Ugh

So I'm at my parents' computer, printing off Inclusive Ed notes from WebCT so that I can study them for the midterm this week. For some reason, it's taking forever to print off Powerpoint slides (I guess I've never printed them at home before), so I'm killing time by updating this thing.

It has been somewhat of an unpleasant week. I've been ridiculously stressed out by everything that's due next week, and my sleep patterns are off and I'm feeling nauseous and my car is sick, to boot. I think something broke and coolant fluid leaked out. All I know is that the engine is overheating like mad, but I can't get any warm air in the cabin of the car. This happened on Wednesday, and I still haven't called the shop. It's not too bad, though, since my parents are in Banff and I've been able to drive my mom's car. They come back this afternoon, though, so I'm going to have to give it back. ^_^

As I said, my sleep is all messed. I slept over 17 hours on Wednesday night. And then I satayed awake for eight hours and slept for eight more. I made myself get up at nine this morning, because that way I didn't oversleep, and I feel fine, but I felt like hell last night. I'm not sure if it's the smell of the leather interior of my mom's car (which makes me carsick), but I've been really sick to my stomach the past couple of days. Bah. I drove myself home last night in queasy semi-consciousness last night before taking yet more Gravol and passing out. Thank God I feel better after I've slept between six and ten hours.

So, yeah, I'm going to Spruce Grove. I've decided not to mention which school or the name of my mentor teacher, since my Policy Studies prof has convinced me that it's unprofessional, but I do imagine that I will be posting tales of anonymous 15-year-old guys being stupid in CALM class.

I think the reason this is taking so long is that my printer is running out of black ink. Everything's coming out in a pleasant shade of grey.

Let's see... what else is new with me...? Oh, here's something for you guys to balk at with me: Those of you who have been through this will remember having to write an IPP for Inclusive Ed. This is done in groups of five, and it's due November 1st. I wasn't in class the day that the groups met up and whatnot, so I had no say in who our group co-ordinator was. Fine, whatever. It's in the distance, compared to everything else that's about to crush me. However, after being unable to make our first group meeting (I was *so* not about to cancel my doctor's appointment when I'm feeling like this), I get an e-mail sayting that the next group meeting will be October 11th, and I need to have my part of the assignment done by then. October 11th is the Wednesday of our observation week, and the day after the new due date of my Dramatic Forma paper, since I begged my prof for an extention on that one. I haven't written back to my group co-ordinator, but I anticipate my reply being some sort of euphemism for "bite me." There is no reason why this chick should be making me have this assignment done a full three weeks before it's due when there's ten thousand other things that we all have to finish and only a couple hours' worth of editing required.

Grr...

We still haven't sold our house. Still haven't had a viewing, as far as I know. However, there are little things, like the fly that was caught in between the window and the screen that I let free a couple of minutes ago. I haven't been in this room since my parents left (before now, that is), and I'm not sure that fly could have survived trapped since Wednesday. So there may be viewings going on that I'm not being told about. That would be highly rude, especially since I'm not going to keep the house perpetually immaculate when the real estate angent is supposed to call and tell me when somebody will be coming. It's all spiffy-looking now, though, since I'm going to be leaving as soon as I finish printing these notes, and if my parents get back and find it other than spiffy, they're going to have massive strokes/heart attacks/other bad things, and nobody, espeically not me as the recipient, wants that.

Not What I'd Hoped For

I'm going to Spruce Grove.

And teaching CALM.

(And Drama 10 and 20, which should be good, but, really, Spruce Grove an CALM??? Yee...)

Why Am I Doing This, Again?

To add to next week's lineup from Hell:

October 4th: EDPY 301 (Inclusive Ed) Midterm.

fuckfuckfuck

Also, apparently we have to do an IPP group project. At least it won't be for Drama, although I don't know what it will be for, since I haven't read the case study yet. It's not due until November 1st, so I'm not going to panic about it now. I do, however, have to go to class today to meet with my group. Apparently I missed the mass confusion of Monday's class where that was supposed to happen.

And now I'm going to go get my ass in gear with that Assessment assignment.

Pseudo-Construction-Paper

Hello, all. it is Monday at noon-time and I am at home. I came home because I need to "stage" my room on the off chance that there's a showing of the house today. My mom is slightly fanatical about some things...

