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December 10th, 2008
08:06 pm
i can see how people get wrapped up in their careers in a way I couldn't fathom before. I live eat sleep my job and its pretty out of control. And I am beginning to realize that tfa knows what they are doing and they probably have some crazy way of weeding out for my personality. Because every day I can go in there and expect for something different to happen. and most of the time it doesn't. but sometimes and I can win over that one kid who I thought was going to be defiant til the end of his life. I'm getting kind of good at manipulating 12 year olds (in a good way). I give them the positive and then mention something their parents told me like the motivating "christmas presents". And whoa can I be a bitch. I track them down and give them detention and it feels good because I guarantee that they will not be in there the next week. Its really cool to hear them talk about mitochondria in a way that I never understood at a middle school level. I don't really know what this is, but I guess I am feeling relatively effective at this point in the year. I have a shitton to learn but it is priceless to have those utterly perfect moments where there is clarity and I just changed someone a little bit. And I really enjoy those kids who everyone else complains about, when secretly, they bust their ass for me. they are my faves.
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July 7th, 2008
08:22 pm
some girl just gave me a code to make the stupid printers work forever and she is my hero. No frustrations tonight in the printer realm= fabulous.
Almost done, 4 days left of teaching! We are kind of in limbo right now because we are supposed to be focused on "student achievement" but then again we get our TFA preachings for 4 hours a day on stuff we will actually be able to use in Denver. I'm kind of nervous to start in Denver because I haven't worked out all the kinks yet and I have to be the face of teach for america at my school. (Usually there are more than one corps member at a school so you can get support but since we have only been in denver since last year, there is still some growing to be done although I am the only one I know of so far to be in this position). So I am scared because everything I do will reflect tfa and will determine whether or not they recruit more in the future. Kinda scary/real life shit that I never thought I would be actually dealing with.
Its kind of funny too the things that will make us successful with our students... such as pretending like we have been teaching for YEARS so they will never know we actually have no clue what we are doing. Instead of saying that one time I taught one class a day for a month, we say back when I was teaching in texas bla bla bla. or you guys are getting it so much better than the other students I've had (all 10). this kind of stuff needs to be dropped constantly so they think you are older and more experienced than you really are.
I mean if it weren't in texas this wouldn't be too bad. They totally have it down in terms of efficiently training us with limited amounts of money. I really want to live in my new apartment though. and eat protein...eating protein is high on my to do list because they don't really understand what vegetarians are down here. and I want to gradually pick up tricks of the trade that I can retain. k bed time.
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July 1st, 2008
04:35 pm - week 4
So I am in week 4 of institute in houston, texas.
all I want right now is to be done and be able to move on to denver and move into my new amazing apartment and start working towards my classroom there. many things are contributing to me counting down the minutes until I can do that.
1. i am in the crappiest dorms ever in the middle of nowhere, texas. this, I assume, is TFA's way of weeding out the people who are not relentless pursuiters. or normal. to stay in this dorm for 5 weeks, you can't be normal. (one of the TFA core values is relentless pursuit so there are many jokes involving being relentless about pretty much everything.) They severely underestimated how much 700 people would be printing vs. crappy printer ratio. there was a point where all 4 printers in my entire tower of 17 floors were not working, and we all have shit to print every single day. copying stuff can take an hour and a half...there were a lot of kinks not worked out before we all showed up even though this isn't the first time institute has been in houston. again...relentless pursuit.
the organization of my school seems to favor saying "i donno" instead of making decisions.
i have 10 kids for 83 minutes a day. I lovelovelove half of them. The other half continuously make me struggle throughout the class period. one of them was supposed to have a conference with me today: instead, he booked it in the other direction. having them being engaged and learning is pretty much at the bottom of the list below trying to control them the whole time. if at least they are being quiet and not learning, the other kids get to have a chance to learn. i donno... the first few days it was getting up at 5 that was a big deal and now that is so low on the scale of frustrations. they shove information at you for 4-5 hours a day on how to teach and you frantically try to keep up with that. Then you go to your class which is all ready for you with new ideas on how to misbehave such as make pig noises and give themselves gang tatoos with their pens. and you try to teach them erosion. I like it when I can get them engaged in learning and having them ask a lot of awesome questions. I love jasmine who tries really hard even though sometimes she just has to put her head down because her life is really hard but who has a great smile when you give her a high five at the end of the day. and I hope to whoever is controlling the universe that at least i can have more than half my class with a little self motivation and no drive to piss me off. i can't wait to have a real classroom situation and not one where they are really there for me to practice as my lab rats. i'm excited to have stuff in denver like a projector and consequences that I can actually use. i'm excited to see the puppy because i MISS her.
