Who are you Heidi Wolten? You sent me a Christmas card and yet, I have no eartly clue who you are. You addressed it only to me and not my husband, so it must be that you know only me. You also missed a number in m house number so we can't be THAT close of friends.
I have wracked my brain and yet I find that I know no one by that name or who lives in Louisville. Have I forgotten an old and dear friend? I certainly hope not.
Meanwhile, I am very confused and slightly creeped out that someone I do not know has my address. Please don't come kill me in the night.
We have coyotes out here and I will sick them on you if you are coming to kill me.
If, however, you come in peace then great. Please remind me of who you are and accept my deepest apologies for not remembering!
Monday, 17 December 2007
Exam Week Preview
I thought I'd pass along this little ditty I used to hand out to my students a few days before their English Final.
HISTORY: Describe the history of religion from its origins to the present day, concentrate specifically but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Demonstrate your understanding by creating your own religion and describing its likely impact on world affairs. Be brief, concise and specific.
LITERATURE: Compose an epic poem based on the events of your own life in which you see and footnote allusions from T.S. Eliot, Keats, Chaucer, Dante, Norse mythology and the Marx brothers. Critique your poem with a full discussion of its metrics.
MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate it and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.
MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your own appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.
BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed five hundred years earlier, with special attention to the probable effects on the English Parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.
PSYCHOLOGY: Employing principles from the major schools of psychoanalytic thought, successfully subject yourself to analysis. Make appropriate personality changes, bill yourself and fill out all medical insurance forms. Now do the same to the person seated to your immediate left.
ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Run for Congress. Build a political power base. Successfully pass your plan and implement it.
PUBLIC SPEAKING: 2,500 riot-crazed students are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.
PHYSICS: Explain the general theory of relativity. Keep it simple. Now demonstrate the limits of faster-than-light travel through an experiment of your own design.
AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE: Outline the steps involved in breeding your own super high yield, all weather hybrid strain of wheat. Describe its chemical and physical properties and estimate its impact on world food supplies. Construct a model for dealing with world-wide surpluses. Write your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
MATHEMATICS: Give today's date, in metric.
CHEMISTRY. Transform lead into gold. You will find a beaker and three lead sinkersunder your seat. Show all work including Feynman diagrams and quantum functions for all steps. You have fifteen minutes.
POLITICAL SCIENCE: There is a red telephone on the desk behind you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.
** EXTRA CREDIT **Define the Universe. Give two examples.
HISTORY: Describe the history of religion from its origins to the present day, concentrate specifically but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Demonstrate your understanding by creating your own religion and describing its likely impact on world affairs. Be brief, concise and specific.
LITERATURE: Compose an epic poem based on the events of your own life in which you see and footnote allusions from T.S. Eliot, Keats, Chaucer, Dante, Norse mythology and the Marx brothers. Critique your poem with a full discussion of its metrics.
MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate it and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.
MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your own appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.
BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed five hundred years earlier, with special attention to the probable effects on the English Parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.
PSYCHOLOGY: Employing principles from the major schools of psychoanalytic thought, successfully subject yourself to analysis. Make appropriate personality changes, bill yourself and fill out all medical insurance forms. Now do the same to the person seated to your immediate left.
ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Run for Congress. Build a political power base. Successfully pass your plan and implement it.
PUBLIC SPEAKING: 2,500 riot-crazed students are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.
PHYSICS: Explain the general theory of relativity. Keep it simple. Now demonstrate the limits of faster-than-light travel through an experiment of your own design.
AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE: Outline the steps involved in breeding your own super high yield, all weather hybrid strain of wheat. Describe its chemical and physical properties and estimate its impact on world food supplies. Construct a model for dealing with world-wide surpluses. Write your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
MATHEMATICS: Give today's date, in metric.
CHEMISTRY. Transform lead into gold. You will find a beaker and three lead sinkersunder your seat. Show all work including Feynman diagrams and quantum functions for all steps. You have fifteen minutes.
POLITICAL SCIENCE: There is a red telephone on the desk behind you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.
** EXTRA CREDIT **Define the Universe. Give two examples.
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Take Your Candle
A nice holiday greeting from Ball State's University Singers. They really are fantastic!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cXwKUD797E&eurl=http://castblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/a-holiday-greeting/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cXwKUD797E&eurl=http://castblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/a-holiday-greeting/
Sunday, 9 December 2007
The gift that keeps on giving
I know I haven't had a long insightful post in a while, and there's one in particular I've been meaning to write for months but I just, "haven't had the time."
I think it's really a matter of - I just can't find the right words to say what it is I am so desperate to get outside of myself.
