Birthday

So in less than an hour its going to be my 22nd birthday, and honestly I am completely at peace with it. I am slightly amazed because I most definitely was not at peace with my age last year. Far from it honestly... pretty sure I was majorly wigging out. I am honestly extremely excited for the next 365/366 days, because even though there are going to be highs and lows I dont think that its going to be boring. I believe that I will most definitely have a whole lot to blog about in the next year. :-D

cluelessness

I am sorry if cluelessness is not a word, which its looking not to be according to spell check. But in all honesty its how i feel in the next week and a half-ish i am going to be starting my final semester of undergrad work and its really scary! Everyone is always saying how exciting etc! and then they progress to ask me what i am going to be doing after i graduate (in may) and to be honest i really have no idea. i wish all of this uncertainty could be resolved but alas that is not how life works. i am trying very hard to be a go with the flow girl, but anyone who knows me well knows that is one of the hardest things to do. I just keep hoping that in time enough doors will open and i will be brave enough to take the risk of the unknown. "Life is what happens, when you are busy planning." But there are some things that are going well-- like i have great friends, a great boyfriend and family members who all care about me. Thats what really matters right? Surrounding yourself with people you care about and who care about you? I guess only time will unfold what is to be the story of my life... which makes me a little anxious.

Frusturation With Academic Institutions

I am going to be honest, this morning as I am waiting for D2L to come back up so that I can finally take my final exam, i am wanting to express my frusturation with academic institutions. I guess these past four years of higher education has jaded me on the topic of how these places of learning should operate and how they do specifically opperate. One could potentially argue that a school is a business, which is true schools do possess a certain amount of fiscal responsiblity as well as making sure that you can provide a quality education for the students that attend said elementary, middle, or high school as well as community college, technical college and 4 year colleges/universities. if yo don't feel that as an educator your are either doing a quality job or if you dont see the value in providing quality education... then honey you are in the wrong industry because it is this mediocrcy that will in the long run get you in trouble and will cause you and the institiution that you represent to lose image points as well the trust from your students and those who are involved as well such as parents and gaurdians. While on such topics of education why is it so blooming expensive? why is it that along with everything going up the cost of higher education is skyrocketing out of control? this is not going to bode well for the future of our nation because so many people are choosing to not go to college because they cannot afford it or they do not want to go into that kind of debt.

Complications

Is life really as easy as everyone says it is-- and we (a collective we) as humans have this tendency or an urge to make our own lives that much more of a hassle, when they really dont need to be a hassle? To be honest I think we do. I know in my own life I have a tendencies to make things into one huge complicating and confusing mess when it really should come down to-- is it right? Now just a second while I give the criteria for whether or not its right 1) Is it going to harm and indiviual or a group of people? 2) Does it coincide with your personal ethics and morals? 3) Is it legal? Those are the basics (there are probably more, but I couldn't think of any) Simplifying life is always good but for whatever reason it seems to get lost in the day to day grind. Another reason why I think we have hassled lives is the fact that we make our lives hassled because we (once again the collective we) feel as if it is necessary to run harried lives and to be perpetually busy which is "good" because I come from a generation of instant gratifiers and people with a 5 second attention span (I admit there are times when I am like this, but not everyone is like this)- there is this need to not only keep up with the joneses but also to surpass what they have which is what puts you in the middle of the rat race.

These are just some of my thoughts that I have had lately-- because I feel like I am complicating my life needlessly and that in the long run I am only going to end up getting hurt.

Life Changes Without Warning Once Again

So on Wednesday a major artery of Minnesota traffic collapsed without any sign except for the fact that it started swaying and then just fell. I'm sure everyone has heard by now, and for those wondering I did happen to venture into the cities that day, but I didn't venture to downtown Minneapolis. It has been said that anyone who travels to downtown has taken that bridge or essentially who travels to the twin cities has taken that bridge. It is a miracle that not very many people have passed away. Yesterday that I heard was 4 confirmed dead and only 10 missing. Don't get me wrong this is a tragedy but it could have been worse considering a major road collapsed during rush hour. I received calls from friends all over the country and from my current town that i live in-- making sure that i was OK, which i am. But once again as we were all content and thinking that life was going grandly something happened that shook our world and some leaders have handled with more grace and tact then other leaders *cough Pres. Bush cough*. My heart and prayers go out to those fellow Minnesotans that are trying to find their loved ones or are waiting to hear how they are doing in the hospitals that have been bombarded by the injured.

But this causes me to wonder about how these changes impact our lives. Whether they are huge changes or if they are smaller changes that dont happen on such a larger scale. An example of this would be one day during playground duty that i heard a student say; "you can be the step-dad" it is so sad that it has become such a norm to these early elementary kids. It demonstrates the demise of American family values and is a wonder that nobody can stay together anymore. I wonder as to what big change is to happen next when dealing with the cultural fabric of the United States.

Catch Up Time

so i moved at the end of June into my new place. my new place is nice but its really small and is essentially the same amount of rent as a whole... but that's ok i have great roommates and am closer to campus so i can walk to class my last semester of classes on campus. I am still not unpacked and cant remember where i put the stuff that is unpacked. Which is really frustrating. I have been super busy with school and my two jobs though... Earlier this summer I was working 3 jobs. It has only recently hit me that this year i am actually graduating for real. I have been freaking out about it for awhile but now its the real deal and its scary. I am starting to get the questions of "what are you going to do after college?" and where do you want to teach? Honestly I don't know and I am ok with that. There is a plan and it will reveal itself when its time. Though I am leaning towards staying in the states this next year. Unless I find an opportunity that cannot be missed and/or will get rid of my sizable amount of debt. :-) But only time will tell of whats to come, so prayers are greatly appreciated. vacation is the next item on the blogging agenda. I went to the lake for a week, I wasn't working either of my two jobs (at the time) and i only had to come to st cloud one day for class. It was amazing and it was very restful, because it was my parents, me, family friends and their mostly adult children. It was a lot of fun and was good to see everyone. work-- i have been working at an Elementary school working with English Language Learners and first grade readiness kids and lets just say that i absolutely love it. There have been days when i have been so frustrated about what either was or wasn't happening, but i truly do love it and know that this is what i am suppose to be doing with my life. At my job I worked on English Language skills, did translating for students and I translated some notes that were to go home into Spanish, and i was advocating the importance of being bilingual to my students. All of them were Latino students coming from different countries and experiences and all were at various levels of English and Spanish. So essentially I was teaching both English and Spanish. I learned a lot too this summer about what does and doesn't work, and i realized the importance of my Spanish again. Since transferring schools I haven't used my Spanish hardly at all and I am noticing some difficulties with my word choice because I have lost a lot of vocabulary, so I am going to start studying Spanish again and I am going to hit it hard so that I can feel confident when i say that yes, I am a bilingual person. Now i say I am not really bilingual I can just read, write and speak a little bit of Spanish. So we will see how this year goes, it should be exciting on August 15th or so i am done with all of my summer classes!!! So i will actually get 3 weeks of summer where i can do stuff and I am only working one job, though a good portion of this time is going to be spent with my family driving down to Texas to go see my brother. I'm trying to think if I missed anything important to talk about, if I did I will just have to wait and see what happens though I am super stoked about going to go see Spamalot!!!

OH GUCAMOLE!!!

Hello Readers!
I am sorry for not updating lately life... has been relatively hectic!
Moving, Vacation, Teaching, Summer School are a few things on the agenda for the next post as soon as I can.