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November 11th, 2007
11:14 am
it seems live journal still has a grip on me, every six months i feel compelled to write something in here.
life is weird, like yesterday, i flushed my ipod down the toliet. i wish it was on purpose, as a fuck corporations thing, but alas no. your first question should be 'how in the hell did you do that??!!?' the truth is, it doesn't matter, life happens it was a freak accident. i like to picture it shuffling through my favorite songs in a vat of shit.
but i'm trying to take something from this experience. do i really need one to ride my bike around town? how about i stop being a pod person and start listening to the sounds of the world again? i'm still working on trying to be a minimalist, this is my goal and it is getting positive reinforcement from jason in mexico. right now he is on a desperate kick to save the world or at least to be aware of all of its wrongs. which, unfortunately, mostly arise from the US. he recommended this book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, that is life changing. seriously, everything starts to make sense after you read this book. If you don't understand our motivations in some of the things we meddle in, like why the fuck we bombed panama in the 80's for no apparent reason or why there was a gas scare in the 70's, this book will make you understand. after an interesting conversation with my dad when for the first time he couldn't trump me in bullshit knowledge, he called me an idealist. and said it was just a phase, that he went through it too and voted for jimmy carter.
i don't want it to just be a phase, i hate that people automatically assume that a sudden a jolt of consciousness will end up only being a phase, like being a vegetarian or learning that the US is not altruistic in the majority of our involvement with the world. whats wrong with expecting nothing less than a respect for humanity? I've just had an overwhelming respect for life recently that is taking over, and no, this does not mean i am anti-abortion. i am just sick of the world running on the backs of money hungry assholes. i wish i could have studied abroad twice, once to do the fabulous nz and once to immerse myself in the real issues going on. i have been angry lately, most of my conversations about vegetarianism with meat eaters leaves me spewing out shit at such a rate that they tune me out. i've always tried to say my bit gently in these conversations, but that doesn't get the point across, yet when they write me off as another insane vegetarian, that doesn't do it either. i really hate it when people go 'are you a vegetarian for...moral reasons?? like moral reasons are overrated. it sucks because all the people that i'm close with for the most part are definitely not changing their ways any time soon, with going vegetarian or fighting the system. but i have jas, but he's in mexico. i'm excited for when he comes back, to talk about it and do something together. he thinks i'm a pessimist, but really i'm an optimist, and i'm having a hard time dealing with the hard cold fact that there aren't nearly as many reasons to be optimistic about this world anymore. and i know the system is going to force me down and i'll have to understand i can't fix everything, that putting my head down and focusing on one small thing is all i can do.
so i guarantee it won't just be a phase.
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April 14th, 2007
10:53 am
this is weird. I honestly miss lj in some ways because i feel like my friends used to know me better in some ways. its an outlet for whatever you want it to be, emotional, what you did that day, what weird shit inspired me, whatever. and everyone read it for the most part. It is nearly impossible to bring some of that stuff up in conversation now a days, and so i am missing that outlet for it. plus i'm just so much better at writing than talking. but the major downfall of live journal is definately the expectation for comments.
