Sporadic Update
More of the same, but I figured I'd at least let people know what's up. UPS still sucks, but with only 11 or 12 weeks to go, I think I can handle it. Slightly less easier to handle is my final education course. I have no idea how 330 minutes can pass by so quickly while playing video games, because it takes forever twice a week. Fortunately, since the classes are so damned long, there are only nine of them. Of course, that also means a full graduate courseload is crammed into five weeks. She actually told us right off the bat that we'll be getting incompletes at the end of the course, as some of the projects, especially the ones that require classroom interaction will have to wait until we're student teaching. The good news is that it doesn't really matter what grade I get in this course. I've gotten either A or A+ in my other four graduate courses, so even if my future school cared about my graduate GPA, it would still be good.
This coming Wednesday, I get to give a lesson on the Pythagorean Theorem to a class of hypothetical ninth graders. It should be pretty awesome, since I absolutely love math. I figure I'll give them some real world applications, do a few examples, show them the first few Pythagorean Triples, then have them do some examples on their own. Then I'll explain some of the various places they'll be using the theorem in their future math courses. Pretty much any time you see a triangle, you should try to use this formula. Even my dad uses it at work, though he doesn't know it by name. One thing that has been an issue in our trial lessons is that graduate students are very bad at pretending to be high school students. Especially when the lesson is in our field of expertise. When the teacher asks you about your opinion on the main characters in Othello, based on their pictures, it doesn't matter that you've studied the play extensively in your junior year. Answer like a high schooler would. The class is all very impressed by your knowledge, but it doesn't help the future teacher to deal with unrealistic situations. During a history lesson about America, one of the other students started lecturing about the Vikings. One of the girls sitting next to me got so frustrated with it all that she threatened to kill me on Wednesday if I pretend to know anything about solving sets of linear equations. There are a few more examples, but I'm just ranting at this point. Though that is my perogative, eh?
Finally, here's a comic for you single ladies out there, of which there are exactly zero in my reading audience. But regardless: Thursday's Questionable Content.