Remember that Time...

That I was a terrible blogger and I didn't post for like 3 weeks?  Yeah, sorry about that.

Life has just been crazy.  Like really, really crazy.  Family stuff and finishing student teaching and graduation and applying for jobs and certification.  Did you know it's practically harder to get certified as a teacher than it is to buy a house?  Seriously...it's nuts.

Anyway, I'm DONE!  Woohoo!  I officially have my Masters degree in Multicultural Education and my application has been submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for elementary teaching certification!  Man...that feels good.  Now to find a job.  (ugh.)

I got to wear a fancy Masters hood.

Craziest graduation ever.  Let me tell you...started outside, then 3 minutes into conferring the degrees it started to thunder so they decided to move it inside.  SO unorganized and just a mess.  I kept thinking "I could make 8 year olds do this better than graduate students are right now!!"  At least it will be a graduation to remember!

And then we celebrated Mother's Day!  These were from our little photo booth at church.  Love my mama!

REMEMBER THAT TIME....

That I was a terrible blogger and I didn't post for like 3 weeks?  Yeah, sorry about that.

Life has just been crazy.  Like really, really crazy.  Family stuff and finishing student teaching and graduation and applying for jobs and certification.  Did you know it's practically harder to get certified as a teacher than it is to buy a house?  Seriously...it's nuts.

Anyway, I'm DONE!  Woohoo!  I officially have my Masters degree in Multicultural Education and my application has been submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of Education for elementary teaching certification!  Man...that feels good.  Now to find a job.  (ugh.)

I got to wear a fancy Masters hood.

Craziest graduation ever.  Let me tell you...started outside, then 3 minutes into conferring the degrees it started to thunder so they decided to move it inside.  SO unorganized and just a mess.  I kept thinking "I could make 8 year olds do this better than graduate students are right now!!"  At least it will be a graduation to remember!

And then we celebrated Mother's Day!  These were from our little photo booth at church.  Love my mama!

5 TIPS FOR FINALS WEEK

We seemed to have arrived once again and my (least) favorite time of the semester: finals week.

There's something about this week that energizes me.  Maybe it's the promise of a break not too far in the distance, maybe it's the fact that I just work well under pressure.  Either way, I always feel a sense of exhaustion and being overwhelmed as well as a resurgence of energy and, dare I say, excitement.

Sure, we've all got papers and tests and work, etc, etc.  I could (and have in years past), spent entire posts talking about how many pages I'll be writing this week.

Being that this is my last semester of coursework toward my Masters degree *does happy dance*, I thought I'd share with you 5 tips I've picked up through, well, 11 semesters of higher education.

1.  Stay positive.  But cry if you need to.
This was one of those things that always helped me.  It's a balance.  Give yourself 5 minutes to whine to a willing roommate or parent and get it all out, then get started on the task at hand.  You can handle this.

2.  Take a break.
When I was in elementary and high school and I was working on a project (that I had no doubt procrastinated on) the night before it was due, I'd always end up getting exhausted.  My dad would tell me to take a break, go take a shower, have a snack, take a walk.  When you come back to your work, you'll be refreshed and will be able to see it in a new light.

3.  Give yourself motivators.
Want to spend 10 minutes on Pinterest or Facebook?  Not until you've written two pages. Write a few little post-its with positive or motivational sayings on them and stick them around your work area.

4. Eyes on the prize.
Remember, when you're done, you get to go on break.  No homework, no classes.  You can breathe and read whatever you want and watch tv and see friends and family.  Just get through this week.

5.  Find your study cake.
My senior year of college, I started doing this thing I called "study cake".  I love baking, and it's a stress reliever for me, so whenever I had a big exam or paper coming up, I'd stock myself up with a cake mix and canned frosting (to keep things quick and easy).  I'd mix up a cake, bake it, go back to studying, frost it, and then my apartment mates and I would all take a break from homework to have some study cake.  Maybe for you, it's not cake.  But find what makes you go "ahhhhh," relieves some stress, gives you some social interaction, and gives your brain a break.  Find your study cake.

Hope these little tips help!  Got any more to add to this list?  What gets you through finals week?

pardon me.

please excuse my absence around these parts this week.  

i've got some writing to do.

scratch that.  lots of writing to do. 

as in, i've-already-written-98-pages-and-easily-have-fifty-more-to-go.

wish me luck!

Excuse me while I get on my soap box.

