Darling Daughter

Totally off topic: On our way home from school today, my daughter and I passed a UPS truck. My daughter said, "Mommy, there goes the present truck!" I laughed so hard I was crying.

Friday....Yuck

Most people love Friday, it's the end of the week so maybe you get to cut loose and have a few beers, blah, blah, blah-I hate Friday due to the life sucking Philosophy class. This week, to keep myself entertained, I considered live blogging during class but our professor banned laptops because too many people were surfing the internet and not paying attention. This week we watched a two hour Nova program about Einstein- did you know he married his cousin.

Thank God there is only three more weeks-then I can cut loose and have a few beers!

Normal?

I am caught up, if not ahead, with all of my homework. I've slept well the last four nights. My daughter has been nothing but delightful. My husband has been usually helpful. My bills are paid on time. I am not totally twitted out with anxiety. I am feeling a sense of normalcy. Strange.

Give that girl a reprieve

Today the WWT was in a decent mood; I think it was because her class had to do a benchmark test so the kids had to spend the morning in silence. When the class came back from lunch, WWT handed me a book and sent me and the PK into the hallway to work on his reading. When I was done reading with PK, out came another kid and another and another, one right after another, about six or seven in total. I was able to spend two blissful hours of reading with kids in the hallway and not listening to the WWT screeching at kids.

Homework Injury

I've been working on two research projects that require a lot of web surfing so now my right wrist is killing me because of all the mouse clicking. It's not carpel tunnel pain (I have that on my left wrist because of too much knitting) but it's pain on the outside of my wrist; it really hurts. Yesterday instead of doing a bunch of research I read about Educational Psychology and just thought about my research. Today I'm really behind on my homework, nothing new, somehow I'll get through it.

There's a first time for everything: Part 2.

I went to school this morning slightly hungover.

There's a first time for everything.

I have been in college for two years and today I am doing something I've never done....miss a class. Really, truly, I have never missed any class. So why am I missing you ask? I am celebrating my 15 year wedding anniversary so I simply cannot attend the life sucking philosophy class this evening. It would be nice to go somewhere fabulous on this monumental day but alas we are too poor; a nice dinner will have to do.

She's Baaaack.....

Instead of tutoring Tuesday, I went to the fair with my family. I had a test in my Educational Psychology class that evening; going to the fair wasn't the smartest thing to do but sometimes you have to take one for the team. In order to make up my tutoring time, I had to go today and it was a mess. To the WWT's defense, today there was an assembly in the morning so the class was unusually noisy and boisterous. When I got there at 12:30 the PK had his clip on red; the problem with this - he had no where else to go! There was no reason for him to behave because what is worse than red? He clearly needs a different discipline program because the stoplight isn't working for him.

WWT was trying to conduct a small reading session but the other kids kept interrupting her, over and over and over. Then she was getting annoyed with everyone, telling them to be quiet and shushing every other word. Towards the end of class, they were looking at a power point show and for whatever reason the slides were black and white on the T.V. She says, "Why on earth is my T.V. black and white?" Some girl shouts out, "We didn't do it." Then WWT starts in on how she was asking a rhetorical question and didn't need an answer. Like a second grader knows what rhetorical is.

I think the biggest problem in this class is WWT doesn't respect her students and they don't respect her. The whole afternoon she was telling kids to sit down and they would walk away from her and do something else. I've kind of seen it in the past but today was really clear, these kids don't give a rats ass about what she says. She yells and they jump for about 15 seconds and then they go about doing what ever they wanted to do. I could go on and on about today but I'm exhausted.

Dream On....

I am stressed to the max because of work, home, and school but mostly school so subsequently I have not been sleeping well. Last night was a real doozy- I had four very stressful dreams and here they are, in order.

1. I had my eyeballs pierced and I was really mad that the piercing dude wanted to put rings in the holes because I didn't know how I was going to blink.
2. I had to go back to work at the horrible place I quit two years ago and we had started selling shoes.
3. I was at my current bosses house and I had to pee. When I flushed the toilet it overflowed into the sink.
4. I was in high school and I couldn't find my car in the snow filled parking lot.

