10 o'clock bedtime

I.

Am.

Exhausted.

That is all.

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student teaching finally begins!

first, let me preface this by saying, I'm sorry for the lack of capitalization and possibly grammar. it's an email I typed to a friend who is student teaching at the same school, and I get lazy in non-formal emails, and I'm too exhausted to fix it to be a proper blog post. the things in italics are things I'm adding for ya'll.

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so. lemme just tell you about my ridiculous day.

started off by waking up late {7:45, had to be there for an 8:15 meeting} [oh, and left my lunch that I'd made at home on the counter.. at least I had some cash!]. then sat through that super depressing meeting {about budget cuts at the school} but we're gonna get jobs, so let's not think about it anymore lol

went to class, met a student who apparently is one of the big problem kids. my team gives out citations before giving out steps. 3 citations = 1 step. he's on step #4. not good. {students get 3 steps before a referral to an administrator}

I had to yell at my class for the first time today. my mentor teacher stepped out into the hall to deal with a student, and the class went crazy. I told them to settle down and told specific students to sit down, but nobody was listening. then the class started yelling at the student that I'd told to sit down, so then I told them forcefully to let me handle it. that shut everyone up. then I told the kid to sit again, and he wouldn't. so I stood up, looked him straight in the eye, pointed at his seat, and said "SIT. DOWN. NOW." and he plopped down. and I felt terrible. I'm just not used to that yet. I know we have to, but I don't like it.

anyways, we played with mirrors in class today, and some of our kids were acting up and had to go out into the hall. they came back in for a few minutes, then classes changed. turns out that one kid had stolen one of the small mirrors. he has a history of stealing things from these teachers. THEN he went to Mr. S's class, and long story short, he ended up cutting himself up his arm. not super severely, but still. and we found out later that day that he had pretended to cut himself in the same place with a pen at first, but that teacher didn't see any marks so she just told him to stop holding his pen like that.

my teacher stopped this student on his way to the bus and asked him if he had stolen the mirror. he said no. lied STRAIGHT TO HER FACE! then she asked to see his arms, so he had to roll up his sleeves and we saw a few minor cuts that *could* be attributed to a cat or an awkward paper cut or something.. but it wasn't. so we went back to my teacher's room and were talking with the rest of the team, and Mr. S says that he thinks that he saw the kid throw the mirror away, so he went to check and found the mirror in the trash. so we collected it as evidence to show the 7th grade counselor on Monday.

GAH. It was unreal.

OH. and this has nothing to do with my team, but apparently a teacher found a 7th grade girl in the bathroom with a thermos full of some super strong vodka. what the heck? 7th grade!

also, this was the kicker. there's another student who has been absent since before Christmas break. he has SEVERAL absences from throughout the year, so Mr. S finally called the kid's mom today to see if he was sick or they'd suddenly moved or something that would've caused the kid to miss school. All this time, she thought that he'd been going to school. He'd been leaving like he was going to school, coming home at the right time, WRITING IN HIS AGENDA AND SHOWING HER so she thought he had all of his assignments.. so Mr. S said something about how the only excused absences he had on record was from a week that he missed last semester. He excused the absence since he had gotten the email from her.

"what email from me?"

the kid hacked her email account and emailed an excuse note to Mr. S! OH MY GOSH. where do these kids learn this?!

but here's the best part. the mom said that she would deal with the kid, but "my husband got tickets for the Blue Man Group tonight, so I'm gonna play dumb tonight and deal with it tomorrow."

give that woman a prize! what great parenting. wow. Mr. S told us that, and we all just dropped our jaws. unREAL. wow.

I am still in shock. but despite all of that, I still had a good day. is that crazy?

oh, the life of a middle school teacher.
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Also, I found out that my granddad has been in the hospital all day. He fell and hit his knee at work, which they think somehow pulled some muscles in his heart or something? he was reporting chest pains, but the EKG showed no signs of heart attack or anything, which is a huge blessing. His knee is pretty messed up though. but at least he's safe. but pray for a quick recovery. this is the last thing he needs right now.

What a day. I'm exhausted. It's only 7, but I'm seriously considering heading to bed. I'm so tired.

2 days down, 58 to go.

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30 Day Challenge: Day 26

Day 26: A Picture Of Your Family

I'll do the most recent pictures, which I may or may not have shared already. We took pictures over Thanksgiving break, and these are my favorites:

my family is crazy. but I love them.

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30 Day Challenge: Day 25

Day 25: iPod Shuffle

Warning: this will probably be an incredibly varied shuffle. my musical taste is quite eclectic.

