Many people think (and to be honest that sweeping statement of many people includes my husband, parents, sister and most of my closest friends) that I panic and worry too much. I know they are right but cannot stop myself. Today has been the first day back at school after nine days off because of half-term and I have been through the same levels of sleeplessness, sweaty palms, blind panic and all of the other things that beset the first day of a new term when I was a child. I probably got about four hours’ sleep last night.

It’s the final leg of my struggle to qualify – in around four weeks from now I will know whether I am to become a qualified teacher. I’ve got six weeks to go on the placement but for some reason the decision is made a couple of weeks before the end.

I’m in meltdown. I can’t explain why I have the terrors so badly but I do.

So, here is a shot of me clinging to some biology for comfort. This hairy thing is the stalk of one of DMs tomato plants. You’ll notice it looks as though the hairs are wet at the tips. They’re not. These are what I now know to be glandular hairs. Each hair has a gland on the end that exudes sticky stuff. I daresay that there is a much more technical way of saying it but it’s late, I’m completely exhausted on day one of the last 30 days of my training and to be honest I can’t face looking it up at the moment.

The strange thing is that for six weeks or so, the summer before last, I spent my days crawling round on my hands and knees peering at plant stalks through a field microscope looking for glandular hairs on Euphrasia plants. If they’re in Cornwall and they’ve got glandular hairs there is a chance they are very special little plants from a rare species. I know that because that’s what I did my dissertation on. I can still remember the thrill of finding my first Euphrasia vigursii with its glandular hairs! At the time I thought I’d run kicking and screaming away from environmental biology because I’d worked so hard on it…I was wrong. I didn’t know the meaning of hard work at the time. I may have worked like a dog but I was on my own schedule whereas now I’m working like a dog and when someone else says “go woof” then I leap up and go woof.

There are 29 more days of my teacher training and another day on campus then it’s done. One way or another. Not that I’m counting or anything…