When I was younger (in fact, up until about 5 years ago) I was incredibly good at showing people how much I cared, how thankful I was. When someone did something nice for me, I immediately would try to think of a creative way to do something equally nice. At times, not enjoying what it was they gave me/did for me because I'd be so consumed with finding a way to thank them. Then, almost overnight - something changed. When someone did something big for me - I went from some huge overture, to not thanking them at all really. It's like - how do say "thank you" parents for spending X thousands of dollars on your wedding? How do you show your appreciation when someone rearranges their life for you for a few weeks because you just had a baby and are so freaked out you can barely move let alone take care of a newborn? So I just stopped. Weird - I know.
I say all that to say that recently, someone I love a lot did something HUGE for me. I must say that my husband is incredibly ahead of the curve when it comes to being romantic. He left about 12 hours ago for a 3 day trip to Chicago and I've already found sweet love notes in my sock drawer, bathroom, and cell phone. He also left some pesos in my pillow for reasons not entirely known by me. But this HUGE thing was not done by my husband. It was done by one of my former students.
I've written about her before - Emily. She became an English teacher in South Carolina. It was her I took off to see a few weeks ago with her family. She mentioned to me in the middle of September that she was working on my birthday present. I e-mailed her that for heavens sake she was a first year teacher and she should be spending her time on more valuable things - like sleep. But, a few weeks later, after a looooooooong night at a Ball State event I came home to find a little packet on my counter mixed in with the mail. I recognized her handwriting (any good teacher can!) and was admittedly excited to see what she sent me. I pulled out a CD with the words "180 days" written on it. I sat an pondered what on earth that could mean - what was happening in 180 days - what happened 180 days ago......and I couldn't figure it out so I just popped it into my computer, figuring it was a "mix tape" or something.
It was a video. The first image was her classroom! I recognized items that I had given her from my own first classroom. My favourite Union Jack flag hung on her back wall, laminated pictures of British poets, even my Shakespeare finger puppet! She was giving me a tour of her classroom! She then showed me their auditorium and introduced me to some of her students! She taped a segment of the play they were working on, and some of their fun acting exercises. (Do I even need to mention I was in tears at this point?) Then I heard her say, "Say hi to Miss Van." Her students were introducing themselves to me! Then, they were all huddled on stage telling me, "You must have been a good teacher, because Miss Reddick is a really good teacher. She talks about you a lot." (Am now in my second box of tissues) They invited me to come see their play so that they could meet me. Then, they all sang Happy Birthday to me. Me! They've never even met me! Here are a bunch of High School kids who have 245 other things to care about - and they're sitting there singing Happy Birthday to a woman they've never met. (I was in hysterics!) She concluded her video with a touching message that said that she touches her students lives for 180 days (DUH! How did I miss that!) a year, and that I touch them through her.
I thought I was going to die. I was sobbing my face off in the middle of my living room pretty much being held up by my husband.
I can't believe she cares enough about me to make SUCH a statement. Yes we were close when I was teaching, and we stayed in contact through her college years, but - I was just her High School English and Drama teacher, it's not like I rescued her from a burning building. I can't imagine what I could have done to warrant such time and love.
My 3 years teaching were the best years of my life (baby year excluded). Nothing (except mothering) was such hard work, so draining, and so amazingly fulfilling and rewarding. I was born to be a teacher, and hope very much to return to it some day. But even if I do, there will never ever be a group of kids like my first group. There just something about those kids who struggle through your first years of teaching with you - who forgive you for making stupid mistakes on them - who secretly like you but pretend to despise you. You form a very weird, strong bond. High Schoolers are especially tough. Little kids love their teachers - they want you to come home with them and live with them. High Schoolers - you have to put on your armor first to prepare for their pointed darts. They are convinced you hate them because you make them work hard. They try to make your life difficult for no other reason than you got on them for forgetting their book - for the 3rd time that week. You certainly don't do it for the instant gratification (or the money).
I didn't know how to thank Emily for what she did. Even now when I think about it - it brings tears to my eyes. I think I ended up leaving her some cheesy message on her facebook page. Certainly nothing close to how I felt, and still feel for what she did. It is I who was so truly blessed to have her in my life.
I used to think that I loved my students just about as much as their parents did. Of course, now that I am a parent I feel foolish for that thought. But, for those 3 years they were the single most important thing in my life. Their triumphs were my own, their losses shared. Now they're growing up, graduating - even getting married and having children of their own.
Delayed gratification never felt so good.
I think it's really a matter of - I just can't find the right words to say what it is I am so desperate to get outside of myself.