I woke up so tired, I almost cried. I know exercise is supposed to help stress but I've been sleeping so bad lately that I can barely get up at 6:30, let alone early enough to exercise. I think I need a good sleeping pill.

How much is too much?

If you go into the way back machine-how much homework did you have in college? I know the professors say, "For every hour you are in my class you should be spending 3 hours out of class studying, reading or writing for my class." So my 12 hours in class equates to 36 hours of homework!? The last few days I can't even begin to tell you how much work I have done, actually I can- four hours Saturday, two hours Sunday, and today Monday another four and I'm still running behind! I feel like I'll never catch up! Got to go, I have more homework!

Only One Good Thing...

The only good thing about my Friday Philosophy class is.....I don't have to write for the final exam! On my mid-term paper I scored 90 out of a 100 which means....I don't have to write for the final exam! On my paper, my professor wrote that I had a weak thesis and didn't define science very well but I don't care...I don't have to write for the final exam! I think what saved me was my good grammar and sentence structure because the people that scored low had lots of red marks all over their papers; what really saved me was my mom, the grammer queen, proofed my paper. The only thing I have left to do in this class is write a research paper and attend class. Yes!!! Here's the weird thing...the class I HATE the most, I am getting my best grade in...an A. This class will still suck the life force out of me but I don't care because....I don't have to write the final exam!

Avoiding

I am writing here instead of writing a paper on Crater Lake/Mount Mazama. This paper isn't that hard; my professor pretty much outlined what he wants in it. I can't think of a good beginning so I think I'll skip that part and start in on the main part of the paper....after dinner.

I also need to study for my Educational Psychology test. I'm getting a B- in that class so I can't have another test performance like I did last time (a 61, if you need reminding) it's make or break time.

I wish I had some exciting undergraduate stories of parties and boyfriends to tell you. I'm sorry this is so boring but this is my life.

It's Tuesday!

It's Tuesday so you know what that means.... Yes, that's right....Tutoring for the Worlds Worst Teacher! However, today WWT had a substitute! The sub did a good job trying to keep the kids on task but they get to fool around with WWT so she had to ignore a lot of bad behavior. So nothing good to report today and only five more weeks of second grade hell.

Halfway Point

My test scores reflect exactly how much time I have spent studying for them....Educational Psychology-61- with a curve this does work out to a C. Earthquakes and Volcanoes- 68 - this was a VERY hard test, I did spent a bunch of time studying, just not the right stuff and just about everyone in the class did poorly. American Public Schools- 82 - This class is by far the easiest and I barely cracked the book to study. It's a good thing none of my classes rely on only test scores for a grade or I'd be screwed!

I am now halfway through my first semester of my big new school and I have to say it's not been too bad except my two technology meltdowns. I clearly need to spend more time studying for the tests the problem is, I don't always know what to study for. Some professors have review information and some don't and I'm not quite sure how to study for a test when it covers five chapters and there is no review. Sometimes I have a hard time picking out the important parts of the text and lecture; inevitability the items that I think are important are not what the professor thinks are important.

Fucked by Technology....Again

I'm taking an Educational Psychology class (remember the one where the professor is also the author of the book we are using) and he has us do assignments out of the book and to do the assignments you have to use the CD that comes with the book. I've done some other projects using this CD and it always acts weird because out of the three CD drives we have in our house it only works in one. So I'm typing away answering the 10 short answer questions, when all of the sudden, the CD drive starts making some horrible noise and the computer crashes; I had lost all of my work, again. I had been working on this little project for over an hour and I had to start all over again. "My God," I was thinking, "I just don't have the fucking time to be fucking redoing assignments!" So I had another meltdown (my book is in bad shape after I flung it across the room) and then started my project all over. However, this time I typed out each question and then answered it- I was not trusting the fucking CD to work. Two hours after I started, I was finished, again. Is this story sounding familiar? I am beginning to think this semester is going to be one long meltdown.

