Last Day of Freedom

Tomorrow is Enrollment and Induction Day.
I haven't received my official letter from Admissions, along with the CRB Check form I should have filled in. I can't teach adults on my placement without being cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau, and each organisation has to do their own check. It doesn't matter that I was checked recently for a friend who is going to be a foster carer, and had a clean record. I suppose I could have committed any number of horrendous crimes since then.
I'm feeling quite apprehensive.
It's... almost exactly 30 years since I left university - with a degree in English and Drama - and now I'm going back to being a full-time student. It's a one year, post-graduate Diploma, but I still expect to be far and away the oldest person on the course. Which is fine. It's just going to be a shock to the system.
For the last four years I've worked from home and worked at being a writer. I've had three novels published and a couple of self-help books as well as business and research publications. There are a couple of proposals for more in with publishers, but since my partner was made redundant a few months ago and hasn't yet found another job, I can't really sit at home hoping to write a best-seller. The initial lure of the DiTLLS course was that it offered a £6,000 bursary, and - in our present financial condition - the likelihood of qualifying for as much again in student grants and loans.
I've just finished applying for everything I can get.
Now it's payback time.
Well, not literally. I won't have to pay back any loans until I'm employed and earning money. What I mean is, I now have to go and do the work. I have to be in college from 9.30am to 4.30pm four days a week, with Thursday devoted to preparing for my "placement". My placement will be 150 hours of teaching Adult Literacy courses, mainly in the summer term. That seems quite far away at the moment, so I'm not worrying about that yet. I'm worrying about my two children, aged 10 and 7, who I'm not going to be able to collect from school any more (except hopefully on Thursdays). At the moment their dad's around and can pick them up, but it's still not the same. And if he does get a job - which of course is emminently desirable - then I'll have to organise childcare.
Anyway, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life. My life as a teacher? I never wanted to be a teacher, though adults have got to be less stressful to teach than children. I'm just struggling with the idea that I must be a failure as a writer to be doing this. But maybe, just maybe, working with the building blocks of language and helping people to change their lives through better literacy, might just be... really cool.