..and thus it begins...

***As we all know, I'm not the greatest at posting in a timely manner; therefore it's now Tuesday September 2nd...and I'm just finishing this post from last week. Suprise Surprise.***



Somebody needs to come with a song that's the complete opposite of that old 80's (I think) song "School's out for Summer." I can hear it now. "Weeeeeel-come back to Hell!" You see where I'm going with that.



So, I made it through my first day of school. In order to make it to class on time, I had to change my work hours on Tuesday and Wednesday. My normal hours are 9-5:30pm, which I'll still be working M, Th & F. Tuesday's I'm here from 6-2:30pm, and Weds 8-4:30pm. I woke up at 4:30am yesterday. 4:30. That time shouldn't exist. Even the owls and the roosters don't acknowledge a time that early. They heard my alarm clock go off and quietly giggled to themselves.



6am in the cube farm is a whole different experience than 9am. It's eerily quiet. Not a soul in sight. Half of the lights are still off. It's WEIRD. To be honest, I could totally get used to that. I say that now, when it's 80 degrees outside and Summer. Getting up and cleaning snow off the car at 4:30am in the dark and freezing cold? Not so much.



I left work at 2:30, and had NO traffic whatsoever. I parked and looked at the clock; 50 mins total to get there. Not bad at all. After me semi-er dash to the bathroom, I sought out the info desk in hopes of getting my ID picture taken. Alas, the damned machine was still down. (It's the same one they use here at work...no surprises!) So, I had 40mins to kill before class. Being the nerd that I am, I sat outside on a bench and started reading the textbook. Geek, I know. It was actually pretty interesting...all about design. Words are purty!



Class began promptly at 4:15pm, with a whopping 9 students. The class is called Media Technology for Educators...and it looks like a lot of fun. The only thing intimidating about it is that it's primarily Mac based, but she gave us a decent tutorial of it, and I feel ok about it. Only a couple of the students are already teachers, so that makes me feel a bit more at ease. I think it should be a good class...and I'm definitely looking forward to it. (Plus, she's giving us one day off a month...LOVE this lady!)



Wednesday's class; Cultural Pluralism in the classroom. Basically it means teaching beyond the color line. I get to class, wait. More students walk in. Wait some more. Prof. is late. We wait. Finally a woman walks into the class, and tells us that the Dr. Addison had an ER, and won't be able to make it to class. "So, I'm going to hand out the syllabus, set you up in your groups, see if there are any questions, and then you're free to leave." Needless to say there was an excited giggle throughout the room. Nothing like getting out of your 3-hour class 2.5 hours early! =)

So she handed out the syllabus, and divided us into our workgroups for the semester. We simply counted off by 4's, and assembled into our groups according to our #. I was a #4, and as I walked to the corner with the other 4's, I couldn't help but start laughing to myself...as the other two girls in the group did as well. We were all redheads, all wearing black. The woman filling in for Dr. Addison looked at us, laughed and said "You girls could be a singing group!" Honest to god, it was so weird. That was like 1/2 the population of redheads in the entire world, right there in that classroom at that time. Bizarre.

The first week of classes went over rather well...as do most first weeks. It's definitely going to be a doozy of a fall. I registered for the GRE yesterday, and plan on taking that November 22nd. I spoke with Sarah, and she quelled my fears about it a bit. I mean, I'm still definitely going to study, but I feel a bit more confident about it. I also need to register for the Illinois Test of Basic Skills...which she also said was really pretty easy. Luckily this test is only $80, compared to the $140 that blasted GRE was. Once I can finish these tests, and Angie's wedding is over, life should be relatively calm.

At least as calm as my life could ever be considered.