Dread Pirate Mary

I was a pirate for our Halloween party. This was basically an excuse to have a sword and put my hair in dreads. Until I manage to upload my pictures from the actual party, here's a hair preview:



Isn't it awesome? I may keep it for a couple more days. We'll see how long it takes to start itching.

a couple questions:

1. Have you ever created an angry dance? What did it look like? Where do you dance it?

2. What can one make for dinner with fermenting barbeque sauce, one slice of cheese, and some old marshmallow fruit dip?

3. Is there an everyday household product I can put on my face for Halloween to make it look dirty?

self-knowledge and naps

In my ed psych class, we've been doing a lot of activities about discovering things about our personalities. It's so much fun. Today I learned that I'm a 7 point on the Enneagram Personality inventory. I'm a visionary!

Worldview: The world is full of exciting eideas and possibilities to explore!

High Side: Innovative, enthusiastic, big-picture planners

Low Side: Intellectual dilletantes

Leadership style: management by awalking around, cheerleading for people and ideas

Appeal to: fun, idealism, adventure

Don't appeal to: duty, norms

Talk: brainstorming, storytelling

When I'm stressed out, I tend to be a perfectionist. When I'm relaxed, I tend to be an observer.

On a totally unrelated note, I took a nap in my car today at lunch time. It made me grumpy. I was cold, tired, and my blanket smelled like wet trunk. But class cheered me right up. At this moment, I'm procrastinating my homework that's due tonight! Boo homework!

quotes of the day:

"Most of this work is just puking. All we do is puke!" - classmate

"Oh my goodness - those teenage girls are aggressive!" - prof talking about watching girls pursue his teenage son

"My mom always says if you're sneaking it's sin!" - Karli

procrastination

so, for those of you who keep track, I have indeed blogged four times today. this is procrastination at its finest.I have a couple hundred pages of reading I may or may not get to. we'll see how it goes.

and one funny extra

late friday night....

fall pictures

gah

Are you ever afraid to talk to good-looking people?

So you don't.

In fact, do you ever run away from them? Even when they are talking to your friends?

sleep fantasies

I think maybe I have mild insomnia. I go to bed at 11:30 and can't fall asleep even though I got up at 5 a.m. and have only been getting about that much sleep every night this week. Thoughts of school, class, students, homework, and papers whirl around in my brain all night. I can barely form sentences and the circles under my eyes are astounding in both their hue and their protuberance. I would love to sleep. Wake up whenever I want, maybe just lie there for a while. Mmm... sounds nice.

At least we got to go on a retreat today. There was the most amazing speaker. I wanted to BE her. Maybe someday...

Suspicious Minds

I have the impulse to punch every man I see in our neighborhood. In the face. Hard.

angry.

I'm sitting at home alone trying to do homework while my mom and TJ are on a walk. It's unusually difficult today. Partly because I didn't sleep well at all. Mostly because I'm anxious about being home by myself. Every time I hear a noise, every time the neighbor's dog barks I'm up looking out windows.

Some masculine person saw fit to carry on inappropriate behaviors outside a window while the poor redhead was home alone on the computer last night. Police came, couldn't do much. I'm filled with Rage. And supremely grossed out. What on earth is wrong with this world? Even though I know the answer, I still get mad. And I get madder when my thought process suddenly begins a we-must-have-done-something-to-deserve-this-it's-my-fault mindset. Lies. Inside my head. The pit of hell is outside our house and inside my mind.

Rescue me, O LORD, from evil men;
protect me from men of violence,
who devise evil plans in their hearts
and stir up war every day.

Keep me, O LORD, from the hands of the wicked;
protect me from men of violence
who plan to trip my feet.

O LORD, I say to you, "You are my God."
Hear, O LORD, my cry for mercy.

Surprise! Your Brain is Broken!

Apparently I've been under some stress recently. Let me share a story to evidence this sorry fact:

Weekends are the balm of my existence. I can sleep in until 7ish, get my homework done, and maybe do something fun with friends. Next weekend I planned to hang out with my mom and her friend TJ - go to a play, maybe my roommate's concert, eat yummies, general parents-avisiting stuff. This weekend, however, I needed some rest. I had no plans. I came home from my teacher conference happy and exhausted. I had just sat down to blog about the teacher conference when I heard a knock at the door. Lo and behold, there stood my mom and TJ. I got my weekends mixed up and wrote the wrong dates on my planner and both calendars.

Oops.

Luckily, it's worked out really well. Two roomies are gone for the weekend (at the Sufjan Stevens concert), so we actually have extra beds. AND I have considerably less homework than usual. And I get to go to the play twice. :)

Lovely Fall Days

Today was a good day.

I would have fallen on my head when that burly high school accidentally pushed me, except the Great Hallway Throng was so thick I was saved.

I heart freshmen. I led an AVID tutorial today (nobody wanted my content areas, so I led a history one). It was really funny. Mostly off task. One said, "I don't really need help in history, but you looked interesting so I picked this group." What? Ok. He later said, "Want to go get pizza after school?" No. Absolutely not. Thanks. No. I think he was joking.

It was warm and sunny.

grammar

In everyday speech, I'm pretty lenient with grammatical mistakes. I make them. Other people make them. We still communicate. I make a small effort to speak correctly, but I don't panic if my nouns and verbs don't quite agree. On this bog I'm pretty laid back about my own writing. However, in academic writing, I do my darndest to write like a professional. That means I use standard spelling and grammar conventions. I want to sound like I know what I'm writing about. I think this is reasonable.

That's why it was so shocking when one of my textbooks featured outrageous mistakes. For example: Assessments are good tools to find out where the students are at. Where are the students at? That poor, unneccessary "at" is just drifting along purposelessly at the end of the sentence. No one wants it there. It doesn't need to be there. It's just there, making the textbook narrator sound like a hick.

There were more mistakes. I can't remember them now - I think I blocked them out of my memory. Why am I reading such dribble?

On another grammatically amusing note, we had a discussion in Methods class that made me and my fellow grammar student friend laugh. In grammar class we had a discussion about how English doesn't have a gender neutral pronoun. If someone were to say, "An anonymous donor provided the funds for all the MIT students to go to a conference," I wouldn't know the gender of the donor. If I wanted to ask if the donor worked nearby, I would have to say donor or he/she. Anyway, this is getting boring. The point of the story is we had the exact same dicussion in methods class. And it was funny. It's not so funny written down in a blog paragraph, but I'm tired. I'm going to get more coffee and finish my homework now. I get to answer questions like what is my most creative response to this situation? Listen to your inner stillness and write down what insights you receive about yourself and the situation.

Gah.

friday

By Friday, I get silly.

Really silly.

We made a Character Education poster to present on Monday. My contribution? After a serious attempt at writing a definition of character ed, I drew a giraffe. It's licking the "C" in character. And a monkey. It's hanging off the "E". And I traced my hand.

Aahh... grad school.

Doubt

As I'm falling gradually on the "W Curve" of the semester, I have these daily (or tri-dailyish) bouts of critical self-doubt. I would love for someone who knows me well- and who knows teaching well - to say, "Mary. You can do this. You will be a good teacher."

Which is when Jesus pipes in and says, "Mary, why aren't you asking me?"

"Umm..."

"Right. Even if I've told you to do this thing that you are unable to do, there's a perfectly good reason. Stop your whining and get to work."

Well, more or less. He usually speaks his truth a little gentler, without being wishy-washy fluffy in the slightest. Which is how I know it's Him.

Quote of the Day:

"Now the elementary teachers have their students crawl up in their laps and give them hugs. We prefer you don't do that." - on avoiding lawsuits