Last August, I was terrified. Pretty much from start to finish, actually, as I had a new job. There is always a lot of excitement and anticipation about any new job you take up, but this one in particular was a special kind of scary, as it was over 4,000 miles away on the tiny island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
I was terrified for plenty of reasons, chief among which was simple fear of the unknown – I’d never been faced with so many unknowns before starting a new job – but just as important was the fear of isolation. Several of the questions in my interview were geared towards living with isolation, so it weighed pretty heavily on my mind.
Since getting here, though, I have shared 6 months with a spectacular bunch of teachers and students, and learnt so much about this incredible place, but (and here’s the kicker) I haven’t lost touch with the wider world – a wider world that means a hell of a lot to me.
As an ICT teacher, I bang on about the idea of the world getting smaller pretty regularly, but I hadn’t actually felt it until I came here. Mum & dad are only a Skype call away, family & friends are all on Facebook, and the thousands of teachers I connect with on Twitter are always there to keep me learning.
We moan about it all the time, but technology is truly changing the way our world works. If it hadn’t, neither I nor any one of you would have the opportunity to share our February 29ths together like this.
It’s a good thing 