I will be staying home, however, because this is a better work environment than the zoo. I'm going to do some journalling for my Drama class. We got back our first round assessment today. I lost marks on the bit about making my journal "more than a book report." Apparently, I have to break out the construction paper. I'm not sure what to do, though, and not just because I don't care for pseudo-creatively-expressive crap, but also because I'm feeling stubborn. My reflections are expressed just as I want them to be with just words, thankyouverymuch. The idea that I would _need_ many kinds of media is a time-consuming nuisance and an insult to my verbal prowress. ;-p

In other areas of my life, things are pretty uneventful. I did more or less nothing this weekend. I slept a lot. I passed out before nine on Thursday night and woke up after 11 Friday morning. I have adopted my signature come-what-may attitude towards school, which makes it a lot easier to work, but tends to piss off the profs with a large consideration for "may." Either I stress and get one thing done well enough, or I don't stress I get everything done well enough.. The course of action required to get everything done spectacularly is something I'm not considering. A lot of this stuff isn't worth that kind of effort.

Yeah, did I mention that by, staying home and doing work, I'll be missing my Inclusive Ed class? Then again, that's the one class that I don't have anything due in next week. ^_^ I think...

I'm trying to not spend money this week. I ate lunch at home today, and I brought my own coffee and got a free refill courtesy of my Drama prof, who makes a pot every morning. I have five hours tomorrow in which to come home and eat, should I not have time to pack my own lunch before class, which will probably be the case since it's an 8am class. The less money I spend, the more I have to feed Visa, the faster I pay down my debt, the faster I can rack some more up in the form of furniture and possibly a new iPod. My iPod was in a good mood yesterday, so I charged it all up and hopefully it'll stay that way. I don't think there's any hope for my FM transmitter, though. :-(

I should stop stalling and go "stage" my room. And then I can focus exclusively on being annoying about pseudo-creatively-expressive journalling. *glower*

iPods!

I want a new iPod. "Fixing" mine didn't stick--it's still periodically unhappy. And the 80GB model is cheaper than the old 60GB model. I'm not even that upset that it doesn't have the big screen like I heard it might.

The problem, of course, is money. I owe my dad money, which I will be giving to him when he comes back from... where ever he is this week, and my mom's agreed to let me pay her back by buying new furniture myself, which is nice, because then I owe Visa money, and they don't glare at me every few days about it. I could probably afford the iPod, even after all this, since I'm working and whatnot, but the thing is that the iPod would have the same freakin' memory capacity as my computer. All I have to say about that is Holy Crap! And, of course, that I would have to buy an external hard drvie to store most of the video stuff I'd put in the iPod. My 20GB one is coming up on half full, but I'd be putting a lot of video on the new one, which means that I'd need more than the 30GB the smaller version has.

It's weird, but the idea of being able to keep all my music and (almost) all of my video with me is very comforting. I would have balked at that idea a couple of years ago, but owning my iPod has been like carrying around a little talisman of happiness and resource. I must be messed. ^_^ And if I don't get going soon, I'll also be late for my assessment class.

So! I leave you with this, fine people! What should I have inscribed, should I get a new iPod. I bought the one I have at a store, so it doesn't have an inscription, and I have no idea what to get, other than my name. So help me out, will you?

ETA: Check out my schedule for the week of the 3rd of October:

3rd: EDPS 310 Empirical Classroom Management assignment due.

4th: EDSE 322 Peer Teaching.
EDSE 322 Dramatic Form Paper due.
EDSE 322 Journal submission #2.

5th: EDPS 310 Midterm.
EDPY Assessment Items due.

I... May be a tad bit stressed around that time...

Not Much to be Done

It is Wednesday and I am lacking in things to do. Normally, my Drama course wouldn't be over for another 45 minutes, but there was a library session on how to find resources, and, since I've been to at least half a dozen of those things in my University career, none of which I found helpful, I just left. I'm in the lab in FAB and I'll be kicked out in about twenty minutes so that Music 245 can learn about MIDI. I wish that I could take the parts of that course that have been updated. For instance, the notation software I learned was Finale and NoteWriter, but they've now replaced the latter with NotAbility Pro, which I assume is a completely different application, since NoteWriter was old and quasi-obsolete when I learned it. It ruled, though. Also, there's no more ProTools on these computers, and I think they've switched to Dreamweaver. I really miss my freeware edition of ProTools, but they don't have one for Windows XP. Or, rather, they didn't a year ago, and I assume they still don't, since it's a Mac program. Or maybe they now use SoundHack. I dunno. There are a lot of audio programs on the dock of this computer that I don't recognize. Or maybe they use SoundStudio...

Hmmm... What to do... Peter will be around in an hour or so, so maybe I'll go practice and see if he shows. Then, I think I have to go home and shower. I lead such an exciting life. I am so not going to Inclusive Ed today. That class is just not worth attending regularly. I'll make myself go at least once a week, though, so I'll get to half of the classes.

