School.

For those of you who do not:

A) have children or grandchildren

teach children

C) work in academia

... September is any other time of year. Sad because it is the end of summer, but generally the same as any other month. For those of us in the second category, it marks the start of the new school year (at least, in the Northern Hemisphere) and a rollar coaster of emotions, frustrations, delights and horrors.

We have now lived, survived, a full teaching week. I have met all of my classes and we have completed our first practical lessons (for those who don't know, I teach Food Technology, a much maligned subject which is NOT home economics, cookery or similar).

Some of these sessions have been times of love and wonder. There is a strange and fierce joy to see the students whom you have watched grow up, little 11 year olds who are now teenagers, full of grand ideas and emotions. Too there is an almost possessive kind of loyalty and love when a girl in my tutor group arrived early, ran in and hugged me without a second thought. I was missed.

There is often bad stuff too, injuries, accidents, this time, a death among the student population. There are the children you dread seeing, secretly hoping they had transferred to other schools: the one who made things hard last year and you fear will do the same again.

I have discovered more recently that I prefer teenagers to children, and that if such a choice was available, I would teach high school. The littlest ones can be so needy, and while others find it endearing, I find it irritating that they have not yet been trained into the manner which I require. They will learn though, it is the entire purpose of their being here.

Which brings us to this: I will often at the end of a short period of writing get a student to read to the class their work. I call them volunteers, but I pick them. Today, someone asked me why, and I was reminded of Sir Terry Pratchett, his wonderful work and the words of Lord Vetinari.

"That greatest of all treasures, which is hope."

I told the students I was imply giving them the illusion of choice, that this illusion was something they would get used to whether they liked it or not. The world is full of apparent choice, though very few of them are actually real choices. They nodded as though they understood and turned back to their work, as did I.

We are all of us toiling away under the illusion of choice.