Blog Assignment #6: Carte Blanche

Why am I not able to say NO?

What a struggle it is sometimes, to be both a part time student and working almost fulltime as a temporary teacher at school. Not mentioning that I’ve got a family to take care of in the “spare time” that doesn’t exist.


An hour ago a colleague called asking me if I could work instead of her tomorrow. Before I had thought properly about it I can hear myself saying, of course I’ll do that for you. Stupid me! I don’t really have the time for it but I’ll do it anyway. I don’t have the strength to say NO, just a simple NO. Why is it impossible for me to squeeze out the NO word?


The “NO” word obviously doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. I always want to be the good girl and I don’t dare to say no when I am offered extra hours at school. I am totally aware of the extra hours I’ll do at work tomorrow steel some time from my English studies. At the end of the day I’ll probably steel those hours from my two children, the unborn I’m expecting and my husband. I’m always stressed of bad conscious no matter what I decide to do. An easy solution to this dilemma would be work less hours, sounds reasonable to me mentally but in real life it’s a NO NO.

Working fewer hours would absolutely help me out when I run out of time, unfortunately there are only 24 hours a day. When my vocabulary doesn’t contains a “NO” word when working as a temporary teacher, I think I have to live with this kind of struggling. Making a puzzle of the hours I’m awake almost tearing me apart. I’m totally aware of the show must go on like this if I want to change the status from temporary teacher to teacher if you know what I mean?

Hiding behind the desk being a good student won’t give me a job as a teacher. Being at school working these extra hours, getting experience will more likely give me a permanent job in the future when teachers born in the 40’s hitting the pension age. One of my dreams is to become an English teacher for young learners, therefore I’m not saying NO working as a temporary teacher. I want to become a propper teacher.