkness and gives strength to the body after removing weakness. By its help, a man reaches the rank of the pious. To think of it is like fasting and its study is like prayer. By its help God is obeyed and worshipped, by its help warning is given, byt its help unity of God is understood, tie of blood is maintained and lawful things are known.
Sayings of the Prophet in Ihya Ulum-id-din by Imam Al Ghazali
theres gotta be something i can do. but what? ……………………………………………………………….
i seriously need cant think of anything i can do that is like businessy, cause thats what im trying to think of. like i can’t work, long story, i cant get a proper teaching job, short story cant be bothered explaining, so what can i do, that involves something i am good at but is useful and perhaps helps me to make money? wow what a stretch….
the thing with photography is, you want the photo to look good, without showing everybody that you tried really hard to make it look good. i was just browsing through Bruce Webbers’ Portraits feature on Robert Pattinson in Vanity Fair Magazine and although Rob looks fantastic because he has remarkable features mashallah, it all looks so fake. Even though you can see that Webber tries to convey a sense of ‘personal’ and ‘natural’ to the photos I feel like all the photos are too done up, its too obvious that everything has been set up and positioned in a particular way. Maybe thats what the photos are trying to do, in which case, they’ve achieved it, but to me these photos are just a reflection of the commercialisation that has become so rampant in todays society. I much rather a photo portrait series with Rob looking like he always does when he doesn’t have makeup on him and isn’t wearing designer clothes, sitting in some remote place he hardly goes to. I prefer the exact opposite of that (unless ofcourse you are doing a promotional shot for a movie poster in which case the New Moon movie photos are just phenomenal). But then I guess it all depends on what you are trying to achieve right? And photos like books are open to interpretation. I guess i just like seeing more natural photos because everything is so covered up and ‘perfected’ these days. And by natural i dont mean you don’t use any photo correction technology but rather that you capture the true essence of what it means to be human and the human experience.
I still do however admire what Webber has done in the sense that he has shown that he had a vision for these photos and he was able to execute that vision. Even though i differ with some aspects of this series I still really respect that he had an idea and he was able to express it in different ways and I actually really like some of the photos, but then I think is that because of the photos themselves or is it because Rob is ‘really really ridiculously gooooodlooking’ in them? Would i have liked the photos if there was someone who wasn’t as photogenic? Hmm now am I contradicting myself? I mean i dont feel that keeping a photo natural and being creative are mutually exclusive. ok im just going to end this post cause it seems like ill just keep going down this spiral of thoughts which arent actually going to lead anywhere and i never was one for philosophising.
everyone around me is so image concious. including myself. people are worried about gaining a kilo here, a pimple there. we have fat days and skinny late’s, ab crunchers, protein shakes and girls and boys spending hours ‘gymming’. i too am guilty of all of this. i am a product of this culture and society that i live in. today i decide that i need to put on my brakes. not completely. because my brakes are not strong enough. but i want to slow down. and i want to focus on whats going on in my heart. i want to be concious of my bad attitude days and rude response moments, my bitchy times and my short tempered and argumentative side that i allow to surface unjustly. i need to let other people have an opinion and agree to disagree. i need to explain things with patience even if it’s something i think is stupidly obvious and i need to be more considerate of other people and their feelings. just be nice. just be kind. just be more compassionate and more patient. that’s all 
I think, I’ve become a work a holic. I say it in the loose sense of the term in that, I don’t like not doing something because it makes me feel crap about myself? no, wait that doesnt sound right, its more like it makes me feel like theres nothing happening in my life…yeah more like that, I can’t really explain it, but I think work helps me to escape my thoughts. I haven’t been watching much tv which is a positive. And ever since prac has been over, either I want to be out constantly, or if I am at home I want to be doing something constantly. At the moment I’ve sort of focusing all my attention on clearing up my book case which contains hundreds of papers I don’t need, I looked at it all yesterday and was so flabbergasted at the amount of paper I had consumed. At the same time I’m also doing my teaching portfolio, which is basically a little portfolio you create to show how great you are not that I need a portfolio for that! But basically there are five dimensions in the Teaching Competency Framework and you need to write a narrative for each dimension to show how you’ve grown in that dimension, what you still need to do (action plan) and then you need to include documentation to support your claims. It sounds boring because it is, but such is the nature of this line of work . Why does my keyboard feel so soft? And NO that is NOT a euphamism, im being serious, my laptops keyboard feels like super soft today, maybe its all the repeats of taylor swift songs that I’ve been playing….