When I was younger (in fact, up until about 5 years ago) I was incredibly good at showing people how much I cared, how thankful I was. When someone did something nice for me, I immediately would try to think of a creative way to do something equally nice. At times, not enjoying what it was they gave me/did for me because I'd be so consumed with finding a way to thank them. Then, almost overnight - something changed. When someone did something big for me - I went from some huge overture, to not thanking them at all really. It's like - how do say "thank you" parents for spending X thousands of dollars on your wedding? How do you show your appreciation when someone rearranges their life for you for a few weeks because you just had a baby and are so freaked out you can barely move let alone take care of a newborn? So I just stopped. Weird - I know.
I say all that to say that recently, someone I love a lot did something HUGE for me. I must say that my husband is incredibly ahead of the curve when it comes to being romantic. He left about 12 hours ago for a 3 day trip to Chicago and I've already found sweet love notes in my sock drawer, bathroom, and cell phone. He also left some pesos in my pillow for reasons not entirely known by me. But this HUGE thing was not done by my husband. It was done by one of my former students.
I've written about her before - Emily. She became an English teacher in South Carolina. It was her I took off to see a few weeks ago with her family. She mentioned to me in the middle of September that she was working on my birthday present. I e-mailed her that for heavens sake she was a first year teacher and she should be spending her time on more valuable things - like sleep. But, a few weeks later, after a looooooooong night at a Ball State event I came home to find a little packet on my counter mixed in with the mail. I recognized her handwriting (any good teacher can!) and was admittedly excited to see what she sent me. I pulled out a CD with the words "180 days" written on it. I sat an pondered what on earth that could mean - what was happening in 180 days - what happened 180 days ago......and I couldn't figure it out so I just popped it into my computer, figuring it was a "mix tape" or something.
It was a video. The first image was her classroom! I recognized items that I had given her from my own first classroom. My favourite Union Jack flag hung on her back wall, laminated pictures of British poets, even my Shakespeare finger puppet! She was giving me a tour of her classroom! She then showed me their auditorium and introduced me to some of her students! She taped a segment of the play they were working on, and some of their fun acting exercises. (Do I even need to mention I was in tears at this point?) Then I heard her say, "Say hi to Miss Van." Her students were introducing themselves to me! Then, they were all huddled on stage telling me, "You must have been a good teacher, because Miss Reddick is a really good teacher. She talks about you a lot." (Am now in my second box of tissues) They invited me to come see their play so that they could meet me. Then, they all sang Happy Birthday to me. Me! They've never even met me! Here are a bunch of High School kids who have 245 other things to care about - and they're sitting there singing Happy Birthday to a woman they've never met. (I was in hysterics!) She concluded her video with a touching message that said that she touches her students lives for 180 days (DUH! How did I miss that!) a year, and that I touch them through her.
I thought I was going to die. I was sobbing my face off in the middle of my living room pretty much being held up by my husband.
I can't believe she cares enough about me to make SUCH a statement. Yes we were close when I was teaching, and we stayed in contact through her college years, but - I was just her High School English and Drama teacher, it's not like I rescued her from a burning building. I can't imagine what I could have done to warrant such time and love.
My 3 years teaching were the best years of my life (baby year excluded). Nothing (except mothering) was such hard work, so draining, and so amazingly fulfilling and rewarding. I was born to be a teacher, and hope very much to return to it some day. But even if I do, there will never ever be a group of kids like my first group. There just something about those kids who struggle through your first years of teaching with you - who forgive you for making stupid mistakes on them - who secretly like you but pretend to despise you. You form a very weird, strong bond. High Schoolers are especially tough. Little kids love their teachers - they want you to come home with them and live with them. High Schoolers - you have to put on your armor first to prepare for their pointed darts. They are convinced you hate them because you make them work hard. They try to make your life difficult for no other reason than you got on them for forgetting their book - for the 3rd time that week. You certainly don't do it for the instant gratification (or the money).
I didn't know how to thank Emily for what she did. Even now when I think about it - it brings tears to my eyes. I think I ended up leaving her some cheesy message on her facebook page. Certainly nothing close to how I felt, and still feel for what she did. It is I who was so truly blessed to have her in my life.
I used to think that I loved my students just about as much as their parents did. Of course, now that I am a parent I feel foolish for that thought. But, for those 3 years they were the single most important thing in my life. Their triumphs were my own, their losses shared. Now they're growing up, graduating - even getting married and having children of their own.
Delayed gratification never felt so good.
Been a Long Time Gone
Well, I am entering into new territory. I will be spending my first night alone with Madline tonight! I'm used to spending days with her, but allll day and evening and night - well that's a tall order.
But many of my mom friends do it, so I have to be able to do it too right? :)
I'm stocked up on Goldfish and Tylenol so we should be ok! :)
Wish me luck!
