I don’t blame any of you I blame your teachers for never teaching you this. In fact if I wrote the P word on your paper you hsould go back to your high school English teacher and yell at them for not teaching you properly. And if you are too scared to give me their name and I will because I’m getting awfully sick of students not being able to cite properly.

Now, yes I agree some teachers need to do a better job of teaching this concept. However, I had teachers who taught this over and over and over until I was ready to scream but the kids in my classes still wouldn’t do it. I think that it is very likely that at least some of these kids were just too lazy to bother with proper citations and thought it wouldn’t be a big deal.

And for those who didn’t know/remember how to cite, this is University and as a student at this level I think it is your own responsibility to read the instructions for the assignment, notice that you need to cite properly and find a guide to follow or ask for help at the writing centre. On top of that everyone has to take English 100 in their first semester and you would have to have cited at some point in that class and been taught how to if you did not do so properly.

Now I get that some of these students probably did have pretty awful English teachers in high school and may not have learned citation but that doesn’t make their inability completely the teachers fault. Most University students are legal adults and should be capable of finding ways to learn the necessary skills. I think what my professor said was totally inappropriate and insulting to me, my fellow students and teachers everywhere.

And beyond the end of year blues, I have so much to do before summer begins: finding a summer job, finishing up term papers and starting to study finals. Soon I’ll have to reapply for my student loan and a variety of scholarships.

The worst part has to be the summer job though, I still don’t know if I should stay in the city when almost everyone I know will be gone or if I should go home where rent will be free. Then there’s what kind of job I want, ideally I’d work at a daycare, but my first aid has expired without my realizing it so that’s out of the question unless I can get it first. So I guess I’m going retail but with the economy it is most places probably aren’t hiring right now, at least not students. Guess I’ll just have to apply everywhere and cross my fingers that someone wants to hire me.

Man I miss getting interesting assignmnets

She laughed at me and said it was alright. I was taught by the same teacher for a while and she was telling the truth with that teacher this wasn’t all that unusual, those assignments were always pretty good. But it made me think about how important having interesting assignments is. I put about as much work into my term papers as I did some of the assignments that I did in high school. The term papers are more important but those assignments were just so much more fun to do.

Now I don’t think every assignment we got in high school was amazingly creative but at least they were all a little bit different and allowed for some creativity instead of write in x format and have z sources and if you have 3 sentence errors you will fail. It gets a little monotonous and I only have to write 2 of them this semester.

It definately makes me think that when I teach I’l be trying to break the monotony instead of using xyz assignments all the time (hey a few of those never hurt anyone)

Why do I like being short? There are lots of reasons. For one, I almost never hit my head on things (this most often would require to either fall onto something or hit it with my entire body). Also, I can wear heels pretty much whenever I want, few guys are shorter than me even with 3″ heels on (4 might be stretching it though). I’ve also discovered that people are very uncomfortable having to look down at people. I’ve learned to use that one to my advantage, the closer you get the more they have to look down, I garantee they will step back.

Of course being short comes with its disadvantages like being tall does (my brother is 6″5″ I can’t even count anymore how often he’s hit his head on a door frame). Most kitchens I can’t reach the top one or two cupboards, shelves in closets, the top of a chalkboard, etc. Most of this I can compensate for, I have become rather amazing at walking on kitchen counters and getting down glassware (kitchen sinks are a pain while doing this). I love my brothers house because there are stools everywhere for the kids to be able to reach things, I definately use these.

There is one thing I have never been able to compensate for though: My feet hardly ever touch the ground while sitting in a chair.

This irritates me more than probably anything else I know of. In high school the desks we had made it possible for me to put my feet up and avoid the dangling feet syndrom but most of the auditoriums here at the University of Regina are just free standing seats. The padded theatre seats are fine, but the hard plastic seats after about twenty minutes start cutting off circulation to below my knees. This makes focusing extremely difficult.

