The Possibilities..

Today is First-Year Move In Day and I'm sure the roads are going to be atrocious. But, like the idiot I am, I will brave the roads towards the dorm areas in order to see some of my friends.

I'm leaving now. If I never post again it means I've either had a massive stress stroke from dealing with the incompetent drivers or one of the incompetent drivers hit me.

Apologies and Placement Information

August is going to be a slow month for me for posting, so, sorry to the one, maybe two people who read this.

I started at Albemarle High School on Tuesday. Things are going well. It's a lot meetings and really tedious work, but I think it'll be worth it to show that I have experience in SOMETHING. It's going to be Friday and I'm so glad the weekend is very close. I'm tired of really boring meetings and copying and stapling hundreds and hundreds of papers. I figure the stapling won't really stop, but the boring meetings will decline once classes actually start.

I'm also currently wearing my AHS polo. We had Open House tonight. Only three students came to us. It was a slow night.

Other than that, things are going well. First-year move in day is Saturday so there will be some new faces around here. I'm kind of excited for it. My roommates should also be moving in during the next few days, meaning I won't be by myself anymore.

I think I'm more excited about that part of it.

My One form of Hate

Wouldn't it be terrible to see a president's picture in a textbook and under party affiliation have it say "TEA"? I really think it would be.

I hate the TEA Party.

On one of their main websites (because they claim to hate overhead, and, therefore, leaders and actual main sites) freedomworks.org, they don't let you comment on any of the articles. I read one about why they wanted people to vote NO to their senators on Kagan's confirmation....they don't want her because they feel she will "allow too much federal authority." No, I'm sorry; the real reason y'all don't want her is because you think she's a lesbian and because Obama nominated her. That is why you want people to vote no. Instead, you put up some lame excuse that she said the federal government would have the right to say how much of what types of food we should eat everyday................................

Which of us did not grow up with a food pyramid? That is a FEDERAL organization that puts that out. Her saying that they are allowed is only going with what has been already put through Congress, you idiots. I was going to post the FEDERAL page for nutrition guidelines, but the page to comment would never pull up. Ever. And I have a fast connection. I tried to do the same on several other articles, and it was always the same...no comments allowed. I think it's because their articles are so one-sided that if someone put even a smidgen of evidence up as a comment, their whole article would fall to pieces, leading to other FACTS being posted, leading their hypnotized Glenn Beck (motherfucking ass fuck of a human fucking being) followers to actually think for themselves, and destroying their whole movement once and for all.

This is my goal in life: to destroy the TEA Party and all of the conservatives in this country. With force.

Using my Sunday Wisely

I finally broke down and got an external hard drive today. I was down to less than 2 GB of space on Laptop and now I have plenty of room to continue adding to my ever-expanding collection of music and other things.

So now with that done I'm just sitting around in my apartment, watching Arrested Development, discussing sex with various friends for some reason, and waiting to go "decorate" another friend's room with sexy pictures before he gets back to Charlottesville.

We had already changed his facebook profile picture to gay porn last year so this kind of fits with the pranks we pull on him.

Baking Cookies

You never really learn some things about a person until you bake cookies with them.

I visited a friend from Curry earlier today and we were talking, laughing, bitching, having a good time. We had dinner and then started baking cookies for the arrival of her roommate in the morning. That's when she opened up about family problems and her inevitable lack of sex because she just broke up with her boyfriend. Let's just say I never pictured this person as very sexually active, and the fact that she mentioned multiple times about how she's already dreading the prospect of no sex for a while kind of floored me. All I could do was sit there and listen as she mentioned sex and then came to the verge of tears while describing her family situation.

I put in my two cents where I could, mentioning the problems I've had in the last year and a half in order to maybe make it seem like she's not the only one going through a rough patch...although...I've got things pretty set for now, so I don't know where I was going with it really..

All in all it was a good night, but I'm still kind of in a daze about the whole..thing. I did find out that I make my cookie dough balls too big. And I also found out that I'm not the only one who feels completely overwhelmed about student teaching starting up VERY soon.

Withitness

I now have less than a week until I will be in the schools once again..sitting through faculty meetings, welcoming students, and observing like only I can do, with pages and pages of fully detailed notes. My observation notes are generally tedious and filled with information that I look back upon and say, "Yeah, I definitely didn't have to write that down." But that's one of the fun things about teaching that I've noticed-- you never actually know what is going to be important when you're doing something. A little side comment could be the key to unlocking a student's understanding of a topic, a finger moving quickly across a desk could be the first sign that you've lost someone.