Every once in a while, I like to write about the things that really get my fired up; the things that I'm really passionate about (see here and here).  Last night, I spent an entire grad class talking and learning about critical literacy, or the practice of incorporating books that have some weight into your curriculum.  Books about homelessness, socioeconomic class differences, racial tension, even Japanese American internment camps during WWII.  The practice is meant to start young students on the path of becoming socially conscious people with a heart and mind for things like social justice.  When my prof asked for us to line ourselves up on a continuum from 1 to 10 with 1 being "I love this, I NEED to incorporate it into my classroom" and 10 being "It's not for me.", let's just say I was as far on the side of 1 as I could go.  

My time at Gordon shaped me into a lot of things, one of which was someone with a heart for social justice issues.  There are a few that I'm exceptionally passionate about (namely urban ed and getting clean water sources into places that have none), but pretty much any issue can and will tug at my heart strings (and yes, I have two pairs of TOMS).

Right now, I'm working on my M.Ed in Multicultural Education.  Eventually, I want to become a teacher in an urban center and maybe someday get my doctorate or law degree and go into policy writing or work for a NGO that champions education reform.  

But right now, in this season, I'm learning.  I'm learning what it means to be a compassionate and  effective teacher.  I'm learning how to get a first grader to understand that there is injustice in the world and that they can play a role in changing it.  And I'm going to classes that (finally) are reminding my why I'm staying up til 1 am writing papers and rearranging my schedule to do observations and jumping through hoops to find someone to interview for this or that.  

For the first time in a while, I'm remembering what God has called me to, and that answering that call, and answering it well, is what it's all about.

via

the top 10 things that stand between me and finishing an assignment:

Because I am the queen of procrastination, here are 10 sure-fire ways to burn some time while you should be doing homework:

1. blog 

(duh! what do you think I'm doing right now? 

I'll give you a hint:  it starts with "p" and ends with "rocrastinating")

2.  check out new pins on pinterest

3.  facebook, of course!

4.  read (and update) your twitter

{and now that all of your social networking bases are covered}

5.  bake and craft

6.  work out or go running

7.  go out for ice cream or coffee with a friend (or dinner with your dad, as I discovered tonight)

8.  edit that photoshoot that's been sitting in your "needs processing" folder

9.  watch a movie (preferably as you tell yourself it'll just be "background noise")

10.  do your laundry/dishes

(this is really out of desperation.  You can try to justify this one as "I really need a clean and organized house/apartment in order to fully focus on my homework", but we all know you're choosing the lesser of two evils here.)

and then there's this:

via

And just one last thing.  I'm currently sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by my laptop, folders, books, my open planner, and a mug of tea and my dad proceeds to initiate the following conversation:

Dad:  Wanna go to Target?

Me:  Oh gosh, you have no idea how much I'd like to say yes, but I've got 4 lesson plans, a paper, discussion board posts...

Dad:  Meh, what's at Target anyway?

Me:  Oooo...lots of things!

Dad:  You'd just want to look at clothing and shoes.

{20 min later...after I finished this post}

Dad:  Target closes in an hour and a half!  We could go walk the aisles!

Me:  Actually, they close in a half hour; they close at 9 on weekdays.

Dad:  We could go to Giant and walk the aisles instead!

{I am my father's child.}

those who can, teach

at the moment, going to grad school for my M.Ed. full time means that

my bookshelves look like this & my desktop is laden with these

It requires: 

extreme organizational skills

late nights of writing lesson plans while watching Bravo reruns

a touch of creativity

and a lot of coffee

Something tells me that with a career in education,

these things won't stop when I get my degree.

And I love it that way. 

Homework.

I'm supposed to be working on my first paper for my grad class right now.  I'm sitting at my kitchen table with a notebook, two articles, a packet with all the information one could ever need on what to put into a 4-6 page paper, my textbook, a highlighter, and a pen.  And what am I doing?  Blogging.  (And popping around Facebook. and picking out a new pair of TOMS. and texting. and thinking of a dessert to bake for a party I'm going to today.)  Because it wouldn't be homework if I didn't exhaust every procrastination option out there before I actually buckled down and pounded out the darn thing.  See, when I actually get to writing it, this paper will probably only take me about an hour.  But the entire process will likely take all morning, because I have no self discipline when it comes to homework.  Somehow, I managed to make it through college with this fatal flaw, and while I'd love to say "it'll be different this time around", I think I'd be lying.  Really, you'd think that I hate school.  But in fact, I love it.  I'm just not good at showing it.  Oh well, here we go again!

