My class grades were posted today and the results are....Psycholinguistics: A...Applied Linguistics: B+. Now I only have 3 more classes to take this Fall and I'm done! Can't wait!
My arms are extremely sore. I think I overdid it at the gym yesterday. Too many chin dips and pull ups and bicep curls. Oopsy! It hurts to raise my left arm although now I just tried to and it's not as painful as it was this morning. I couldn't even do my running today (I tried) because it was jarring my arm/chest muscles too much so I did some brisk walking on a slight incline for about 20 minutes and then did the elliptical machine for 30. You know, throughout my exercising tonight, I kept thinking about the guy that went on the crazy rampage in the LA Fitness gym in PA. I kept thinking about what I would do if all of the sudden somebody came into our gym right then and went crazy with a gun. Luckily I was right next to an emergency exit so I think I could escape rather quickly but why would I even be thinking this? I hate it. It's such a morbid thought but I can't help it because things like that happen when you least expect it just like I'm sure those women in the salsa exercise class didn't expect it. I know this fear shouldn't consume my thoughts, and it doesn't, but I have to be more aware of my surroundings now. Thanks to the crazies out there. It's scary but I have to enjoy my life and not be paralyzed by fear or else I'll never leave my house.
Kyle is doing good. He's ready to be done with night shift, as you can imagine. I'm ready for him to be done with it too. Although sometimes it's nice to just be on my own sometimes at night. I do miss him at night though because my hearing is more alert when he's not here and I "hear" things that I might not normally when he's here. It is nice, however, to have the whole bed to myself. :) hahaha.
Oh! I need to post some pictures of a small road trip that we went on this past weekend. We went to Malad Gorge (about 1.5 hours east of Boise). It was pretty but it was also about 100 degrees outside so we didn't stay long.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Bookwormerific
I went to the BSU library today with Kyle to go pick up some books for my thesis this semester (well, it's technically called a "Capstone paper"). The professors don't call it a thesis for some reason but it's an article that could have the possibility for publication in hopes of turning us into doctoral students. Yeah right! Hell would have to freeze over before I became a doctoral student! I've put in enough time and punishment just getting this master's degree! :)
I got about 15 books or so to get me started. I'm brainstorming on possible topics and the topics are all sorta related but I just got to narrow it down and decide exactly what I'm going to cover in the actual paper. My two possible titles are: The Power of Monolingualism? (meaning, is there really power in only being monolingual?) OR The Politics of Monolingualism (meaning, what does it say about a society that enforces only one language on the people? i.e. the English-Only Movement). This is sorta what I've just become interested in throughout the course of acquiring my degree. I've witnessed ELL tutors (one, in particular, comes to mind) that have said to the children, "ENGLISH ONLY, PLEASE!!!" What kind of message is that sending to the kids? The kids pick up on that too because I've heard the kids repeat it even though their English is limited, they say it and once they realize it, they will then throw their own language/culture down the toilet and lose their roots. It's damaging. Anyway, I've got to narrow my search and figure out exactly how to address this issue. :)
I got about 15 books or so to get me started. I'm brainstorming on possible topics and the topics are all sorta related but I just got to narrow it down and decide exactly what I'm going to cover in the actual paper. My two possible titles are: The Power of Monolingualism? (meaning, is there really power in only being monolingual?) OR The Politics of Monolingualism (meaning, what does it say about a society that enforces only one language on the people? i.e. the English-Only Movement). This is sorta what I've just become interested in throughout the course of acquiring my degree. I've witnessed ELL tutors (one, in particular, comes to mind) that have said to the children, "ENGLISH ONLY, PLEASE!!!" What kind of message is that sending to the kids? The kids pick up on that too because I've heard the kids repeat it even though their English is limited, they say it and once they realize it, they will then throw their own language/culture down the toilet and lose their roots. It's damaging. Anyway, I've got to narrow my search and figure out exactly how to address this issue. :)
Friday, July 31, 2009
Oh No!
We've been having a guy mow our lawn (front and back plus edging) for $15 each Wednesday. Well I've become extremely dependent on that and so this week was a train wreck for me when he didn't show up on the scheduled day!! I emailed him on Wednesday evening and got a response from him saying he was very sorry but his parents had been in town and Monday was their last day. He decided to play hookie and it put him back a day but he would be there the next day in the early afternoon. Well, Thursday came around and still a no-show (luckily we pay him by the day and not in advance) but still. Our lawnmower is on the fritz right now and we're relying heavily on his services to avoid having to pay a lot of money for repairs for now. So, I was thinking maybe he had too many clients and was so behind that it pushed him behind one more day. Well, here it is on a Friday night at about 11pm MDT and the lawn is still not mowed. Well, I waited til about 8pm tonight when it might be cooler and I tried to at least mow our backyard because that tends to grow the fastest. I got about a little less than half done and then all of the sudden the mower wouldn't start again after I emptied the grass bag for about the 3rd time. I could NOT get it cranked again at all. So, it looks like I will be waiting on this guy again. I guess I could borrow somebody else's mower but oh well.
