Random Thoughts, who knows what topics will be covered!

I'm in the writing mood so here goes...

At the end of the Fall semester, when I was desperately trying to decide if I should continue with my Secondary Education license or switch to Elementary Education, James made a suggestion to me. You see, the issue with the Secondary was the prereqs for my math classes. I have to take certain classes before I take other classes, its a nightmare. I was going to have one semester where I could only take Calculus II and that would be it because I need Cal II for all my other classes....so James' suggestion...add a minor to fill in those semesters when you have no other classes to take! BRILLIANT!!! So that's what I'm doing now. I am a Secondary Math Education Major with an English Education Minor...holy cow world watch out, not only will I be able to do all kinds of crazy math problems but I'll be correcting everyone's grammar as well! (HA! as a funny side note I totally misspelled grammar and the computer had to correct it for me!!!!)

Anyway, that explains why I am in the writing mood. I have an English class, Methods of Teaching English, where I have been given these random writing assignments and I'm really enjoying them. So far I've had to write on why I think I (or anyone) watches movies over and over again, or why someone would read a book more than once. I've had to write a paper where I've sketched in words someone who didn't know I was watching them. That one was fun, I did it on my little boy playing with his toys, maybe I'll post it here one of these days. Tonight I had to make an observation on a movie, song or book. Any observation...that one was a little harder but I find that once I start the writing process the words just flow out of me. I have a total of 14 different writing assignments to write on, some that I'm looking forward to are: capture an incident of fear so the reader actually is fearful, explain an important lesson you learned as a child, describe you idea of heaven or hell, write a nasty letter about a product that didn't work, and then the next assignment is to write a letter in response as if I was the customer relations manager in charge of that product...lots of things that really make you think. If I feel I really like my papers I'll post them on the blog.

I also have this Introduction to Poetry class that I am completely NOT enjoying. I know nothing about poetry and I have no desire to get into the heads of these poets to figure out what they were really trying to write about when they wrote these poems some 100 odd years ago!!! My math classes this semester are Calculus I and Linear Algebra, both are going well so far, of course I'm only starting the 3rd week so I'm sure they are going to get worse very soon.

My Education in Society class is very informative. For example I learned that every state in the US gets money from the government, depending on how many students are in class during the school year, (I knew this part already) and Utah gets the least amount of money. The amount received is based on a formula that has to do with the number of kids in school the year prior and the amount of taxable land in the state. Utah has a ton of government owned land, with all the National Parks in the state that's not hard to believe. But because of that Utah has hardly any taxable land, which means they receive a lot less than a majority of the other states. I learned that Connecticut gets about 4 times more per student than Utah does (roughly $10,000 to Utah's $2,400) so I might move there and teach because their teachers make about $80,000 a year :) hehe (just kidding mom!!!!)

I have yet to come up with my goals for the year. I know a few that I want to add to my list but my list isn't officially put together yet, so until then I'm going to keep my mouth shut and post the list when it is completed. Once its out there in there in the world of blog its there to stay so I better make it a good one!!!

Update on my dad: I spoke with him Saturday morning. He is doing good. Only two more week of radiation left thank goodness! He is still gaining weight (which he is completely unhappy about and is threatening to sue his doctor over! HA!). They have moved the point of radiation down more from his face to his throat but his throat isn't hurting yet which is a good thing. He did lose the facial hair he had in that area but once the radiation is completed he should get it back. His face is really red and his skin below his chin is beginning to blister but other than that he is doing great. I am so relived about that, I had this awful image in my head when the doctors warned us that he would be losing tons of weight and not want to eat. I'm thankful that he might be lucky enough to not get the "worse-case scenario"

Ok, well its 10:30pm and about 30 minutes passed my bedtime so I'm off to get some sleep. Secretly I'm praying this HUGE STORM they keep warning us about will shut my power off briefly in the middle of the night making my alarm clock reset itself and then my alarm won't go off in the morning and I'll "accidentally" miss my Calculus class :) If I could only get so lucky! But the power can only go off long enough to reset my clock because the heat runs off of electricity and I can't have my little man getting too cold!!!!

Good Night Blog Land!!!!