The Ethics of Attending an Ed Class and other moral conundrums

I'm in my ISIP class again and you know what? I hate it. It is a useless class with a useless teacher and I feel cheated having taken it. I feel this way about other Ed classes as well, and I don't really know what to do about it. I'm going to graduate with a BEd next year and what will I have actually learned about the theory behind teaching? I've learned from the practise part at this point, but that's about it. So should I even bother going to class when I so clearly do not learn anything? Should I bother getting up at 6:30 in the morning to attend my ISIP course to talk about cheating and how we SHOULDN'T deal with it? Useless.

Another problem I'm coming up against is the issue of my professional development portfolio. I'm not upset about this or anything because I know I can do it, but I'm just wondering about the technical aspects of it. I'm going to do a blog just like this one, but more professional. I need to figure out how to organize the blog so that it's not just all post and surplus; I need more text and less crap. I don't want to move to Wordpress because I don't think I know how to use it, but perhaps it's the smartest route to take at this point? Hopefully I'll find out enough about Blogger in the next month that my portfolio is bang up fantastic.

Class is over in 45 minutes. Excellent.

 

-Laur

As much as I dislike winter, when you can get a scene like this at 6 pm, not a moving vehicle in sight, I tend to appreciate it more.
Still working on the blogging from Word sans pictures problem, but it will soon be solved.
There's a lunar eclipse going on outside right now. It's pretty awesome.
Nature astounds, unendingly.

-Laur

A Luddite I am Not

I downloaded Microsoft Office 2007 on Monday, mostly because I think I'm going to be getting a new laptop this summer and I would rather have an office suite that is Vista compatible (ugh). Most of the time I'm averse to new technologies; I like the comfort of knowing exactly how to open a file, insert a header or footer, or double space a paragraph without having to search for the commands each time. I knew that it would be better if I switched to the new Office now and became familiar with it rather than having to fight both a new office suite AND a new operating system at the same time, so Mom and I decided to split the cost and go in on this together (as soon as the optional DVD arrives, I'll install it on her computer, too).

I love this new version of Office, and I'll admit it now. I can't get enough of it! I could play on Publisher, newly included in this version of Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007, for days, creating fliers, brochures, business cards and labels to my heart's content. The new Word is fabulously beautiful to look at, and does MORE and BETTER than the old version used to. As long as I remember to save everything in compatibility mode (so I can share notes with the poor saps out there who don't have this wondrously amazing program yet), I could rule the world with documents.

Now I'm trying something different in OneNote; I'm going to compose all my blogs here and see if I can upload them to Blogger this way.

We'll see if it works!

 
 

 
 

-Laur

 
 

 
 

 
 

Kickback

Do you believe in Karma?
A dear friend was the first to ask me this in quite a while after a personal hardship forced her to ask herself the same question.
I thought about the answer for a while, because keeping faith of any sort is a problem for me. I don't like religion or any sort of dogma for that matter, but Karma is a case I now realize I'm willing to keep faith for.
I have to believe in Karma. I have to believe that all those people out there who do bad things to other people, who make stupid choices and then blame the fallout on other people, and who do not learn from their mistakes no matter how many people they hurt in the process, will eventually get theirs. I have to believe that if I live well, and kindly, if I learn from my mistakes and make decisions wisely and try as hard as I can not to hurt other people and to make others happy, that I will be rewarded, somehow.
Another dear friend recently watched the movie "The Secret" after going through a rough breakup; I know the basics of what that philosophy is about, and I agree with a lot of them. After she watched the movie, I was happy to see that her outlook had changed, and she was feeling a lot better about the world and her circumstances. "The Secret" dictates this: if you put positivity out there, it will eventually come back to you and help you be happy and content. But if you put negativity out there, which I sometimes am guilty of doing, then all you'll get back is a kick in the pants, or worse.
So I have to believe that the people around me who constantly screw up and hurt other people, who don't learn from the mistakes they make and take to blaming other people for their failures, will eventually get their just reward. If I can't believe that, then I don't know what I'm going to do.

-Laur

Seat sale!

I bought my ticket to Edmonton last night, the ticket that will take me to Alberta and leave me there for 3 and a half months. I leave at 7:15 am on May 5th, 2008.
This is a big deal. A very big deal indeed. And now that I'm announcing it, people are coming out of the woodwork from all over my life, asking me why I'm going, when I'm coming back, and expressing somewhat flattering (to me, at least) feelings of upset over my departure.
There's nothing like a few months away to make people miss you. I have big plans for this summer. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

-Laur

Free day

My oh my, there is nothing quite like the sight of a wooden slab of raw fish on seasoned rice to get my mouth watering. This evening I went out to Sushi Fun at Yonge and Glen Cameron with my very good friend Laura and her boyfriend Hank.

Laura D, pictured above with yours truly, had her interview with the Faculty of Ed at York this afternoon. She's hoping to get into the Consecutive Education program, into which she fully deserves acceptance, and I'm rooting for her all the way because it means a) she gets to follow a career path she's dreamed about since she was a kid and b) I get one more year of school with her YAY!