I am just so amazed at people who are able to take something that they are really good at or passionate about and make a living out of it. There is a teacher at my school (the school i’m pracking at ofcourse) who teaches a year 4 class for two days and is also the resident art specialist. This guy is amazing when it comes to art, its so inspiring. He has his own art room and seriously that is the best room in the whole school. It’s filled with beautiful art work that he has done with the kids from all era’s and all art styles. When talking to him today he was telling me how he really didn’t want his own class anymore and was more than happy to keep his position just as the art teacher. His story brought me to thinking how great it is when people are able to take their passions and turn it in to their careers. I mean this guy actually has something to fall back on, a subject which he loves. Although I felt happy for the guy, I couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed at my own predicament, that being someone who is without talent or skill at any one thing. I think thats why its so important that parents encourage their children to participate in extra curriucluar activities so that they can develop that special skill as they grow older and make something out of it if they chose to. I wish there was something that I could do that I could turn in to my career.
Speaking of not wanting to have your own class, I was talking to an EA today (education assistant) who has been giving 0.3 time in my classroom (3 mornings a week), because a girl in my class has recently been diagnosed with a mental illness, and she too was telling me about how she realised teaching wasn’t for her. After having completed her degree and teaching for a while she left it and is happy to do relief work and EA work. Its good to know other people feel the same way. It’s not just me.
I am also really glad of the support that I’ve bee getting from all sorts of people. Firstly theres my group of prac friends with whom I’ve created this mini support network. We whinge and we cry and we complain and we all understand what the other is going through and we give each other advice and encourage each other to be patient and to do what ever the hell it is the mentor teacher wants you to do. As much as I don’t like to complain and I feel like an ingrate when I do, it is something that I feel has become somewhat of a coping mechanism for me these past few weeks. I feel like its way for me to just release some of the tension, stress, frustration, and anger I have in side of me in a few minutes and then I can refocus on get on with it. And seriously that is what I have done, I have messaged people about this or that and it just helps to have someone listen because when theres no one at school whose arms you can just slump in to like a marshmallow you just want to get something off your chest so you can carry on the rest of your day. So I am ever so grateful to those people for listening to me. And then theres my lovely oldest sister who despite not being able to complete her own prac is very supportive of me and my school expeirence. She is probably the only person in my family who really understands what I am going through and knows what kind words to say and kind things to do that will help cheer me up and feel like someone knows! I mean the number of days I have been going in to my room feeling so depressed and lonely and isolated, and this is despite it being ramadan! I mean how pathetic hey? I can’t even keep it together during this holy month. Anyway, I guess its just natural to feel that way.
Oh and just as an aside, the art teacher is semi cute. Which is really weird because he is so not the kind of guy I would go for. He’s tall and skinny and has blonde hair, and could easily be mistaken for being gay, although he doesn’t walk like a gay guy or even have hand movements like a gay person, so perhaps its just because the left side of his brain (i.e. the artsy side) is far more developed than the other right hand side of his brain. Either way, its kinda weird how i find him so attractive, I don’t even get it….
As another aside, it was really really nice to play with leggo today during lunch time. It was raining buckets outside so we had ‘wet weather lunch’ which means all the kids have lunch in class. I hate weather lunch! I hate it with a passion purely because it robs me of my precious time with out the students. Today at lunch time however, I fully got in to building with the leggo. I couldn’t believe how relaxing it was, I mean I had been hiding the leggo from the students purposefully because I wanted to play with it first, but after they found it and wanted to play with it I joined in! Seriously, it must have been the only time during the whole day where I wasn’t thinking about what lesson I had next, or what pieces of work I still needed to assess, what reading activity I would need to do with them next, or how I could better explain a maths concept to them, or how i needed to laminate those papers, and type up some reflections, and update my daily work pad and blah blah blah. All the things that I try to block from my mind, most of the times unsuccessfully, during prayer. Alas it was the leggo that finally did the trick. I have really had a hankering for drawing recently, like my hand is just itching to draw, but I haven’t had the time to do it, so I did some today after being inspired by mc arty. Oh man he painted this picture of uluru and it is just amazing! I realised that good painting and good drawing is really basically about getting lighting correct and the same can be said for good photography. And that ladies and gentlemen is the end of a really long week.