I pay attention to a lot of these things when I'm observing, but when I'm teaching it's a completely different story. There is so much pressure to perform and keep track of everybody. One of my friends has a quote on facebook that reads "Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater." I'd say that it's probably closer to one-fifth preparation, three-fifths theater, and one-fifth having a bazillion eyes and the patience of a saint (what we refer to in Curry as 'withitness'). I do not have the final fifth.

So we will see how all of this turns out. In the meantime I'll be going home and tracking down multiple forms, transcripts, proofs of immunization, etc. so that I can apply to be a substitute in Albemarle County Schools. This means that if my CI is absent I get paid for the time I'm there, which is so much better than having to pay them for something I don't plan on using much in my life.

Currently

As I'm sitting in my car in New Kent jamming to some Korean pop I have a bit of time to think about some things. I don't know if they're things I should be thinking about but at this point it doesn't really matter.

I'm relatively happy right now. I haven't had a breakdown in a few weeks and I'm hoping to continue the streak. I've canceled my appointment with the psychologist because I feel that I have things under control for the time being. That's all subject to change and I have a feeling that it will in about two weeks once I start my semester at AHS. But we will see. As for now though, I'm content with where I am. I don't feel like I have anything hanging over my head, I don't have any unnecessary concerns dragging me down, I'm holding myself well.

I know I'm probably depressed, possibly manically..and that's why at times I feel great and energetic and really happy, and others I have crushing feelings of, well, depression. I know online surveys aren't usually a great place to go to look for signs of this, but the school-sponsored one said that I needed to call 911 a few weeks ago amidst my last breakdown. I didn't know what I was supposed to tell them on the phone so I never did. And besides that, I didn't want the embarrassment of having EMTs or firefighters come to my apartment to talk me down. Nah, that's not what I wanted at all.

I can't say what it is that I want when I get that way. I guess I just want a different feeling than what I'm having at the time.

Regardless, I'm doing well now. I'm in a healthy relationship that I'm having fun in, I have great friends who like me, I have a kick-ass apartment (except for my upstairs neighbor who I'm going to have to have a talk with), and I have good prospects for my future.

So, for now, I am just going to kick back and enjoy the rest of my summer and the amazing voices of this K-pop group. It's going to be a good night.

"Tesla died in this hotel"

New York is not the city for me. I don't really think any city is right for me, at least not any big city. There are far too many people.

I do have a new respect for New York drivers though. I had always heard that they are bad, terrible, rude, etc. But what I saw was that people who actually drive constantly in New York really know how to do it. It's the out of state drivers that cause the accidents and mess up the traffic flow. The constant sound of horns blaring is a bit annoying though, but it's the language of the cars.

Speaking of languages I barely heard English the whole time I was up there. It is such a multinational city that to hear 15 languages in the span of half an hour is nothing uncommon. I found that to be both amazing and offputting at the same time. I usually like hearing a lot of languages, but when it hinders my ability to communicate with those around me I like it less.

I did, however, speak with a family of Poles in Ellis Island. We were reading a photograph of a menu from just outside the main entryway to the Island. Most of the menu was written in Polish. I was translating it for my family when I came across "szynka," a word I was not familiar with. I had heard a family speaking Polish on the boat to the Island and waited for them to come up to the photograph before asking "Co jest szynka?" The matriarch of the family thought about answering me in Polish, but then called for her daughter who spoke both English and Polish and she was the one who explained to me that "szynka" is ham. The matriarch then began speaking in Polish to me and I understood what she said to me. That was definitely a highlight of my trip. When I told my Polish teacher about it she laughed and said "That's what happens when a vegetarian teaches Polish."

I don't know why, but I was feeling very sick during my first two days up in the city. This made traveling by boat, plane, and fast elevator very difficult. The trip to the top of the Empire State building almost did me in and afterwards all I wanted to do was go back to our hotel (The New Yorker) and sleep, but we had tickets for the NBC Studio tour, which was also one of the best parts of my trip. I always find it interesting how television studios are so much smaller than what they seem on screen.

There's a lot more to say, but at the same time it's nothing too terribly important. New York is a place where I will probably go back to, but not for a while. I much prefer Virginia. I'm too Southern and offer/expect too much hospitality to/from others.