I moved to east London from Chicago two months ago with the incredibly responsible plan of being a supply teacher, when in reality I moved to get drunk and fuck anything with an accent and a club night. But I’m the best supply teacher you could ever want – I wear too-short skirts, gossip with the (8-year-old) girls about which of the seven Mohammeds in class they have a crush on, as if I were their friend, and let everyone do whatever the hell they want all day while I fantasise about banging the hot year 5 teacher in the bathroom at lunch to a soundtrack of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”.

I still go out a fair amount during the week even though I have to get up early, one night of which involved way too fucking long at Old Blue Last and a botched attempt to kiss a boy who I discovered was only interested in making out with a gay guy named Paul. The next day I woke up feeling shit, but I knew I needed the money so I trudged over to Mile End and decided I was going to stick it out, even though I probably smelled like I used vodka for mouthwash. Half way through the morning, as I was trying to explain for the thousandth time that I was not Britney Spears (my name is Brittany) and did not know anything about the cast of High School Musical, I felt it.

“Guys, I feel really weird,” I told my class of 25 Bengali children.

Then I threw up, right in the front of the class, to a chorus of “NO MISS BRITT-A-NYYYY!” I nailed the front table’s numeracy books, their homework, the wall and carpet. I couldn’t stop laughing/vomiting for the next five minutes as my children looked on in sheer horror, the swiftly increasing future debt for counselling painted on their faces like my vomit on the shoes of the quiet, wide-eyed girl in the front row.

Twenty minutes later I was on the Tube back to Liverpool Street with vomit on my coat and a bag full of “Get Well Miss Britney Spears” cards. GET WELL CARDS. For the sake of the primary school children of east London, I now max out at four drinks on weeknights. (Usually.)

Brittany is teacher and writer from Illinois who runs a blog that almost got her kicked out of uni in 2007.