Oh, hey, I know what happened that was interesting! During the hour of Drama class I did have this morning, we started on stage fighting. We didn't get through everything, but we covered the fall, the chin punch, and the dragging by the hair, nose and ear. I am so glad that the people in my class aren't as dense as the people in my Drama 149 class. Those people just didn't understand that the person who's being beat up is the one in control of the movements. When I was being restrained by a group of guys in a scene from our final project, I kept getting hurt. And rather badly during our performance, since the guys were giving it their all. I had bruises on my upper arms... *annoyed*

Anyway, to the practice rooms!

Tuesday Morning

Huh. It's been a while since my last post. I was kind of hoping that someone would comment on that theory exam question I posted, but, oh, well. :-(

So I totally got hit on by this 40-year-old guy at Starbuck's earlier this morning. He was talking about the rain and was telling me about the umbrellas that he went through while living in Victoria. When I ordered a triple grande, he said he'd hate to see me in a bar. It was somewhat amusing.

I'm currently at Peter's, on my own computer, because my house is being cleaned and photographed so that it can be listed online. I'd be at school, but I missed enough of my Policy Studies class this morning to make it not worth going, and my next class isn't until 3:30. So I came here to putz around and possibly sleep, and I discovered that Peter was here, too, which was an added bonus. ^_^ He's excited because he just found out that he gets to go on a Blackwing Lair run on Friday. For those of you who don't know what that means, count yourselves lucky to have avoided a nasty addiction. ^_^

So our official moving day is October 26th. We get possession of our new house on the 13th (a Friday, of course), but the moving truck will haul all of our big stuff on the 26th. Which is good, because it gives me a chance to repaint my room before stuff goes in it. The painters said that they'd use the brand of paint I wanted if I couldn't find a comparable colour in the brand they used, and I couldn't, so I left my mom the paint chip from the other brand when I went to Uruguay. My mom then went out and found a colour that matched "perfectly," which of course means that it was three shades bluer than the colour I wanted, and gave that to the painters. So now I have to repaint. Oh, well. It shouldn't take more than a couple of coats, since the colours aren't _that_ different. Plus, with no furniture to move around, it'll be a lot easier than usual.

I am beginning to panic about all of the stuff I have to do this term. The week of October 3rd will be hell, with four projects due and one midterm. I made sure I wasn't working the weekend before, or, as much as I could make sure, since there's only a September schedule. I worked last night, and I work tomorrow night, but, after that, next Monday is my only other shift for the rest of the month. This is good, school-wise, but bad money-wise. Stupid money being a requirement of living. *sigh*

I think that's about all that's up with me these days. Inclusive Ed sucks, but the rest of my classes are fine. Work is work. Peter is doing well since getting back. My dog's as poodle-ish as ever. Yeah, my life's pretty dull... ^_^

Yes, I Spend Time Thinking About Stuff Like This

At school again. Long breaks and repeated forgetting of my trumpet leave me with not as much else to do I as I would hope.

Anyway, my assessment class yesterday got my mind back on this exam I came up with a couple of years ago as a nifty first-year theory (156) final. I want to hear what you guys think of it. It's not exactly a common type of exam, but it covers a lot of the principles of 155 and 156 and makes students apply them. Plus, I think it's really interesting.

Consider an interval both approached and written as a minor sixth (m6). You will write two short essays (2-3 pages each, handwritten, double-spaced), one arguing that this is a consonnant interval and the other arguing that this is a dissonant interval. You may use different instances of this interval for each essay, and include any existing or potential (TONAL) examples if you wish, either written in English within the essays or on manuscript paper. Each essay must be understandable on its own. Note that I have only specified how the interval is approached and written, not how it is left.

I am such a theory geek. ^_^

Boredom

I'm at school and Wind Ensemble is about to start. I am much more jealous than I thought I would be. Between the fact that I know almost nobody in the classes I'm taking, the fact that I don't have rep class or rehearsal to go to, and the fact that there's no more lownjlounge to congregate in, I'm feeling very disconnected from things. I currently don't even have Peter around to hang out with, though I got an e-mail from him today confirming that he'd be home Friday evening. Plus, I went to e-mail people about for Thai food this past Saturday, and there were only four people there because everybody else is out of town having a life. :-(

*pouts and feels lonesome*

Saturday night was good, though. I don't get to see Pri, Morgan and Angela as much as I'd like. Morgan said that she'd be coming to Stylistics in HUB to get her hair cut sometime this week and that she'd drop in to visit while she was around. I am looking forward to that, and I've even decided to hang around for my five hour breaks for it. ^_^

Oh, and, on a related note, 8 am classes are especially bad when they're two and a half hours long and are followed by five hours with nothing to do but read. >-p

In other news, last night was the most boring shift ever at work. It was dead, and I was on cash, so I couldn't even go do busywork. I made duelling fortune tellers. And then I met Joyce at Remedy cafe afterwards and stayed up late enough to make my 8am class feel even worse. At least the prof gives us a coffee break.