1. Crank That Soulja Boy - Soulja Boy
   the shuffle WOULD start off with something like this. appropriate, since it's my guilty pleasure genre of music.
2. God Is In This Place - Plus One
   crankin' it old school. I def saw them in concert once.. so amazing. this was the song they dedicated to the guys in the audience [it was WinterJam, so it wasn't a specifically Plus One concert] who hated boy bands.
3. Real Thing - 4HIM
   I've been listening to this group since I could talk. one of the best concerts of my life, except they didn't play my FAVORITE 4HIM song [Ride Of Life]
4. Don't Save It All For Christmas Day - Avalon
   truly great non-traditional Christmas song
5. Breaking Free - High School Musical
   yes, I love HSM. don't judge.
6. Tell Him He's Yours - Frank Sinatra & Michael Buble
   I have this great cd that took all of Sinatra's greatest hits and made them into duets with Michael Buble. SO GOOD.
7. Call Your Name - Daughtry
   I like this song because it hasn't been beaten to death on the radio.
8. January Friend - Goo Goo Dolls
   Goo Goo Dolls. a blast from my childhood. and still so good.
9. Jigga What/Faint - Linkin Park & Jay-Z
   I would never have picked those two artists to make a cd together, but it's great. amazing compilations!
10. Softer To Me - Relient K
    my favorite RK song, thanks to my ex. it's a lesser known RK song, but I believe it's one of their best.
11. Two Worlds - Phil Collins
    anyone who knows me probably knows how much I love Phil Collins. anything he's ever done by himself, anything he's ever done with Genesis, anything he's ever done for a Disney movie.. I love it all. this happens to be one of my favorite Disney soundtracks: Tarzan!
12. No Such Thing - John Mayer
    this was our class song in 9th grade. we tried to make it our senior song [at a different school.. yeah, I went to three high schools] but our principal wouldn't let us. apparently "I wanna run through the halls of my high school" wasn't appropriate.
13. Crush - Gavin DeGraw
    GAVIN. one of my greatest musical finds ever. then he had to go and get all well-known. but I knew of him first!
14. Baby - Justin Bieber ft. Ludacris
    if there's a song with a rap section by Luda, I probably have it. oh, and I'm a closet Bieber fan too. sue me.
15. Always Be My Baby - Mariah Carey
    this song reminds me of going to the skating rink when I was in elementary school. someone would always request this to be a couples song. -sigh-
16. I Write Sins, Not Tragedies - Panic! At The Disco
    wasn't sure that I'd like P!ATD very much, but Rylan bought the cd and let me borrow it, and I was hooked. the music videos, however, are a completely different story.
17. Why - Nichole Nordeman
    I get chills every time I hear this song. I first heard it when Lauren Parr sang it at high school camp for the talent show and then again a few weeks later at church. it's just so beautiful.
18. Just A Dream - Nelly
    best line of the song: "tried to get my Usher on, but I can't let it burn"
19. Stationary Stationery - Anberlin
    nothing will ever beat "Foreign Language" but this is a good one.
20. Joyful Noise - Flame
    best. dance. ever. I just wish I was a little more coordinated so that I could do it better.
21. Gaston - Beauty and the Beast
    one of the MANY Disney soundtracks that I own.
22. Dream On - GLEE
    I never get tired of this song. Neil Patrick Harris is amazing.
23. Come On Get Higher - Matt Nathanson
    I'm still not sure whether this song has any sexual connotation or not, but I choose to believe it doesn't.
24. Cigarettes Equal Pain - Bill Engvall
    not a song, but the FUNNIEST one off of the whole cd. if you haven't heard this bit, you need to.
25. Ain't No Party - The Chipmunks
    this would be Katie's doing. it's not a road trip if we don't have at least one Chipmunks song. it drove Jona crazy, but I liked it. who wouldn't love those squeaky voices?!

That could've been a lot more random. I don't feel like that was a true shuffle of my library, but oh well.

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30 Day Challenge: Day 24

Day 24: Something You've Learned

Something I've learned over the past year is that my dreams have changed. Since I was a little girl, I wanted to teach math. The age group that I wanted to teach has changed, ending up at middle school, but math has stayed constant. I have always loved math. It makes sense to me. There is [almost always] a right or wrong answer, but the beauty is that there is generally more than one way to get to that answer.

On the flip side, I always hated science. The irony here is that I took more science classes in high school than any other type. I took gifted biology in 9th, gifted chem in 10th, AP chem in 11th, AP Physics B in 11th, and AP Physics C in 12th. With the exception of biology, there was enough math in each of the other courses for me to figure my way through the class.

And somewhere along the way, I fell in love with science.

I took another physics course in college, and it was no surprise that I excelled in it. Labs were hard, but I succeeded. Then I got into my major, where we have to pick two subject areas to focus on. I'd applied with math and social studies the year before, but my social studies grades were rough, so I tried again with science the second time, since they were all A's. I also took chemistry over the summer and made over a 100 in both the class and the lab. It was a 4 week long course with a quiz every day and a test on Thursday [no class on Friday]. The catch? IT WAS OPEN NOTES. And people STILL failed! How in the world do you fail when it's open notes AAAAANNNNNDDDDD she GIVES. YOU. THE. NOTES.