i'm committing to this journal entry. Being back in this country is mostly normal again, although it has definately taken away some of the life and excitement i got from being abroad. this semester has really made me into the loner that I always expected to be. My best friend last year is too fucking busy. it is sad to realize that in one semester last year we might have had 100+ quirky fun moments together, while as this semester it is maybe 2. Plus i despise her boyfriend (for logical reasons) which put more of a damper on our friendship than i realized until today. even now that they are broken up. oh well, i've gotten used to being by myself (with my puppy that is) which I think is A lot better than being so dependent for other people. I miss those times when we were all living for the moment, i really don't feel like i've found anyone since who I can do that with. maybe i should just try to be that completely free spirited person that i used to be, but it is so much easier to initiate when you are around other people who are the exact same way. as in stay up until daylight just to talk. screw whatever you have to do tomorrow, you can do it tired. because this is what counts. maybe i should talk to people from home more often. but anyways, i have recently started this thing with one of my friends here, jason. he is one of those ridiculously smart people who is bored with the level of difficulty this world has to offer to suceed (he is already in med school). I'm working on starting again with him because I've known him since freshmen year although we knew each other as well as aquatainces is what i've decided since we've been dating. he is ridiculously good to me. scares me because he is basically going to be home all summer making mula (i'll see him once a week) plus going to mexico next semester which is awesome because he will have that perameters dissolving experience. sometimes i'm really freaked out that it is a comfort relationship, something that i vowed to myself i would never ever do, but i have come to terms with it, as I would freak out about that with any relationship and there is definate chemistry there. but he calls me leigh instead of julia and he speaks to me in spanish and he argues with me and sometimes proves me wrong. its been a really good few weeks. plus the happy hour trips almost every day have been amazing.
i've been struggling with figuring out what i'm going to do after i graduate. i can't pick and commit to a path. i don't want to do it because i feel like its the rest of my life and i can't do it so easily. i hate astronomy. class is stupid, i freak out about a test and find out later i did fine on it, and think i put the smack down on another one and find out i didn't do so hot. it just makes me on the brink of saying fuck it all. I really am closer to not giving two shits about school than i ever have been before. I want to write but i don't have the time. i want to read fiction for a living.
god my roommates are such cold robots. creepy stepford wives.
maybe this will initiate a connection with people i haven't talked to in forever (heather, whoever is still on this, etc)
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August 31st, 2006
10:56 am
i hitchhiked my way down part of the east coast of Australia...and i'm liberated.
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April 23rd, 2006
01:12 am
for the record, coming home from MSU and finding a Hampton Inn upon entering your town was quite a shock.
might as well bulldoze the whole place and fill in the lakes. this town/my childhood is going to consumerism american hell.
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January 25th, 2006
01:28 pm
"Well a sun's gonna rise in a mile
In a mile
In a mile
You'll be feeling fine
In a mile you will see
After me
You'll be out of the dark, yeah
You'll get your shot..."
hint: look up elevation of Boulder.
this song was written for me it seems.
and i wish i could have shared it with my 18 year old self.
Current Music: citizen cope
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December 7th, 2005
09:40 pm
ok, maybe i lied, maybe we do all come back. i guess it might be because i want to share this with people but i really need to write it down first. and i can't bring it up in random conversations with people- that just doesn't cut it. neither does writing about it in a personal journal- it needs to be shared so that maybe someone will take something from it. but i'll admit it- i'm a live journal fiend and addict and i can't resist a damn needed entry. take it or leave it.
I'm in a locally run coffee shop in boulder and i absolutely love it. its real when most things aren't anymore. plus its open till 2.
My sign class has affected me in a tremendous way...i didn't think i would love it this much. my teacher is deaf and from west bloomfield. she has taught us the whole time using gestures and context and sometimes the blackboard to make us learn the signs. and the class is so COOL because we learn signs that apply to real life, not the bullshit words you learn in high school like red snapper or venganza. ha. it's so real in a fakely emotional way because a lot of the emotions in the face are exaggerated to get your point across. But anyways, she has been going through some emotional shit the past month, and didn't show up one day. the next day she came in and spoke. fucking TALKED. told us her whole story, the entire hour. because she grew up in west bloomfield with parents that didn't know she was deaf until she was two. then they put her through a mainstream school where she "learned" (faked) understanding people by lip reading. and cheated to pass by. and didn't have anyone as a friend because verbal communication is so essential when you are little. then went to lasher high school and was miserable. she didn't learn sign language until she was 15. then she went to MSU for a year and was miserable. she finally transferred to gaulludet (sp) where she finally had her people, and that was only after she was my age that she could finally have communication. Couldn't communicate to a full extent until she was OUR AGE. i can't even fathom. she knows how to speak only because she went to speech therapists for years and had to use it to get by, but it isn't any means of an alternative to actually hearing. it just made me feel terrible because we grew up in that area and i know how hard it must have been to have to deal with that. And she included a lot of details in her story that only i understood from growing up there, maybe that made the whole story hit me harder. its just so interesting, i just want to learn it all and maybe help to decrease this gap between deaf and hearing. besides i think sign language is just the coolest language and expression ever. and we had to sign songs this week- two girls did part of that world from the little mermaid and it was so beautiful to watch; i was entranced. then jp told us that she really related to that because she had such a longing to be a part of the hearing world and not have a permanent separation from it. i don't know but that really affected me. i love astronomy but i need to involve myself with the deaf world somehow.
