update...and then some!
So, despite my best intentions to post regularly about life here at MOSS, I haven't posted in, oh, about two months...oops. Well, can't do much about that now, so I'll work on rectifying that situation...but no promises:-)
*warning: coming back up to the top having completed this post, it's ridiculously long. Therefore, I'm going to put in an LJ cut so it doesn't take up ridiculous amounts of space on anyone's friends page, cause I hate that. So, if you're really interested, you can read this post in it's entirety:
Life here in McCall is maaaaad busy, but good! believe wer'e about to head into week 8 (of 10 teaching weeks for the fall portion), and I have quite a bit on my plate. My basic two-week schedule, starting with teaching weeks:
Monday: get to start at 10 am, prep for the arrival of the kids, teach until about 830 pm.
tues: start with 7:15 am field instructor meeting, then get the kids all day for either terrestrial day or hydrology day, teaching in the field, free around 6pm when dinner's over
wed: same as tuesday, except flipside (ie half of us teach terrestrial first, half hydrology, and then switch on wednesday). start at 715 am, done at 6 pm
thurs: start at 715 am for meeting, but today we facilitate the kids in a scientific inquiry project that uses the scientific method to come up with a question, hypothesis, and methods to research the answer, and then we go out into the field, do the research, and then finish up with analyzing our data, conclusions, and making a poster to present with. It's great to see the kids apply what they've been learning, and some groups require just a little guidance while others need you to pretty much tell them what they're question is while tactfully presenting it in a way so that they think they came up with it all by themselves:-) Then, after dinner, lead the goodbye campfire--ie thank you sticks (what you're thankful for from the week) and then s'mores + skits and songs. Lots of fun!
fri: 715 am meeting again, then after breakfast all the groups present their inquiry project, then we wrap up the week and send the kids off on the bus. After that, cleaning everything up and debriefing the week, usually done around 3-4 pm.
Academic Week:
pretty much class from 830 am - 430 pm every day. Much of it out in the field, and all excellent courses, but by 430 we're damn tired. What classes am I taking you might ask?
advanced teaching methods for environmental educators with KB (Karla Bradley)
community ecology with EC (Eric Carpenter)
outdoor leadership with GT (Gary Thompson)
for which I'll receive at the end of the semester a graduate-level certificate in environmental education. Pretty sweet huh?
Well, now I'm looking back and wondering why I thought it necessary to post in such detail what I do every day on a two week rotation...I think my point was that we're ridiculously busy, because somewhere in there we have homework, and quite a bit of it. I was just reading Mara's blog, about never having any time for homework during the week and having to crunch it all in on the weekends...and I know exactly how that feels. During teaching week I'm so exhausted at the end of the day that I'm pretty useless when it comes to homework, which means I have evenings during academic week and weekends to get all my work done. I was thinking about how in college I mostly loaded up my classes btwn about 10-1 or so, which meant that I could then go home, take a break to eat lunch, and then my prime homework times were from about 230-530, and 8-11...what this means now, though, is that during my first block of productivity I'm still mostly in class, and then by the time my second wind would normally come about, I'm exhausted and it's time for bed...
So my big challenge has been readjusting the entirety of my work habits. It's been tricky because for the past 5 weeks or so I've had a weekend taken out of that two week rotation--first for rosh hashanah when I went home, and was in schul all day or driving to and from mccall (it's about 5 hour drive to spokane), then the next weekend I was set back 6 hours because I went down to boise for kol nidre, and then a week later my parents were visiting, so not much homework done that weekend...so I had to squeeze two weekends of homework time into one twice in a row...not so much fun, and I got way behind on both work and sleep.
Well, the good news is that I'm now pretty much caught up on both. Last monday, as a result from the combination of being exhausted, behind, and then going over everything that will be due in the next month in class, I was, well, a little overwhelmed. I left class and said to myself "wow, I need to reorganize my entire life." so step one was cleaning up my side of the yurt, which had gotten a bit, um, scattered, and then my desk, because I couldn't start organizing all the work I needed to do when everything was piled under a foot of papers, books and folders. So, did that, got caught up on my work, and yesterday took some time to get everything I need to do in the next month all organized in one place (my computer, actually...ical is a wonderful thing). Today was quite productive, and I got in a good amount of homework, a short but good workout, and even a bit of R&R. Nice. Tomorrow I'm going to get up early, canoe down the peninsula to my phenology site in the state park, do some work there, and then hopefully canoe back, go on a run, eat lunch, and head to the coffee shop in donnelly to a) get lots of work done, including lesson plans for the week and b) pick up my mug that I left there accidentally last weekend.
