Nothing but Good News
Sorry it's been a while since I last posted. Just so many things were going on.
I learned at the beginning of last week what I'm going to be doing for my assistantship. I have been been appointed as a fellow, which means I will be tutoring outside the Writing Center in a class of another discipline. Get this--it's Physical Science. I'm going to be tutoring English in a science class. It will be a challenge, I'm sure, since one of the things I've learned this summer semester is that science has completely different rules for English grammar, and the literary and grammarians don't know them because they won't talk to each other. Probably what I'll have to do is buy the APA manual and familiarize myself with the rules, though I'm not sure if Physical Science uses APA. I'm going to talk with my supervisor about this fellowship next Monday, so I'll probably have more details then. I hope I work with a great professor who can teach me a little about how to structure a class, like how to make a syllabus and grade, that kind of thing.
For my final project in class, I put together a lesson plan on punctuation that includes Victor's Borge's famous "Phonetic Punctuation" sketch (if you're not familiar with it, search for it on Youtube; it's hillarious!). I also included a rather good writing assignment. It must have went over well, because I got an A in the class. Even after those parts that were kinda difficult, I'm glad I took that class. It gave me a new outlook on this topic I've always loved. Now I got a couple of weeks before school starts again. I'm working for the last time in the adaptive technologies lab this week. Next week I got some orientation stuff to do, and hopefully I'll be able to come home. It depends on what I got to do and where I got to go to.
My diet's still going well. At my last visit at the doctor, I learned that I lost 7 pounds last month! I have lost 22 pounds total! If I keep this up, maybe I will break 200 before I go off the pill. I haven't been as good with keeping up on my food diary, but I more or less eat the same stuff every day, so . . . well, at least it's working.
So far, the FFVII fic is going great. The co-writer who's working with me is good about communicating with me. She's from Singapore, which is interesting. Her contribution has mostly been in just some added descriptive phrases. Though it makes these long chapters even longer, it does add some flavor to my story, maybe even make it feel a bit more realistic. She said she'd be able to help me with "Crisis Core" characters, which I'm sure will help, and she said she'd help me through Writer's Block parts. I keep getting more and more ideas, so maybe that won't be so much of an issue. I don't know, though, there are still some things I'm not sure about.
Last week was my little sister's birthday. She turned 20, not so little anymore. It's usually my parents' custom to give a birthday gift for everybody. They gave me a nice watermelon dish for my kitchen and a very cute fast food serving Nutcracker. This was the weekend Mom took me to the used book store. I looked all over the store but this time didn't find much that really struck me. I kinda wanted to find some of those "Young Wizards" books (that's the series which includes an autistic character), but I didn't know enough about the series to find them. I did find some good video game stuff, though. I got an official Playstation 2 memory card, so maybe I could save those games I was having problems with. I also got "Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus"! I'm excited about that because I love Vincent, but I'm not sure I'll be very good at it. It looks more like a shoot 'em up than an RPG. I also got a wireless controller this weekend, so I can play from the couch.