my sociology class was really awesome this semester too. today my teacher poured his soooooul out to us begging us to appreciate college and everything that we have because we have opportunities given to us on a silver spoon that is so valuable and unobtainable to most people. its been sucky the past couple of semesters when i have completely pointless classes like physics and calc that get me down on learning, but it should get better. his class just basically pointed out how entirely FUCKED up this world is and left it open to us to figure out what the most fucked up things were that bother us. and he begged us to do something about it. So i'm going to finish the paper that i'm currently not writing, and truck my way through my finals and then disappear for 10 days. hopefully. fuck not existing only on december 18th, i'll just not exist for a week. It just sucks because i'm doing a poor job with leading on guys and because of this they are frustratingly clingy. i am so done with guys for the instant- or at least the guys that i used to be attracted to. its impossible for them to get hints and to merely be friends. and i feel so liable. but being that mysterious hard to get girl is also very very fun. So anyways i really have no idea where i'm going with my future. i thought i would be burnt out before ever considering grad school, but possibly not. As a side note my house has been having tension recently, but last night we all got together to smoke my hookah and AUDREY came downstairs. and it was awesome. and i think we are all cool now. i have so much to look forward to for the entire next year, i just really can't fucking wait.
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October 22nd, 2005
October 19th, 2005
11:19 am
lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovleovleoelvoelvoelvoelovelovelovleovleovleoe!
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October 11th, 2005
01:22 pm
after two days of cold raining my mountains have snow on them again and they are like the most gorgeous things ever. i love the sign for mountain in asl its pefecto. I'm all ready for ski season i got my pass for copper/winter park this weekend. stokin.
i just looked up my house on the satellite images page. the picture was taken 4/10/2002. i kind of wish i hadn't erased firefly667 so that i could look up what i was doing that day. what was i doing when a satellite was passing over my house taking the picture? completely insignificant but whatever.
the communication gap is getting w i d e r. but isn't that what i wanted? i feel like my birth control is fucking me up again. this is my third kind. and i don't know if i should accept that i should just stop trying new kinds and give up or if i should wait it out a couple months and let it regulate. because the truth is i've been feeling kind of miserable for really no reason and i hate that more than anything.
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October 5th, 2005
11:38 am
heres a proposition: I'm going to have two weeks over christmas of free time between the 1st and the 17th (of January). My dad is offering to pick up a plane ticket to where ever because there is really not much of a point in coming home if my parents are working and i don't have a car or a job.
proposition: does anyone honestly want to go somewhere with me for those two weeks? I'm thinking if all else fails, i'll go to new york to see my bro/family/caity but i would love to go somewhere else with you guys. anyone, anyone?