Hmmm... Maybe I'll type out my Drama journal entries. The bar for creative presentation of this journal seems to be set very high, so I should at least give my prof something other than looseleaf.

Purge

I just cleaned out and organized my hotmail account. I created two new folders and deleted a whole bunch of crap. There were around 250 e-mails in my inbox half an hour ago. Now there are 9, 8 of which I have gotten from Peter since I got home from Uruguay. The ninth is an e-mail with a Finale attatchment for an arrangement of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen that I did for Wookwind Tech. I'm not sure where to put it in case I don't have a printout of the music. I think I do, but I want to check, and all of that stuff is currently packed and sitting in the garage...

Anyway, I'd like to take a poll: How many of you notice the sub-headings of my blog? I'm talking about the little phrases right underneath the "janitablog" title. I've never been sure if people notice or care or get them. They're usually quotations, from songs or conversations or books or television shows... Sometimes they're references to the post that I've just put up. Sometimes they clarify bits of the post. The one I have up right now is a joke referring to the last sentence of the last post I wrote, "Word." So if you guys could leave a comment as to what you notice/like/dislike, that'd be great. :-)

Word

I found the word from my Ed Psych class today, now that the lecture slides are on WebCT. It's pathognomonic. This confuses me, since the definition of the word is a symptom that defines a disease. For instance, a malignant tumor is pathognomonic of cancer. The list of criteria the lecture slide gives for a "pathognomonic" teacher is this:

Learning problem located within student
Role of classroom teacher narrowly defined
Refer to special education for help outside the classroom
Provides little or no instructional accommodation or modification
Tends to work alone

I guess, now that I look at this list outside of class, it's not the list that I match, it's my prof's description of it. That and the fact that I don't particularly fit the other end of the spectrum, called Interventionist and described as this:

•Learning problems are result of interaction between student and environment

•Role of classroom teacher broadly defined

•Seeks out resources and supports to use within the classroom

•Provides many instructional accommodations or modifications

•Works collaboratively

I especially don't agree with the first point. Then again, I have a much narrower definition of "learning problems" than my prof seems to. It seems that, in this class, the definition of "learning problem" is something that does not allow a student to learn a concept when taught in a traditional manner and amount of time. I'm picturing an older woman with a yardstick and lots of memorization requirements. Learning differently doesn't mean having a problem. If you're a visual learner or an auditory learner or a tactile learner, that's all fine by me and I intend to include all of those types in my teaching approach. By learning problem, I mean something like an IQ below 60, or being deaf (which isn't always a disability, but in Music and Drama...), or suffering from autism or something along those lines. I'm talking about people who can't be taught the curriculum along with other students because of different capabilities. I'm worried about the educational experience of the majority of the students being negatively affected by the adaptations made for special needs students. And by that, I don't mean kids being uncomfortable around someone who might not have the best control over their speech, I mean a class where a teacher spends 40% of his/her time on one student. Espeicially in classes like Music and Drama, where it's almost always required that the instructor work with the entire class for the whole period, that wouldn't be fair.

Anyways, what got me thinking that I fit the description of the evil teacher was my prof's description of a teacher like that, talking about what they do more than what they believe. They would send a special needs student out with the special ed people. I think I just explained my position on that. They prefer to work alone, implying that they have a way of doing things and require control to execute and maintain that way. My prof said that these are often the teachers who have paper or posters convering up the window beside the door. Except for the paper part, my reply to which is that I've never had a classroom, the working alone thing really does fit me. If I know what I'm doing and I'm doing it properly, then I say leave well enough alone, rather than having extra factors (ie, people) thrown into the mix that I'll have to rethink everything for. Keep in mind, though, that the something I'd be doing is teaching, and doing it properly means that all the students learn well. So it's not that I'm a narrow-minded bitch, it's that if I need help, I'll ask for it, so go away.

Ok, so I can't be entirely nice about that one. But at least I would be not entirely nice to other adults, rather than students. ^_^

But, you know, after all this, I still have no idea why my prof used the word "pathognomonic." Are bad teachers the symptom that defines the disease? What's the disease? I thought difficulty succeeding in school was the disease. If anything, I'd say that failing students were pathognomonic to that. But, then again, I would say that a girl with no thumbs shouldn't play the saxophone, so I'm evil.

