To Do

Now that school is officially summer, there are many things I hope to accomplish.

• Go to Zion's National Park and camp and hike and star gaze
• Go to a beach somewhere. Anywhere...
• Read a lot of YA lit so that I am ready to enter the world of 7th graders.
• Join BYU's group of Juvenile and YA book reviewers 
• Hike up to as many of the peaks in Utah as possible
• Go swimming at least 3 times a week
• Plant a mini-garden on my balcony
• Get a teacher wardrobe
• Visit my family in Idaho as much as I can
• Get back into writing poetry
• Stop biting my nails
• Go on lots of bike rides (this may require me to get a bike)
• Find a reason to sing this song:

It's the end of the world, as I know it. And I feel fine(ish).

This is my last week of finals. Hopefully ever. Who knows what the future has in store for me, but I don't feel like I'll be heading back to do a graduate program any time in the near future. This marks the end of an era. My college era. These are the last finals I will take. The last essays I will make up. I would expect a greater feeling a relief to accompany such a momentous occasion  but I am not feeling any such thing. Perhaps it is because I still have 5 finals in between me and the end. Or perhaps it is because as a future teacher, I understand that my work will never really be done. There will always be a lesson or unit to be planned. There will always be papers to grade. There will always be deadlines. And then just when I think I've gotten things under control, life will change again, and I will start all over. Such is the circle of life though, eh?

This semester really has been great. I feel 100% more confident about being a teacher than I did when I first started my teaching classes (which doesn't mean that I am 100% confident  just 100% more confident, which may not add up, but math really isn't my forte.) I am excited to enter the world of public education once again, and excited to apply the things I have been taught, and the things I will discover, to the situations I will teach in. Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned in the past year is that as a teacher, I am not teaching English, I am teaching people. People come first. If the subject matter is placed above the people, they are far less likely to learn. But when the focus is on the students and their individual needs, learning can happen. Relevance is one of the greatest tools available to helping students learn.

In other news, I went to the dentist today to have a cavity filled. It was my first time doing this without my mom there to help me be brave. I wasn't very brave, but at least I didn't bite, or cry, or pass out. I didn't smile at all either, and I wasn't particularly friendly, but I hope the dentist people understand. I was trying not to let anxiety overtake my body and cause me to convulse in the chair and foam (even more) at the mouth. For some reason, having people poking me with needles, drilling, clamping with giant pliers, and using other torture devices on my mouth has always been a source of great anxiety for me. I don't know if this is something I will ever overcome.

Bon Appetit!

This is what I had for dinner tonight! I got distracted, talking to my roommate in another room, while my grilled cheese was grilling away. Eventually, I remembered my sandwich and made a mad dash for the kitchen. Unfortunately, I was too late--my sandwich as already more grill than cheese. In my lazy stupor, I decided that trying to salvage it via scraping off the black (aka carcinogens) was more effort than it was worth. You see, this sandwich didn't even have butter. It was only bread and cheese, nothing special, and there wasn't any soup to dip it in or anything. So I settled on drowning out the smoke flavor with ketchup, just like my dad taught me. Frankly, it could have been worse. Perhaps the worst part of this was the demoralizing aspect of it. It is hard to picture a life beyond the college years, where dinner consists of more than one person, eating something from more than one food group, that requires more than a microwave or quick pan melting. I must confess, the longer I am in this world the lazier I get. Smith's had a sale last week on Wheat Thins--if you bought 5 boxes they were only $1.77 each! So of course, I bought 5. And of course, for several nights last week my dinner consisted mainly of Wheat Thins. You can do a lot with them, if you are creative enough. I've had Wheat Thin nachos before,dipped them in a large variety of condiments, and topped them with numerous fruits and vegetables. When used wisely, they can really be a nice staple to any meal!