There is only a thin line between survival and falling by the wayside of my course. I’m doing my best to stay on the “right” side of it, even though I sometimes wonder whether the “right” side could be the wrong side for me. I find the placements unsettle me and make the on-campus bits very hard going.

For the last couple of days I’ve been battling with post-placement blues, an ever more urgent and ever less coherent assignment with a deadline looming faster than Sebastian Vettel on speed and the feeling that no matter how hard I try I’ll never make it as a teacher. Just as this fish is marooned on an island in the middle of Drake’s Circus in between the shopping arcade, the University campus and a building with the dubious title of “the moneycentre” (who knows what goes on in there, I doubt it’s very honourable), I too feel like a fish out of water floundering around in the quagmire of life, study and the desperate need for a job.