I am glad that week is over. I had some fantastic times and some grueling completely irritating times. With the end of last week, the worst classes I have ever taken, since my undergraduate degree, also ended, the class on Adolescent Development. Before I get all weepy and celebratory I want to dwell on the good things.
I have a friend named Edie who I used to work with at the evil insurance company. She also writes a blog, Displaced Brooklynite - http://adisplacedbrooklynite.blogspot.com/. It has not been updated since President-Elect Obama was elected but we shall forgive her non-writing ways since I have a tendency to fall off the radar as well. Anyway we had tried to meet up at the Wordstock event but had failed miserably and we resolved to meet for a cup of coffee and a lively discussion of her trip to France. What happened in reality was a day long event of shopping, eating and drinking. We had a good time and I visited some places I would never have walked into on my own. Some of those were women's clothing stores but another was a little eatery downtown and a nice little bar. Anyway we had a great time.
That was a great escape from reality, which was a group paper and presentation on why a junior high school should become a middle school for the Adolescent Development class. And another lesson plan for my Reading class. Apparently becoming a middle school is more then a mere name change, there is meaning behind the words; it was probably the most boring topic in the history of the world. Once again something that had nothing to do with learning to become a teacher was what we were tasked with for an assignment. How knowing the difference between a middle school and a junior high school will help me teach is beyond me. I figure either one will work for me as long as they pay me. This assignment was bad but not as bad as pretending to Be Erickson and assess our own adolescent experiences in the context of his theory. My attempt was comical at best.
Anyway I got home after that long day of lighting up the town and I was exhausted. So within an hour of getting home I was in bed. Unfortunately sleep was elusive that night and kept slipping through my fingers. I ended up tossing and turning and managed 4 hours of sleep before I gave up and went out to the living room and watched a movie and surfed the net. I stumbled across a web exclusive show called Gemini Division and was instantly intrigued. It is at NBC.com and they have 60+ episodes already. It is set in the future and is sci-fi in nature. It has some recognizable actors in it and it seems to be set in front of a green screen. Some graphics are better then others. Anyway I watched that until it was time to go to court.
No.... I didn't do anything bad. I was there to serve Jury Duty and I was allowed to sit in a room and drift in and out of consciousness from 8 AM until about 2:30 PM. That was when my name was called and I went in to a room for jury selection. I am too dang nice or honest looking because I was picked to serve on the jury. It was a criminal case and it was a complete and total mess. The case would end up bleeding over into Thursday and tie up a day and a half. The complete incompetence of the two attorneys and the strangeness of the case were amazing. We ended up only convicting the defendent of one count and not the other. If you want to know more about the case just post a comment and I will go into detail... of course with names altered to protect those involved.
As a result of the sleep deprivation and being on a trial that kept me occupied for a day and a half no homework was done Wednesday and only one slide was made for the presentation by the end of Thursday. Part of my reluctance to do the assignment came directly from apathy. I did not care about this topic nor had I bothered to understand it. Friday was spent doing everything but homework and I was at Barnes and Noble when my friend Cat called to ask me some questions about the assignments facing us. She reminded me that we had to go out the next night (after class) to celebrate slaying the demon that was this class. So I went home and got busy. I wrote a snippet for the paper and turned my one slide and couple paragraphs in for the assignment. I had essentially done the minimum on an assignmentand felt a little guilty but I got over it. Then I began hammering out the assignment for my reading class. This class has been kicking my butt. Well both have been but this class especially. I was working on the third lesson plan, the first two had not went over that well, and I was hoping that the third one was the charm. I am still up in the air about how well it was received but this week I need to make 2 more and clean up the mistakes in the first three and turn them in as an integrated unit. It is ridiculous.
Anyway we went to class Saturday and did our presentation and went through our dog and pony show. I pretended I cared and got involved in the discussion because the first class we had with this teacher had resulted in no participation points for me. My problem stemmed from not having ever fantasized what my future classroom would look like one day and so I had nothing to add and so she felt it necessary to grill me on the topic. I came up with some stupid ideas but since she had to call on me and I had not volunteered I got low participation points. So I decided to talk a lot in class but I still did not get full participation points. How irritating! I have a few choice words for her but I will not share them here. Anyway we muddled through the class, all 5 of us, yes there were only 5 people taking the class and we all hated it. Then as Cat and I were discussing where to eat while leaving another classmate mentioned he was stranded until 5:30 and it was only 3:30. He had been dropped off by his wife and had been sure the class would run the entire class time because the teacher had said as much. Even though she had only one presentation to watch and nothing really to discuss, she managed to drag the class on for 2 hours when in reality it was 50 minutes of material tops. Anyway we had him hop in the car and he, Cat and I had some nosh at McCormick and Schmick. They have a happy hour with fantastic prices as the non-happy hour prices are out of my ball park. After much belly aching about the class and laughter was had we dropped him off and parted company. Cat and I ended up hanging out later that night and our 4 stop tour included Pambiche, which is a fantastic Cuban restaurant. A place everyone should experience. It was a good time.
So a weird and fun week came to a close.
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