Metricumalation

At school. Classes have been all right so far. Long, though. I think my shortest class, except for a couple of labs that I only two of per semester, is two hours. The others are two and a half hours. *sigh* Oh, well. It helps me to focus when I'm not expecting a wind-down for another hour and a half.

My EDSE 322 Drama class that leads into my student teaching is actually pretty good. The prof is totally Francine from American Dad, both in looks and voice. And in sunny disposition, though I'm not sure if she's psychotic underneath yet. I was actually playing "Yes, Let's!" with some energy yesterday morning. Not really with any enthusiasm, but, given that I hate that game with a firey, firey passion, I'd say that energy is impressive enough. Plus, there's a coffee maker in our room that the prof intends to use for us. :-)

My first Ed Psych class wasn't quite as pleasant. It's 301, and it's called something like Inclusive Education and focuses on students with disabilities. The prof has her head a little too far into her own subject, which, as I have said before, leads inevitably to it being up her ass. There was an overhead of a continum of teaching approaches to disabled students, the "best" of which was Inclusionist, the "worst" of which was a word that I've been having trouble remembering. It starts with P and ends with ognomonic. I fit the description of that approach almost to a T. Except that I have a desire to know everything, so if I encounter a disabled student, I'm going to want to know about their disability, even if I can't accomodate them. They way I see it is that, unless your needs are pretty simple, like a wheelchair ramp or some ritalin, it's not practically feasable to include disabled students in regular Music or Drama programs. If it's a class of disabled students, that would be fine, but a normal curriculum for Drama or Music cannot be run to include all types of students. It's just not physically possible in a lot of ways. I don't want to disclude disabled students from these subjects, I'm just saying that they need an approach to them that cannot be done in a curriculum-based environment.

And, to annoy me further, I accidentally bought the wrong textbook for the course--apparently, there are different texts for different sections.

My EDPS 310 class this morning looks like it'l be a lot of work that I won't want to do, but will be overall quite interesting. It's called a Policy Studies class, but it's title is Managing the Learning Environment, or something to that effect, which means that I get a nice little course on what makes students tick, but without the condecention and impracticality that Ed Psych courses offer. The prof is a Scottish woman with an accent. I can understand her just fine, but I noticed today that when she says the word "fair," it comes uot sounding like "fear," so there were lots of times where she seemed to have said "You can't do that--it's not fear." That made me giggle. ^_^

I have to keep a journal for the Drama course. Naturally. My prof said that someone had put it perfectly in that you can't fart in the Drama department without being required to reflect on it. I was considering having my opening entry mention that I am a bad person. I'd avoid terms like Jungian Shadow and go instead for simply stated ambiguity of the sardonic variety. But I like my prof in such a way that means that I don't feel the need to make her wary of me. Her name's Gail. My stage manager friend Lester hadn't heard of her.

I'm half an hour into a five and a half hour break. I'm gonna eat lunch and hang, then go back to the bookstore, then go home and shower before my EDPY 303 class at 3. I'm dressed unusually today because I can't find some of my clothes. I have a hoodie and a cardigan that I can't find. They're not in the wash, nor anywhere in my closet or dresser. I am confused. But when I go home, I won't be in such a rush (I woke up an hour late this morning), and I'll therefore be able to pick out clothes that aren't so hodge-podge. Because it's all about looking cool.

Lemurcoons!

It is Saturday night and I have good fresh pizza and Dr. Pepper. This makes me happy.

Lemurcoons also make me happy. :-)
I haven't gone to get my picture CD back from Wendy yet, so I can't post any of the pictures that I took myself, but that's ok, since those didn't turn out well and I found some great ones on Google Images. Here is what a lemurcoon, aka coati, aka coati mundi, looks like:

Now, this picture doesn't look all that cute, but it gives a good idea of how "coati" could be mistranslated into "raccoon," despite not looking all that much like one.













This picture is rather cuter, and shows the lemurcoon in what has come to be its natural habitat, acquiring food in what has come to be its natural form of hunting. Seriously, these things are all over the garbage cans. They may subsist primarily on insects, but they won't turn down an empty Coke bottle.


Now *this* picture showcases their cuteness, especially where the flexible nose is concerned. This is a young coati, of course, and I have no idea what kind of animal its looking at. Maybe a lemur. ^_^



So that is my post for the day. I hope you have all come to appreciate these things as much as I have. ^_^