Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

***Warning this post is REALLY long. It's my way of procrastinating a stupid assignment***

I'm glad I'm going back to school. I can actually see myself being happy teaching, under the right circumstances. Even so, it doesn't make the classes any more tolerable.

My Monday night class is irritating because it's partially in class and partially online. This week we're supposed to meet in class and turn in a guided observation, which I have no idea whether the teacher wants it in Q&A format or paragraph format. All she told us was that she wanted one of the questions to be answered in list format. We also have to turn in a journal, our only instructions being a triangle with teacher, student, and content as the points and context as the line. She went on to define context as the rules, etc. Other than that I have no idea what she wants. I don't consider a triangle to be directions or parameters. I've already done the guided observation as best I could, and I guess I'll struggle through the journal. For my next 2 classes we don't actually meet, we're just supposed to read 5 chapters and the supplemental material online, post a response to the discussion question, and respond to someone else's post for each chapter. While we're not meeting, we're also supposed to be working on our Philosophy of Education paper, a 20 min group project, and a Performance Based Assesment which actually does have parameters because our online teacher assigned it but is gonna be a TON of work.

Our journals and guided observations are based on observations at our placement school. All of the high school candidates were placed at Happy Valley High School. I hope no one was planning on using today to get their observation in because Carter County schools were closed because of snow today. I would really like my observations if my teacher actually taught. Only 3 of her Drama students are in the play. The rest of them are designing tickets and playbills, building sets, and serving as run crew. So until they get some semblance of a scenic design together, they're basically watching movies. How am I supposed to write a 1 pg journal on that?

My Tuesday class is really cool when I'm in class. We just have class discussions, and the teacher elaborates on the readings. It reminds me of my honors classes, but so does the reading. Each week, we have to read at least 100 pages of The Handbook of Adolescent Psychology and related articles. The book is extremely technical, and the authors assume that you have a base vocabulary that none of us have. So, we end up reading with a dictionary next to us. One of the chapters got so technical, I had to ask Ryan to explain some of the medical terms in context. After we do the reading, we have to post insightful responses to 3 discussion questions posed by the professor. For our midterm, we have to answer 6 or the 8 questions on our midterm, 2 pages each. Last week our professor said he would be looking to see that we included information from multiple readings on each question. Our final will be the same thing, just 8 different questions. Then we also have to write a 15 page research paper that is a review of 8 peer reviewed journal articles on a topic related to something discussed in the class. The more I think about it, the more it sounds exactly like an honors class, especially the ones we had Jr year.

The only class I like is my Thursday class. We each have to do a 30-45 minute presentation on one of the course topics, but I've already done mine, and my teacher gave me a 100 on my presentation. All I have left in that class is reading (the book has pictures) and a notebook that she gave us strict parameters for, and even gave us all of the title pages, so that should be easy enough. In that class we have to have 10 hours of observation of special ed kids. The teacher arranged it so that we all do it together at one site. We've gone once, and have 2 more to go to. It's so fun. We watch little kids with special needs while their parents go to meetings to help them with their kids. I think last month's topic was dental health.

I think it's so hard now because I'm working and going to school. It's really difficult to balance working enough to have enough cash to stay afloat, focusing on school, and having any time to do what I need/want to do. I guess such is the life in Grad School. I think it would be a lot easier if I lived closer to campus. As of right now, I'm driving 40 min to class and 40 min back 3 days a week, in addition to driving 20-25 minutes to work and 20-25 min from work 2-3 days a week. The worst days are the ones that I work and go to class because I have to get up at 5:30, leave my house at 6:45 and don't get back until 7:30 that night. Alright enough bitching, I guess I'm gonna get to writing my journal.