Herein, a much overdue update on my life in general.
Some of you may not have heard anything about my ruminations concerning a return to school, this time for teacher certification so I can teach high school. Well, I've been ruminating about that for quite a while--by some counts since I was a 6th-grader, but more to the point the last several months. Well, I have started moving down that path.
Because of various geographical considerations, and because UIUC doesn't seem to offer the route that I wanted (already have a degree, don't want to get a masters yet for fear of pricing myself out of the job market), I'm heading to ISU for this. My plan is 2nd bachelor's, with endorsements to teach English and Theatre both. Since I applied late, enrollment for fall in English Ed was already closed. Rather than wait to start until January, I decided to go ahead and apply in Theatre Ed, which still had open spots. Whichever route I took, I have enough credit hours to add the other endorsement anyway.
Last week I finished the only 100-level prerequisite course as a four-week summer session. It was intro college public speaking, with some psych100 group dynamics and critical thinking stuff thrown in. I certainly didn't need it, but it is content that I actually care about (my classmates were a very different story). And it was a decent way to reengage the study habits and accompanying brain cells. Also, an easy 'A' doesn't hurt the ego. More importantly, I was willing to put up with a lot of extremely boring lectures, low expectations, and apathetic classmates--something I thought might totally turn me off the idea. Hopefully higher-level classes will be better, but I won't be surprised to encounter similar circumstances in the future. Apparently I care enough about teaching to put up with it, at least most of the time.
I also had an interesting experience dealing with my lecturer from this class. I think I am probably about the same age as he is, and perhaps that helped me to challenge him more assertively than I remember ever challenging an instructor. Not in front of the whole class, and I think I was respectful and professional, but I was really animated by the process. It was a case of poorly-written test questions, on both the midterm and the final exams. In the not-too-recent past, I might have just picked the (clearly erroneous) choice I knew he thought was right, and/or just given up on him and his class altogether. I've had quite a few instructors over the course of my career that were unqualified, and it's always made me angry and frustrated but I guess I never thought I could do anything about it.
Well, in this case I at least refused to back down. After he required us to put our midterm question rebuttals in writing, I was pretty sure there was going to be no option for that with the final. So I stayed after everyone else and argued the two multi-choice questions (out of 15) that were clearly terrible. One had no clearly right or wrong answers. The other was perpetuating the myth about syllogisms, that gets a lot of students in trouble: if the two premises are true, the conclusion *must* be true. I just was not going to accept the watering-down that he was trying to justify--that this idea is good enough for students to believe, even if it's not strictly true. I could go on about this for a long time, but the point I want to make is that my reaction made me feel better about becoming a teacher. Partly because it was evidence of my passionate belief that my classmates deserved better than what they were getting.
So anyway, I'm heading into full-time study in the fall. I'm planning to move to B-N, since trying to stay sane and focused living where I am doesn't seem feasible.
Anybody have suggestions about apartment hunting in Bloomington-Normal? Places/management companies to avoid? I have a couple of leads, and am looking at residential stuff (as opposed to student-oriented housing). Share the knowledge, please.