Other than that, nothing much has been exciting here. I keep checking obsessively for my Praxis test scores online even though I know that it's nowhere near time for them to post the scores but back in my mind, I keep hoping they graded mine fast--silly, I know. I got a pedicure today with my friend, Karen. She took me for one for a belated birthday present. It was a very nice salon and spa near the mall area. It's called Viziato's. It was so fancy in that salon!!! I should've taken pictures but that might've come off as a bit tacky. :) Anyway, my toes are now poiple! It's definitely not a color I would normally choose and I've heard that if I ever wanted to go bold with a color on nails, put it on the toenails! My toes are about the same color as this print--except darker. :) I've gotten back into half marathon training and it's kicking my butt!
Other than that, nothing much has been exciting here. I keep checking obsessively for my Praxis test scores online even though I know that it's nowhere near time for them to post the scores but back in my mind, I keep hoping they graded mine fast--silly, I know. I got a pedicure today with my friend, Karen. She took me for one for a belated birthday present. It was a very nice salon and spa near the mall area. It's called Viziato's. It was so fancy in that salon!!! I should've taken pictures but that might've come off as a bit tacky. :) Anyway, my toes are now poiple! It's definitely not a color I would normally choose and I've heard that if I ever wanted to go bold with a color on nails, put it on the toenails! My toes are about the same color as this print--except darker. :) I've gotten back into half marathon training and it's kicking my butt!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Argh..
Kyle and his friend just went to Jack in the Box for their "lunch" at midnight. The old me would've gone with them but I chose not to tonight but that makes it so much harder when they come back home with their goodies and are munching on them behind me as I write this.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
That test was hard!
I had my test yesterday for the ELL certification. All I can say is that it was sooooo hard!! I finished about 15 minutes before the end of the testing session that was about 2 hours long. The test comprised of a listening section where we had to listen to sections of speech from English language learners and diagnose what their issues were with the language. That part was a little difficult because some of the speakers sounded really clear and spoke clearly to me but they might have had a slight issue with sounds. The next sections were teaching methods and theories and maybe a little bit of law-related material. By the end of the test, my head felt like it wanted to explode and I was really pissed off at the BSU ELL department because the 2 linguistics classes that I took didn't talk about any of the stuff that I encountered on the test!! It was a good thing that I even spent any time preparing for this test on my own because I would've been totally screwed had I not.
This week BSU is having a very important person coming to give a talk and his name is Peter McLaren. The professors have been hyping this man up so much the last few weeks. One lady in my test session asked me if I was going and she sounded so excited about it but I made up a white lie saying I wasn't going because I'm lazy and didn't want to do anything else this week after finishing up classes. Well my real reason for not going is the fact that I don't want to go to anything extra because it would show my support for this program that did not prepare me at all for this test and thanks to them also, that if I get an ELL job soon, I'm going to be so lost as to what to plan for these kids--I have no tools under my belt to plan fun activities to help these kids learn English and I will be jumping in cold turkey. I realize most education classes don't really prepare you for a lot but my undergrad classes actually taught me how to make lesson plans and even gave me some ideas as to what to do in planning language games. Anyway, I won't know my scores for a few weeks (about a month from now) and hopefully I passed it.
This week BSU is having a very important person coming to give a talk and his name is Peter McLaren. The professors have been hyping this man up so much the last few weeks. One lady in my test session asked me if I was going and she sounded so excited about it but I made up a white lie saying I wasn't going because I'm lazy and didn't want to do anything else this week after finishing up classes. Well my real reason for not going is the fact that I don't want to go to anything extra because it would show my support for this program that did not prepare me at all for this test and thanks to them also, that if I get an ELL job soon, I'm going to be so lost as to what to plan for these kids--I have no tools under my belt to plan fun activities to help these kids learn English and I will be jumping in cold turkey. I realize most education classes don't really prepare you for a lot but my undergrad classes actually taught me how to make lesson plans and even gave me some ideas as to what to do in planning language games. Anyway, I won't know my scores for a few weeks (about a month from now) and hopefully I passed it.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tiger's going crazy right now...