But alas, I digress. It was after taking this class that I realized that lots of sciences weren't so bad if I could incorporate the math. In fall 2009, we took physics for middle school teachers as well as a methods class to teach us how to teach science to middle schoolers. Basically we got to pretend to be middle schoolers in that class and see different models and experiments that we could use for our students. As someone who'd had several physics classes, I was not stressed at all. I was the only one, however. People were having a hard time with the class, so I tried to help them whenever possible.

They got to pay me back the next semester: earth science. No math whatsoever. I was freaking out. But it ended up being alright. Not just alright.. it was interesting. Fun, even. That was when I decided that I wanted to teach 6th grade [earth science] or 8th grade [physical science] rather than math. I was too afraid that it would screw up my placement in Gwinnett since I would be living at home the next year, so I didn't switch my specializations, intending to just take the GACE in math and science and apply for science jobs.

Then I got into the math classroom in the fall of 2010. What a culture shock. I've struggled with depression and anxiety throughout my life, but it has been under control for the past year and a half: no medicine, no episodes. That all changed. I had a mild panic attack the first time that I got in front of the kids to explain a concept. It was not the "being the center of attention" thing.. I was stressed that I was not explaining myself well enough. Unlike science, it's really hard to vary the way in which you teach math. It is the way it is, and that's that. My teacher said I did fine, my supervisor said I explained things extremely well, and my class's grades were higher than my mentor teacher's other two classes on the test at the end of the unit that I taught. But I can't handle that kind of pressure every day. I won't survive. I wasn't happy. I was stressed and unhappy, eating too much and sleeping too little.

One morning, I arrived before my teacher, so I went next door to the science teacher's room. I felt an immediate peace as I looked around her room at the different signs, diagrams, and objects related to earth science. That's when I knew what I needed to do.

I emailed Dr. Andrews that day and asked what she thought I should do. [background: the way our program is set up, we are ideally supposed to stay in the same classroom from our fall experience during our full-time student teaching in the spring. that way we already know the teacher, some of the student, etc. if I switched specializations, I would need to switch teachers, which would possibly mean that I would have to switch schools. Which would require me to switch counties, and since I'm living at home, this was NOT something I wanted.] Dr. Andrews said that I needed to do what would make me happy. I told her that science would make me happy. So she told me to switch my specializations and that she would do her darnedest to keep me at the same school or at least in the same county, even if it meant teaching in an elementary school.

The whole thing has been a mess ever since, but none of that is my fault or even because I switched specializations. Gwinnett has a lot of red tape to go through, and the contact person at UGA kind of dropped the ball, which has put me and another student teacher WAY behind. The snow week hasn't helped AT ALL. So we'll be starting about 7 days later than we should have, if not more. I still haven't gotten my confirmation about my placement, but I know that everything is working out; it's just paperwork at this point.

I'm gonna be a science teacher. After YEARS of claiming "this is my last science class EVER!" and throwing a mini party. God sure has a sense of humor.

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30 Day Challenge: Day 23

Day 23: Favorite Vacation

I would love to go with the cliche again and say "DISNEY WORLD!" but I think my favorite vacation was one that we took about 6 years ago. Since 7th grade, I've been allowed to choose one friend to take on our vacations, since my siblings and cousins are so much younger than me. I took Hanna with me to the beach one year, which was fun.. but not the best decision, in hind sight. Hanna didn't like seafood, so going out to eat was hard. But I got better at choosing in the future lol

So in 10th grade, I took Nicole with my family to the beach. The next year, we decided to do something different, so we rented a cabin in the mountains. We went to Gatlinburg and rented a 3-story place. My aunt, uncle, and cousins stayed upstairs, Memama and Pepaw stayed on the main floor, and my family stayed on the lower floor. Nicole and I got a futon, and my brother [he was like 11 at the time] decided to sleep underneath the pool table. Nicole and I got to travel down the Gatlinburg strip, and we went white water rafting one day. That was a BLAST. We did a lot of hiking in different areas. It was great. We ate out a few times, Charles made his famous wings, and we had lots of game time and fun. Oh, and I got to beat up my brother for the first time without repercussions. It was a great trip.

Plus I definitely prefer mountains to the beach.

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January Bucket List

December wasn't so successful, so I'm gonna put some of last month's onto this month's list.