One of these is a Black Dragon roll and one of them is a Red Dragon roll. Can you guess which one is which? I'm not telling.

Afterwards, when Hank and Laura drove home to Brampton, I came home and had 45 minutes to kill before "Die Hard" on AMC's DVD_TV started at 8, so I played with some of the makeup I bought over the holidays and took pictures. I probably could have been doing some readings, seeing as I'm now on reading week, but after careful consideration of my options, I decided playing makeover was so much more fun.
This is what I do on a Saturday night. AWESOME!

-Laur

What a snowy day. Right now there's lightning. Very disconcerting.

A picture of the end of the Common through the orange glass of the Accolade Collonade. It looks almost sepia-toned.

Isn't this just the neatest thing? This is one of the cross-cultural workshops put on by York is U, our student alumni association. Regular people got to dress up in saris. It was so fun.

Pretty Lauras in a row! Today has been an interesting day.

-Laur

Miss Take-Me-Seriously

Sarah says I look really grown-up in these glasses. I was never under the impression that I looked less than grown-up. But anyways, I am now known as Miss Take-Me-Seriously, and I think I'll test that particular theory out on my new grade 9 classes this Thursday.
How long has it been since I've had new glasses? Sometime in high school, surely. I like these new ones, I think they're a nice cross between funky and professional, so hopefully they'll serve me well. It was time for a change anyways, and I can only cut my hair so many times until there's none left to cut.
-Laur

*Paradise*

I'm having a bit of a blast from the past right now. My old Caribbean Geography prof, Bill Found, is here in my World Geography class guest-lecturing on the Caribbean as a region. I really enjoy him, despite some of my complaints about last year's course, and after class I'm going to talk to him about the 4000 level Caribbean geog class he teaches now.
I've been thinking a lot about my course selection for next year; I only need 21 more credits in my BA to graduate, and 9 in my BEd...that's really not very much. That's one year of study. I need 2 4000 level Englishes, 1 4000 level free course, and one any-level half course. In Ed I need my Teaching Geography in the I/S division and another Ed elective, hopefully Inclusive Education or Education and Human Rights. When I put those numbers into perspective, I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel; I can see the end of my university career.
I have mixed feelings about graduating; I'm intensely excited to be done with university, but at the same time my sense of trepidation is almost overwhelming. When I graduate I have to go out into the real world; I have to apply for jobs and interview and face more setbacks than successes. I can hope and wish all I want that this process goes smoothly, but I know that smooth is probably not what I'm going to get.
I was just on my friend Valerie's Flickr site checking out her very excellent pictures, and I noticed that she had found an album by a duo called Iron and Wine; these artists have a folksy, hauntingly sweet sound, and they sing one song in particular that I'm fascinated by because the same song is also covered by a techno-rock-indie band called The Postal Service. The song is called "Such Great Heights" and I love both versions; however, if I had to choose a favourite, I would choose Iron and Wine's version. The lyrics go something like this:

I am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes
Are mirror images and
When we kiss they're perfectly aligned

And I have to speculate
That God himself did make us into
Corresponding shapes like puzzles pieces
From the clay

True, it may seem like a stretch
But it's thoughts like this
That catch my troubled head
When you're away, when I am missing you to death

When you were out there on the road
For several weeks of shows
And when you scan the radio
I hope this song will guide you home

They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll stay

I've tried my best to leave
This all on your machine
But the persistent beat
Sounded thin upon listening

That frankly will not fly
You will hear the shrillest highs
And lowest lows with the windows down
When this is guiding you home

They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll say...

Think of soft acoustic guitar and a man's voice, gentle and breathy and soothing. That's why I love this song. Paradise.

-Laur

Home home home

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of home, and the comforts that term seems to bring to most people. Yesterday I began to read a book called "The Namesake" at Thornlea during my lunch break. I didn't finish it, nor did I bring it home because I had a test to study for, and I can't wait to get back to it next week and finish the story of Gogol, and young Indian-American learning to live his life with a sense of duality. Where is is home, in Cambridge or Calcutta? What is his good name, as opposed to his pet name? It's so interesting.
Yesterday, consequently, I fell as I raced down the hill to Willowbrook in order to catch the 10-minutes-early bus home. I slid in mud that had been frozen solid 7 hours before, and fell on my butt. It hurt, a lot, and as I fought tears of frustration as I limped down the rest of the hill and down another to head the bus, who's driver had seen me fall and driven away in spite of it, off at a different stop on Royal Orchard, all I wanted was to be at home. All the way to Clark and New Westminster, all the way down Clark to Tansley, and all the way down Tansley to home all I wanted, with my entire being, was to go home.
So what does home mean? I'm willingly leaving home this summer to go live 3 provinces away, thousands of kilometres from my superior bed, my gorgeous cat, and all my friends, so that I can make enough money to pay for my final year of schooling. I love my home, but I'm leaving it. Are the ties that bind so very strong, or can they be stretched for a time without becoming uncomfortably drawn?
We'll see. We'll see.

-Laur