It made me think about how important things like that are in a classroom. The 3/4 teacher I worked with in my grade 12 year had measured all her chairs to fit each individual student. How nice that would have been. sigh. Definately it is important to learning/working. I can remember being at a job interview and the seat I was sitting in was way too high for me. I was so uncomfortable that I had a hard time focusing on the questions. I know that when one of my moms employees went on worker compensation for a bad back one of the conditions of her coming back was that she had to learn how to set her seat at the right level. With her feet flat on the floor. It’s strange to think how important that one little things is, but if you are short like me i tink you would probably agree on just how annoying and uncomfortable it can be.

SO without further ado:

Chocolate Cheese Cupcakes:                

1 1/2 c. flour                                     1c.sugar                                    

  1/4 c. cocoa                                    1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt                                       1 c. water

5 tbsp. salad oil (vege. oil)         1 tbsp. vinegar

1 tsp. vanilla

Chocolate Chip Filling:

1- 8oz. pkg cream cheese

1/3 c. sugar                                1-6oz. pkg. chocolate chips

1 egg

Beat cream cheese sugar and egg togetho. Stir chocolate chips in to make the filling. Set aside.

In a large bowl, stir togethor flour, sugar, cocoa, soda and salt. In a second, smaller, bowl beat togethor the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla, Gradually add liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients, beating until smooth. Fill 18 paper lined cupcake tins until 1/2 full of batter. Top each with 1 tbsp. of the filling. Sprinkle the tops with finely choped nuts if desired. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes until top springs back when pressed.

I really found something my Math 111 prof. said especially interesting. She said that learning math is different than learning any other subject. It requires you to build on what you already knew and you can’t let yourself get behind in it. Other subjects you can learn it all at the end of the semester and do alright but for math even one week behind is too much.

I remember other teachers in high school saying much the same thing but for some reason this hit me in a different way this time. I think for me this was the first time that I looked at this as what does that mean for my teaching it instead of what does that mean for my learning it. I also think it is a good reason why it is such an important subject to learn. It is an entirely different way of learning that they need to learn and be able to use.

It really makes sense to me now why it has it’s own learning type (which I’ve discovered recently I have become). I need to think more about what this means completely and I’m sure as I learn more about teaching I’ll figure it out. But it was definately my aha moment of the day.

At first we were all rather distressed it was supper time and none of us had anything that didn’t need to be cooked and sounded apealing. Our brainstorming was rather interesting. It usually went like this: “how about…no that requires (insert piece of technology)”  Needless to say ideas were not quick in presenting themselves.

Then came the problem of how to entertain ourselves, no power meant no lights in our appartment except for the emergency lights from the hall coming through our open door, and since we are not allowed to have candles we had no way of lighting our way to things except with our cell phones or my roomates laptops which were nearly dead. We could have gone to another part of the campus and evenutally we did but what happened before that is what has got me thinking.

We played UNO. Probably about 10 rounds of it. We had been so bored before I pulled out my UNO cards but once we started playing it was amazing how much fun we had. I was the only one with ebough light to see my cards colors and the deck was in complete shadow. We had to use our celllphones to see the deck and the others cards. It made for an intersting game. I can honestly say it was one of the funnest things I have done in a long time. Far more fun than watching tv or playing on the computer.

I think sometimes we need time to take a break from technology. We need to know how to survive without it for cases like last night. I think that is what keeps me from believing the technology only approaching I see some people taking to schooling. If kids only ever expereince technology then how will they function if the power ever goes out. Will they know how to entertain themselves.

My own question I think I have a semi answer to. I keep thinking back to when I was little. Every Christmas I would get tons of awesome presents. I hardly ever played with them instead the wrapping paper and bows held my attention. I see my niece and nephew do the same thing. They have tons of technology (I know for sure that they are both getting brand ne DS’s for Christmas) but they still like playing with the bows and finding new uses for boxes.

We worry about not being able to keep kids attention if we do not use technology, yet often they themselves choose to entertain themselves in other ways. Do we need all technology or will a nice balance (suited to each individual classroom) be better for our students? I think for now the balance is what attracts me. Sometimes it is nice to not be completely attached to technology (though I admit we did have need of our cellphones-I mean it was dark!) Sometimes all you need is good companions and something interesting to keep your attention.

However, my parents computer isn’t the greatest so I will be disappering from the interent world until I get to my brothers who has a nice new laptop.