1. No cokes for a week. This one is gonna happen this time. Day one of seven is almost complete! Sugar-free water flavor packets will be my new best friend.
2. Print pictures for my room. I got a cute new frame from my parents' trip to Disney World, plus my other frames that are sad and empty.
3. Try a new recipe for dinner. I found some really good ones in People magazine that I want to try!
4. Set up a payment plan. I haven't been able to pay my student loan payment in recent months because I've spent $200+ each month in gas to get back and forth to Athens. Lame. I also have lots of money to pay back to my parents from my college years, so I want to figure out the best way to do that. I need to get something on paper though because they tend to say one thing.. then a few days later, they say something COMPLETELY different, so this will help things a lot.
5. Complete 23 Things Before 24 list. I need 6 more things that I want to do before I turn 24 in November.
6. Get more shoes for student teaching. I have one pair of flats that I've used for both semesters of our teaching practicum, and now I have a new pair of short boots. Both pairs of shoes are black, so I need some brown and maybe some grey shoes.
7. Complete teaching resume. I started this last semester, but then the end of the semester hit and CHAOS ensued. I need to finish this and practice interviewing, because I seriously suck at that.
8. Exercise consistently. I don't wanna put a number on how much I exercise, because that's setting me up for failure. If I run a few times a week and do some exercises on the Wii Fit or using Jillian Michaels' DVD, I'll consider it a success.

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Flashlight 5k

On New Years Eve, I ran the Flashlight 5k last night! I had several goals for the race:

1. Beat my time from last year [41:07]
2. Get a sub-40 time
3. NOT FINISH LAST!

And one that I wouldn't allow myself to make for fear of not making it was to run the whole thing.

I did the first mile with Stephanie, then she needed to walk and I wanted to keep going. So I did. The course was pretty flat, minus the first huge hill at the very beginning. I had already resolved to walk the hill the second time, but the second lap rerouted a bit and didn't include the hill. So on the second lap, I just kept running. I made it to mile 2 and I wasn't tired, so I kept running. Then all of the sudden there was a half mile left, and I was like, "Oh, I've got this!" So I kept running. I came up the last little hill and saw the time sign, just as it turned to 39:00. I thought, "Oh, HECK NO. I'm not gonna get over 40 minutes!" and I kicked it into high gear.

And I finished in 39:19. I completed all of my goals, and then some. I felt amazing. There was a pizza dinner afterwards with salad and a cookie. It was delicious, but I think I could've eaten cardboard and it would've tasted good. Afterwards I went home and got ready for Stephanie's party. We played some Mario Party 8 on the Wii and Guitar Hero on the Xbox, then we counted down to midnight, set off fireworks, and I went home because the lovely TRU gods decided to schedule me at 6am. Yay. I'm ready for these early shifts to be over. Waking up at 7am will seem like a dream instead of a nightmare now.

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30 Day Challenge: Day 22

Day 22: Favorite City

I know it's so cliche, but my favorite city in the world is New York City. I never had the intense desire to go there like some people do. But in October 2009, my friend Alysha and I went up there for a whirlwind 24 hours. We flew up there on Saturday, after I ran my first ever 5k, and we came back home the next night. Once we got up there, we shuttled over to our hotel, got settled, and asked the hotel receptionist, "what is the ONE place in NYC that you HAVE to go?" and she said, "Times Square."

So we found out how to get to Times Square via shuttles and the subway, and when we first came out from underground, I was overwhelmed. The intensity of the lights was astonishing. The first thing I remember seeing was the Mary Poppins Broadway sign, and I wanted to drop everything and try to get tickets to a show. But I contained myself, and we decided to go ahead and get some food. We went to Planet Hollywood because Alysha had never been, and it was delicious. I had the salmon and rice and a strawberry daiquiri.. yum! Our waitress commented on how nice we were and asked where we were from, so we had to show her a little southern hospitality and gave her an extra large tip ;] it was fun to watch her face when she saw it! After dinner, we walked around Times Square, going into the giant Toys R Us, the M&M store, the Hershey store, perusing the Theater District and drooling over all the shows we wanted to see, and taking tons of pictures.

The next morning, we went to Ground Zero because I really wanted to go. It was kind of a disappointment because they were rebuilding and we couldn't see anything, but it was still pretty powerful. We were going to see A Steady Rain, a FABULOUS two-man play featuring Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Oh. Em. Gee. It was seriously amazing. But before we got there, we were running seriously late and were starving, so we literally ran to a pizza place and ate pizza while running to the theater. I managed to stop and get a cute New York bag on the way. The play was so amazing. It was 90 minutes long and over before I knew it. It just captivated me from beginning to end. When the play was over, we had less than an hour to get back to our hotel, get our stuff, and get to the airport to catch our flight, so we were booking it. We caught a cab and made it to our hotel just in time to take the shuttle, checked our luggage and ran to go through the line to get to our gate.. only to find out that our flight had been delayed. We decided to get food while we waited, which was great since we hadn't eaten much that day. We flew home, and the best trip of my life was over.

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