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September 29th, 2005
12:45 am - would you rather appear to be three feet to the left of where you really are or
not exist on december 18 every year?
would you rather have a unique verereal disease where whenever you kiss someone they transform into a japanese soldier who thinks the war is still on or have the inability to distinguish between the taste of mint and the concept of increasing?
would you rather when asked where you come from always answer "probably the creation of some insane wizard" or
be incessantly preoccupied with the whereabouts of the muffin man
would you rather have a purple cloud of dust appear when you flatulate or have a nervous compulsion whereupon meeting the parents of a date of spouse you say quite happily "hello how are you? give me the salmon or i will destroy you"
would you rather have to always answer the phone with "i am the vindicator of the damned" or have a deep seated insecurity that causes you to refer to yourself as "the ambassador" as in "the ambassador would like some more pie"
heres my new life obsession: getting a law passed making the week 8 days long. work monday tuesday, break wednesday, work thursday friday and tomday (the newest one) and then weekend. repeat. brilliant 7 day weeks blow and are pointless.
and kungfu. oh my fucking god that was the most RIDICULOUS thing EVER. this is how we should solve problems, by breaking out into fights anytime we don't see eye to eye with eachother.
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September 20th, 2005
05:22 pm
i don't know if this is easing off live journal. maybe i should actively try harder to.
i hate LAs on power trips. it reminds me of 9th grade when you weren't allowed to make your own decisions. cool.
I've been thinking a lot about how much i hate physics and how i hope that qualitatively studying astronomy is worth something. and how i should take a communications class. i need to back up.
I was flying home through pheonix, where i had one of the best conversations of my life with the guy next me the entire way there from the moment he sat down next to me. he was this 40 year old guy who was a total sucess and multi millionaire just because he was able to talk to people. he was so good at it too he knew everything about life that related to me and knew just how to say it. it was absolutely amazing, but i imagine to him it was just another person to talk to. but i was flying back from san francisco for the weekend because my cousin got married. I forgot how it is to go to a family gathering and be swamped by them and their intense drunken shit going on. but my aunt told me about my cousin who is three months younger than me and i haven't seen since we were infants and how he is going to harvard because he was rejected from berkeley too, and he is studying some kind of ancient sumerian language that no one has the least bit of inkling of an idea how to pronounce, and she said "well its as useful as anything" which goes back to the beginning of this paragraph.
so in conclusion i need to take a communications class because i think that i will be able to do more if i can communicate and i need to fly out to harvard or something really badly because i need to meet Curtis who sounds like the coolest person in the whole world.
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September 11th, 2005
01:39 am
jason was dd driving us home, and a guy was in the middle of the street walking backwards into the lane. jason just swerved around him and then i think it all hit us how close he was to completely nailing the guy. so how many accidents do you hear about when the sober people are driving and the drunk people are the ones getting smashed into. he mearly shrugged it off as natural selection, but i can only think of how close he was to killing someone. and how much that would change his life. and how i can never judge anyone for anything ever again that happens to them because it could have just as easily happened to me. the end.
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September 6th, 2005
09:40 am
my aim name has been signing on to three places this past week. stupid. so i changed my name to b0iledw0nderland. HOK???!
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September 3rd, 2005
04:08 pm
today i got a futon. now my room/life is complete! EEEE!!!!!!
i love these days when i get to totally relax in my little leigh hole...playing shuffle itunes, reading a very long engagement, and air drying my laundry while the rest of the world is at the CU game. and feeling like i totally deserve it. yesssssssssssss.
by the way during the first week of school, our rec center had free classes. there was one called NIA that i decided to go to because it sounded better than pilaties.
A M A Z I N G!!!!
if you guys ever see a class called NIA sign up right away. you get to flow around the room to awesome music. yesterday we were embryos. hopefully that gives you the idea of how brilliant it is.
so here is what i'm thinking. mostly the only people who actually read this are the only people i can really see myself staying in touch with. but i don't want to be tied to lj forever. i think i'm going to try to start calling people up completely randomly and hopefully have 10 minutes of excellent conversation occasionally. anyone in favor of that or have any other ideas?
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September 1st, 2005
August 22nd, 2005
08:44 pm
one of these days i'm going to post pictures. anyway a cat named Burrito jumped in the window pretty close to my roommate's head today. then he ran up the stairs and i had to go fetch him and pet him. awwww.
i love my classes from my british feathery haired astronomy lady teacher, to my sociology teacher that is playing spearhead and john butler trio and ani difranco for learning, and my ASL teacher who could be deaf or could not be, which is an unknown fact because she signed the whole class.
LOVE!!
Current Music: whatever bitch by Mya- our apartment theme song haha
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