I'm done with my classes for the summer.
Still have my paper to get done soon.
I have my ELL praxis exam on Saturday that determines if I get certified to teach the subject and hopefully I'll pass the first time around. Fingers crossed, please! :)
I'm tired and don't want to think anymore. I'm thinking about chopping off a lot of my paper that I've written so far because I'm just babbling simply because I got mad at the class and wanted to vent but I don't want to write too much to where the professor can't follow my point: my point that I'm trying to talk about is the way we use language to categorize people and how that's not technically fair because usually those categories aren't based on good things and just on preconceived judgments...but how can we get away from that? It's human nature to want to categorize by color, shape, size, gender, etc. It's confusing to me--we're supposed to treat everyone equal, yet not everyone is the same, but if we make notice of that, we're categorizing...and it just goes in circles from there! ARGH! BLAH!!! Anyway, that's what I want to talk about and I have a feeling my paper's gonna be chopped in half right now and I might have to start over and put more concise language and phrasing in there instead of rambling.
It's late. I'm getting up somewhat early tomorrow to go to weigh-in, I think and then I'm going to pick up a couple of friends at their training classes and we're going to lunch. Then I'm going to take the practice Praxis exam again and see how well I did on it. I only missed 17 out of 90 questions and if I do the simple division problem from that it means that I made an 81 on it but I know that's not how they score it, however, it made me feel good. :)
Oh yeah, I revisited my Body Attack class this evening. It about killed me. The instructor did say that this was a harder routine though and that it's real tough on endurance and range of motion and whatnot. Of course, that class has never been really easy either but I will say this--I didn't leave the room at all. In the past, I've always tried to conveniently miss one song routine to make the class "shorter" to me. This time, I stuck with it and stayed in there. Yeah, I'll probably be sore tomorrow but it'll be worth it. This Saturday will mark exactly 10 weeks before the City of Trees half marathon that I've signed up to do again this year. I've already begun training for it this week and so next week will be my 2nd week of training officially. I'll be looking forward to these next 10 pounds to drop off of me by the end of training (or sooner, hopefully). I think these last 10 pounds will be the last of my weightloss problems...I think I'll feel much better after that and I can just maintain my weight then and not feel so pressured. I don't want to get down way too low.
I guess that's about it.
Night, ya'll!
I'm done with my classes for the summer.
Still have my paper to get done soon.
I have my ELL praxis exam on Saturday that determines if I get certified to teach the subject and hopefully I'll pass the first time around. Fingers crossed, please! :)
I'm tired and don't want to think anymore. I'm thinking about chopping off a lot of my paper that I've written so far because I'm just babbling simply because I got mad at the class and wanted to vent but I don't want to write too much to where the professor can't follow my point: my point that I'm trying to talk about is the way we use language to categorize people and how that's not technically fair because usually those categories aren't based on good things and just on preconceived judgments...but how can we get away from that? It's human nature to want to categorize by color, shape, size, gender, etc. It's confusing to me--we're supposed to treat everyone equal, yet not everyone is the same, but if we make notice of that, we're categorizing...and it just goes in circles from there! ARGH! BLAH!!! Anyway, that's what I want to talk about and I have a feeling my paper's gonna be chopped in half right now and I might have to start over and put more concise language and phrasing in there instead of rambling.
It's late. I'm getting up somewhat early tomorrow to go to weigh-in, I think and then I'm going to pick up a couple of friends at their training classes and we're going to lunch. Then I'm going to take the practice Praxis exam again and see how well I did on it. I only missed 17 out of 90 questions and if I do the simple division problem from that it means that I made an 81 on it but I know that's not how they score it, however, it made me feel good. :)
Oh yeah, I revisited my Body Attack class this evening. It about killed me. The instructor did say that this was a harder routine though and that it's real tough on endurance and range of motion and whatnot. Of course, that class has never been really easy either but I will say this--I didn't leave the room at all. In the past, I've always tried to conveniently miss one song routine to make the class "shorter" to me. This time, I stuck with it and stayed in there. Yeah, I'll probably be sore tomorrow but it'll be worth it. This Saturday will mark exactly 10 weeks before the City of Trees half marathon that I've signed up to do again this year. I've already begun training for it this week and so next week will be my 2nd week of training officially. I'll be looking forward to these next 10 pounds to drop off of me by the end of training (or sooner, hopefully). I think these last 10 pounds will be the last of my weightloss problems...I think I'll feel much better after that and I can just maintain my weight then and not feel so pressured. I don't want to get down way too low.
I guess that's about it.
Night, ya'll!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
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