I also made myself coffee this morning.  I SO feel like a student again!  (And I LOVE it!)

Graduation.

All the pomp & circumstance is over.  I'm (officially officially) done with college.

And I started grad school last Monday.

Senior Formal

Here's a few of the photos I took at senior formal in Boston on Saturday night. It was an interesting evening...I enjoyed getting dressed up, going to Boston, and spending time with friends, but there was also a feeling of disconnectedness looming in the air. Its strange to have not been a part of this community for the past 5 months. For the rest of my class, Saturday night was an opportunity to blow off steam before heading into a hectic finals week.  For me, this whole week just seems surreal. Even now, I'm sitting in Starbucks, the place where I spent every Sunday night last fall doing homework, and I'm surrounded by familiar faces who have congregated here to frantically finish papers and cram for their next exam, and I just feel out of place in some ways. This area will always be a second home, but I also realize now that this chapter of my life is really closing.  

And I can honestly say that I'm ready to start the next one.

Today I...

...got into graduate school. 

More specifically, the Campolo College of Graduate and Professional Studies 
at Eastern University.

Sometime between this month and September, I'll be starting my master's degree in multicultural education.

Here's to the next step!

#10: The Elijah Project

I have ten days left at Gordon.  

Ten days to be completely present in the relationships I've built over the past few years.  

Ten days of classes, papers, exams, and packing.  

Ten days of being a college student.

I've been pretty absent from the blogging world for the past few weeks.  I haven't had time to take many photos, and having to take them for a class has sort of sucked some of my creativity in that field out of me.  And I haven't had much to say; I've been doing a lot of internal (ok, and external, in the form of venting to my roommate) processing, wrestling with the fact that in a little over a week, I'll be done.  Outta here.  Skeedattled.  But I thought I'd leave a mark on my last ten days here by posting one thing (out of a list of many) that I'm going to miss about this place.

First off, the Elijah Project.  Now, this one probably shouldn't count.  In fact, that's why I placed it last:  because its a bit of a stretch, not because I'll miss it least.  I finished the EP last May when I moved out of Dexter House.  But its still an everyday part of my Gordon experience in the fact that I'm surrounded by the people, the language, the ideas that are central to the project.  The EP played a gigantic role in who I am today and the direction that my life is taking.  My classmates and our instructors, the Carmers, affirmed my strengths, supported me in the midst of big, life-altering decisions, and gave me hope and inspiration.  The readings that we did provided me with a new lens with which I now view the world.  I get so excited when I think of the amazing things that Lacy, Jae, Emily, Willie, Cassie, Rob, Christine, Erika, Ian, Tim, Ben, Dan, and Becky will be, or already are, doing with their lives.  These people are agents of change, and are poised and ready to seek God's will first and follow Him wholeheartedly.

This was the first group picture we ever took.  I remember coming home from this weekend and saying "I love these people!!!"  A year of living together later, I still feel the same way.  :)

Excuse me while I go cry my eyes out.

Apple-y Goodness!

 Fall has finally arrived!  Bromley 3 went apple picking at Russell Orchards today...we had a blast picking and walking and talking, and then coming back to Gordon and baking our little hearts out!  I make P-dubs' Flat Apple Pie.  It was easy as pie (heh, heh) and I highly recommend it!

What have you been up to to celebrate fall?

the apt.

Bromley 310 (my apartment) had a little photo shoot today with the talented Peter Morse.

We got all gussied up and had our picture taken for a while, and had a ton of fun in the process!

I'll be getting the images this week, so I'll be sure to share them with you, but in the meantime, I thought I'd introduce you to the women I live with!

This is Lacy.  She's not only gorgeous, but she's an amazing, talented, woman of God, and she's also a great friend.

This is Hannah.  She and I are still getting to know one another, but I love her dearly!  She's smart and so much fun to be around.

This is Jae.  I was lucky enough to share a house with her last fall, and am so happy to be living together again!  She's such a fun, beautiful girl!

This is Nicole.  She was one of the first people I ever met at Gordon, and we were bio majors together for a while.  She's got the most infectious laugh out of anyone I know!

This is Emily.  She's my roommate, one of my dearest and most beautiful friends.  We have a lot of fun together, and I'm so blessed to be living with her again this year.

Hope your weekend is going well!