Mom and Wife

The hardest thing about school is not the homework and tests, it's trying to balance school, wife, and mother commitments. Take yesterday for example, it was just a hell of a day-I worked, picked up my daughter from school, took a short nap and then started some homework. I got caught up in writing a paper so when my husband got home at 7:00 I hadn't even started dinner. He was carping about being hungry and I felt guilty about not having dinner ready. To complicate matters, my daughter had a meltdown about a computer game being too hard. I don't think I have mentioned that my daughter is autistic; she not like Rain Man or anything, she is fairly high functioning. I was beaten down by the paper writing, then the husband whining about being hungry, then the massive meltdown, and then just being hungry myself; I was ready for a meltdown.

I finally put together some leftovers for us to eat and my daughter comes into the kitchen and starts whining and crying about the computer game again. I was at the end of my rope; I said if she was so angry about a game and it was making her crazy then no more computer games for the night. Well that started another meltdown. Great. Now I have to live with the consequence for the rest of the evening...her whining about not playing on the computer. For the love of God, I just wanted to finish my dinner and homework so I could watch Lost!

By the time it is 10:00, I was mentally and physically wiped out and I crashed about 10:15. Around midnight my husband gets into bed and starts rubbing my arm and back, like he wants some! He woke me up and starts saying, "Can't I do something for you." I said, "No, I am fucking sleeping." He gets all pissed off and says, "You don't want anything to do with me." Your Goddamn right I don't, I'm exhausted! By then I was fully awake and I didn't fall back to sleep until after 3:30, so today I'm wiped out.

So yesterday the only thing I succeeded in was being a shitty mom and wife. Oh, I did write a paper.

Shhhh....Shhhh....

Today is Tuesday and you know what that means....Yes that's right, tutoring for the World's Worst Second Grade Teacher! Today I didn't do much tutoring instead, I spent two hours cutting out math flash cards. I did however, get to listen to the teacher yell at kids, have a loud cell phone conversation, and have a loud inappropriate personal conversation with the school counselor while the kids were supposed to be doing a word search but were really just messing around.

Today when I got to the classroom the kids were just getting back from lunch and WWT (Worlds Worst Teacher) was in the face of a kid about something, I mean she was really hollering at him, then she justified this yelling to the school counselor by saying, "Sometimes you just have to to it" and the counselor was like, "I know." When the kids come into the classroom, they are supposed to put their head on their desk and be silent; I've been in that classroom every Tuesday for four weeks and the being quite thing has yet to happen because WWT is in the hallway yacking to the counselor and not in the room making sure students do what she says. I personally am not a fan of put your head on the desk but if I said it I would enforce it. I also noticed that she has now moved problem kid number two to the back of the classroom so now problem kid number one has someone to mess around with and she can ignore them both; this happened a lot today. And can I tell you how pencil sharpening can reeks havoc in a room; one kid needs to sharpen a pencil then they all need to sharpen a pencil, the problem is WWT lets them or she might not depending if the kid has pissed her off for the day.

WWT was doing a little skit and she picked a few kids to help her, after the skit was over problem kid number one said, "I didn't get to help." She said something like, "Kids, do you hear what PK1 said? He said he didn't get to help, well PK1 you don't get to help if you don't do your work." Wow, this seemed really harsh! She said is in a nasty tone of voice in front of the whole class. I think you say that kind of think to the PK in private. Then a few kids were slouching in their chairs and she made them stand up with no chair for about two minutes. Here's my problem, she never told them to sit up, at least when I was there, she just said, "Little girl, push your chair out and stand and little boy you too, while were at it." I have not taken Classroom Management but I'm pretty sure making an example of a few students really teaches anybody anything. 16 more hours of this....I hope I don't get car sick.

On a lighter note, I stopped at the grocery store to get some egg noodles for dinner and there, on an end cap, was a box of brownie mix calling my name! It was only a dollar so I brought it home with me; tonight after my Educational Psychology class, I will be having a brownie and vanilla ice cream.

But I don't want to...

I really need to finish my assignment for my Educational Psychology class but I have no motovation; I'd rather clean house and I hate cleaning....I wonder who is on Oprah today.

Early to rise...

I'm up at the freaking crack of dawn on a Saturday to review for a test I have this morning. Today is the end of the week of hell and it's been a long week of hell. I wish this was the end of my hell but I have a weekend of homework to do. I am hating life right now.