Slice of Life

This morning I had my first experience as a teacher figure as a substitute teacher of sorts. I was supposed to just meet with my the teacher I'm assigned to do my practicum with but she was gone today, so she sent me her substitute plans so I could play teacher for a day. It was a little awkward because there was a real substitute assigned to the class with me, so we kind of taught the class together. Kind of...

The first class was really talkative and rambunctious. It was hard to classroom manage them. I had terrible flashbacks to my own middle school/high school days where I honestly say that I never liked having a substitute teacher. They drove me nuts. I also never liked the student teachers. Karma? Maybe. I could tell that the kids didn't really like the idea of their teacher being gone any more than I did, but I still had fun. At one point during the class a girl asked me how old I am. I told her to guess. To my surprise she guessed right the first time! 23. That is a hard one to guess I think. I didn't confirm or deny their guesses. I told them I was 45 though and they were totally shocked for a second until I started chuckling.

In summary I learned two important things:

1. 7th graders are funny. I was laughing a lot, not even at them, but with them sometimes.
2. 7th graders are gullible, and this is probably something to be careful with as well as something to have fun with.

This experience also made me excited to teach my own class and my own lessons one day.

Perspective

Sometimes there are moments in life when you slow down enough so that God has a chance to tell you things you need to hear. Today is one of those days. I'm at work and there are hardly any people here in the library and it is silent. It has been a great chance to think and read. I read a talk by President Eyring from way back when called, "A Child of God". He talks about the importance of realize who we really are and how knowledge that we are children of God should dictate the way we live our lives and continually seek learning. I highly recommend reading it, whether or not you're a student.

One particular part that stood out to me was the story of his mother's death. Eyring explains: "She died after a decade of suffering with cancer. At her funeral President Kimball said something like this: "Some of you may wonder what great sins Mildred committed to explain her having to endure such suffering. It had nothing to do with sin. It was that her Heavenly Father wanted to polish her a little more." -" A Child of God", Eyring, 2007 

I really appreciative this perspective. Lately there have been a lot of new challenges and changes introduced into my life most of which I feel totally inadequate and unequipped to handle. Especially this whole being a teacher business. I'm in all the classes that are supposed to be teaching me how to teach the language arts to adolescents while anticipating having my own class in the Fall secretly freaking out in each class not knowing how on earth I'm ever going to be qualified to do so. There is just so much to learn between now and then! It is easy to get discouraged and it is easy to get caught in the "I'll be happy when [fill in the blank] is over..." and it is easy to wonder about the purpose of hard things in life. However, until today I had forgotten that all these little challenges in life can be used to polish me into a better woman. There is purpose to the journey, not just the destination. I had forgotten that there is no time in my life that God can't use to help me move closer to my ultimate goal of coming back to him. Even when it might seem like I'm in the eternal-twenty-something-single-college-student-limbo-land he's working on me and where I am is perfect for right now. I'm grateful that God doesn't waste time like I do...

Girl On Fire

I just saw this music video today at the gym and I loved it. I love the lyrics contrasted with the housewife role she plays in the video. The end.

Slice of Life

When I walked to school this morning at 6:43 am it was only -2 degrees Fahrenheit outside. I just don't understand how the cold can squash out so much of my motivation to do anything at all. It takes all the strength I can muster to walk out the door. I have recently found myself obsessively checking the weather forecast not only for the next five days, but for the next five months, just so I know when to hope for bearable weather. I've also started drinking hot chocolate. The thing is, I really don't like hot chocolate. It makes me feel super nauseous and burns my tongue every time without fail. Yet I've found myself going out to buy it twice in the past week. I'm just worried that if winter doesn't leave soon I might accidentally drop out of school and move to Mexico, become addicted to hot drinks, forever have ice crystals on my nose hairs, or die due to a lack of vitamin D. #iliveforsummer

I love school.

This semester all of my classes are focused on how to teach English. This means that I just get to spend all day in class learning effective and interesting ways to teach content, which is uber fun. In my writing class yesterday we all wrote Six Word Memoirs, which you can see examples of here. The main idea is exactly what it sounds like, to write a personal memoir for yourself, using only six words. Each member of my class wrote one, and then my professor pasted our collective memoirs into this neat website, Tagxedo.com, which turns words into word clouds with the size of each word correlating to the number of times a word is mentioned in a particular passage or website. It was interesting to see what the class memoir would say. For those curious, my personal memoir was, "I dress from my socks, up."

I decided it would be interesting to make a Tagxedo cloud for my blog and see what writing topic trends or words I subscribe to. My number one word was "really". I'm not sure what to think about this. Here is my final product, after editing for typos and really boring words that I didn't think should count (you'll notice that "really" isn't there.)

Click to expand for the full effect. You know you want to.

Apparently according to this I am obsessed with the concept of time as shown by several of the words, and also the philosophical business of thinking and feeling and all that stuff.

In summary: I love* English, six word memoirs and cool things like Tagxedo.

*note, the things I love are not limited to this list

I can't resist.

I just can't help myself- I wanted to abstain from doing a typical "this is what I did this year" post, but here I go!

2012:

• Completed my 5th year of college, 4th year at BYU Gross. I also completed my minor in Business Management and started my teaching certification program.
• Successfully passed 3 kidney stones, involving my first hosiptal trip
• Ran my first Half-Marathon
• Finished my first (and possibly last) Marathon
• Visited or drove through Nevada, California, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee and Missouri
• Worked 9 weeks straight of EFY and made some new really cool friends
• Earned the lowest grade that I've ever received. (B-) I was hoping for a C, just for the experience
• Participated as a Groomsman at my friend Bryan's wedding. I even wore a tie
• Married off 2 more roommates/best friends
• Joined my first intramural team. It was kickball, which is my second favorite sport
• Planned and helped to execute 12 ward break-the-fast functions, (not single-handed)
• Read 45 books (ish). My favorite for the year 2012 was The Book Theif.
• Orchestrated some neat parties with my roommates including one with gallons and gallons of homemade ice cream
• Arrived at my 23rd year of my mortal existence
• Developed self-discipline to have my nails painted without obsessively chipping all the paint off
• Learned how to knit
• Held 3-4 babies, and liked it.
• Tried snowboarding for the first time, got some gnarly bruises, but had a great time
• Acquired Steve, the 1990 Toyota Corolla with over 300,000 miles and no working odometer or speedometer, for the small price of buying Becca and Jamo Cafe Rio. They are the best.
• Discovered the joys of edamame
• Quit drinking (diet coke, most of the time)
• Joined the gym (again)
• Fell in love with Yogurtland, Passion Pit, riding bikes on the river trail, The Game of Things,  City Creek, uglier sweaters, extensive people watching, making pizza, and drinking water.

As far as New Year's resolutions are concerned, I evaluated the level to which I achieved last year's goals and concluded that for me, monthly goals are better. Or quarterly. I'm just not good at the whole year commitment thing I guess. So I've resolved to not really make resolutions this year except one: run two half marathons in the year 2013. Maybe I'll think of another attainable, relevant goal for the year but for now I'm going to zero in on making monthly goals.