Recently there have been a few things that I have done that remind me that I am different now.  When these things happen I don’t get as confused as I did in the beginning but they help to remind me that there are many things that I still need to improve.  I understand that I probably won’t be able to do everything the same but I try to do the best that I can.  The first thing that you need to do is to try and understand where you need to help and to recognise when you need it.  I still struggle when I am at work to ask for help as it wasn’t something that I needed to do before.  I spend so much more time doing things because of this.  One thing that I have noticed over the last few years is that my maths and english isn’t really up to the standard it should be.  I don’t think I was really very good at them but when you start from the bottom again you really notice it.  I have been told that parents who have primary school children really struggle with the homework as they have forgotten most of what they learned in these first years at school.  I guess you just know how to do things without thinking about how to do it.  Before all the lockdowns happened I was finding out about maths courses at the local college.  They do free courses that anyone can go to where they are taught maths and english so people can help their children with their homework.  Over the last couple of years whilst everything stopped I brought lots of primary school maths books which helped me to get to grips with simple maths again.  I really enjoyed doing them and it helped me to get into maths again.  I was never very good at times tables and I am awful at them now but I have this urge to try to get to grips with them finally.  Recently I contacted the local college again to see if I could sign up for a maths course.  I have to wait until September to do a face to face course but they are doing online ones straight away.  So a couple of weeks ago I thought I should bite the bullet and I signed up for a maths assessment which would show me which level I was at now.  Of course I thought that as I have a maths GCSE I would find that I would not have a problem with the assessment.  We were told about the level one and two maths courses that would be taught and the assessment would see which level we would start on.  I explained my situation and the tutor was very understanding and supportive.  Well like I said at the beginning this was a test that once again has shown me that I am not the same person anymore.  My sister said that she probably wouldn’t pass the GCSE now.  I was so bad though that I am not even at level one or two yet, I am at the bass level.  I was so disappointed as I feel that I have progressed so much but I guess I must have been at rock bottom.  At least it will feel like I will be learning something.  I started doing the course this week, it is online which isn’t great when you need to ask for help.  I am enjoying it so far and hopefully by September I will progress to level one and perhaps go to a class at the college.  Fingers crossed.