But many of my mom friends do it, so I have to be able to do it too right? :)
I'm stocked up on Goldfish and Tylenol so we should be ok! :)
Wish me luck!
Friday, 7 December 2007
Friend across the Miles
I posted my same little rant that I posted here yesterday on my facebook page and got quite the reply from my old friend Betsy. We were kindred spirits in College - both vegetarians, both a little off the beaten path, loved the arts.
She ended up moving abroad and now lives in Edinburgh. (Not the outlets down south) :)
We are now very different in some of our political beliefs and she was sooooooooo worried that she had offended me. That made me sad. It's terrible that 2 people couldn't be friends who had opposing beliefs isn't it? I am certainly not an expert in any field (ok, maybe John Milton and Charlie the Unicorn) so I am always welcome to dialogue. Especially now that my days seem to be filled with poopy diapers and teething tablets. It's because of reading and researching and talking to people differently than myself that I have changed my mind on lots of things. For instance, I never thought someone could really pull off the 80s slouch boots - but I have a friend who TOTALLY rocks them!
I have my core beliefs - my convictions - but I have a lot of things that I vacillate on - for which I enjoy sharp dialogue. I don't ever want to live in a word where we couldn't oppose each other and still like each other.
Love ya Bets! I'll always remember our good times on 2nd floor!
She ended up moving abroad and now lives in Edinburgh. (Not the outlets down south) :)
We are now very different in some of our political beliefs and she was sooooooooo worried that she had offended me. That made me sad. It's terrible that 2 people couldn't be friends who had opposing beliefs isn't it? I am certainly not an expert in any field (ok, maybe John Milton and Charlie the Unicorn) so I am always welcome to dialogue. Especially now that my days seem to be filled with poopy diapers and teething tablets. It's because of reading and researching and talking to people differently than myself that I have changed my mind on lots of things. For instance, I never thought someone could really pull off the 80s slouch boots - but I have a friend who TOTALLY rocks them!
I have my core beliefs - my convictions - but I have a lot of things that I vacillate on - for which I enjoy sharp dialogue. I don't ever want to live in a word where we couldn't oppose each other and still like each other.
Love ya Bets! I'll always remember our good times on 2nd floor!
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Bendy ARMS
I was watching CNN this morning and heard President Bush discussing a bill that would aid homeowners whose houses were in danger of being forclosed because of ARM loans.
But wait... didn't these people know the terms of the mortage when they signed the papers? They knew things could flucuate wildly.....but they decided to take the risk anyway.
If they were in over their heads, how is that the governments (and my tax dollars) problem?
Am I missing something? Seriously, is there something about this that I'm not understanding? I'm not trying to be a snot - I just want to understand the reasoning.
Along this vein, President Bush - I bought a pair of BCBG stilettos that I thought would be a fantastic investmet and they ended up not going with anything I owned and sitting in my closet. Would you please give me some money for my own poor choice?
>,
>{ r4g6
But wait... didn't these people know the terms of the mortage when they signed the papers? They knew things could flucuate wildly.....but they decided to take the risk anyway.
If they were in over their heads, how is that the governments (and my tax dollars) problem?
Am I missing something? Seriously, is there something about this that I'm not understanding? I'm not trying to be a snot - I just want to understand the reasoning.
Along this vein, President Bush - I bought a pair of BCBG stilettos that I thought would be a fantastic investmet and they ended up not going with anything I owned and sitting in my closet. Would you please give me some money for my own poor choice?
>,
>{ r4g6
Wednesday, 5 December 2007
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
The true north strong and free
Go Cards! Ball State has been officially invited to the International Bowl to play Rutgers University. WOOOO HOOOO!
This maaaaaaaaaaaaay mean that we will be visiting our friends to the north after the New Year. Still lots up in the air though, we'll see.
I must give a "shout out" to my old roomie Shyla. She made me learn the Canadian National Anthem since she was a Canuck and had to learn ours. It's come in suprisingly handy here and there.
Monday, 3 December 2007
Because I could not stop for death
- it kindly stopped for me.It had to happen sometime...all my baby momma friends were getting sick and their babies were getting sick. So now it's just my turn. I think that Madeline got ME sick, not the other way around - but it doesn't really matter now. All that matters is that we don't get Daddy sick!!
Madeline looks like death and I feel like it. Her nose is running constantly and I am chasing her around with a tissue non stop. There's no one here to wipe my nose so I'm managing that as well.
It's amazing how something as small as a little cold can stop you in your tracks. Headache, bodyaches, ear, nose....grrrrrrrrrrrr
Stupid Eve!
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