So, I've rambled on for way too long already, but I just now remembered that I was going to include part of the incentive for getting organized. To echo a sentiment that a classmate of mine mentioned in our leadership class on friday, I've always known that I never worked to my full potential in college. I made decent grades and got my work done, but I was always scrambling at the last minute and turning in work that wasn't bad, and some of it very good, but rarely was it my actually my best. Well, that's all good and fine, and what're you gonna do about it right? It's in the past. But I can change that now, and I want to. I've mentioned often that right now I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. No more of the anticipatory feeling that I'm just prepping for the future (not that this isn't a stepping stone, but much different). It's remarkably satisfying feeling like you've actually started your life, and the life that you'll more or less be doing for, well, the rest of your life. Um, hopefully that made sense. How that relates to my coursework, though, is that sure, I could "get by." I could scramble, pull several late nights, starve myself of sleep, and get something turned in. (representative of our entire semester-long progression of teaching, leadership, and learning is our portfolio, which includes any combination of bits and piece from teaching and courses throughout the semester that shows that progression; and our phenology project, which studies one place and how it changes throughout the course of 4 months, both in a place-based education sense for teaching methods, and secondarily with a more scientific element with transects, plant ID, data collection and such) So yea, I could hash something together, get it turned in, get my certificate and move on to the next portion of our year, which is outreach in the spring.
But this is my life. And the first step of many. I want to start out right. I want to look back on this year, on the projects I did, and the teaching experience I received, and be able to say that I truly gave it my best. That I worked my ass off, but not only worked hard--I worked smart, efficiently. Part of that is getting enough rest, and getting enouch exercise to be on my best while I'm teaching and in classes. But the other part is dedicating myself to turning out work that really shows both my instructors and myself what I'm capable of, because I now I'm capable of a lot more than most of what I turned in in college. I think of some of my best papers that I wrote, and there's a few that are damn good pieces of work. But then I think "wow, what id I had started those 3 days in advance instead of 12 hours before they were due?" Or some similar extension of that--starting well ahead of schedule, rather than last minute, and giving myself time to complete my work in a relaxed fashion so that I'm not rushing to finish it 15 minutes before it's due with no time to even look over my work sometimes?
My point is that I can do this, and I feel like I'm finally ready to. I've told myself I needed to do this for a long time. But there's no excuses now. I think part of why I'm allowing myself to write such a ridiculously long post is so that I hold myself accountable not just by knowing what I should do, but by throwing it out into the public sphere. Now it's in writing. Now (theoretically at least, I'm not sure anybody will get this far...kudos if you're still reading!) friends of mine have read these changes I'm supposedly making, and the fact they other people are reading my thoughts and decisions give them a weight different than that which remains when it's only internal. So, yes. I'm now done, and, speaking of rest, it's time for bed. Long day ahead of me tomorrow :-)
*warning: coming back up to the top having completed this post, it's ridiculously long. Therefore, I'm going to put in an LJ cut so it doesn't take up ridiculous amounts of space on anyone's friends page, cause I hate that. So, if you're really interested, you can read this post in it's entirety:
Life here in McCall is maaaaad busy, but good! believe wer'e about to head into week 8 (of 10 teaching weeks for the fall portion), and I have quite a bit on my plate. My basic two-week schedule, starting with teaching weeks:
Monday: get to start at 10 am, prep for the arrival of the kids, teach until about 830 pm.
tues: start with 7:15 am field instructor meeting, then get the kids all day for either terrestrial day or hydrology day, teaching in the field, free around 6pm when dinner's over
wed: same as tuesday, except flipside (ie half of us teach terrestrial first, half hydrology, and then switch on wednesday). start at 715 am, done at 6 pm
thurs: start at 715 am for meeting, but today we facilitate the kids in a scientific inquiry project that uses the scientific method to come up with a question, hypothesis, and methods to research the answer, and then we go out into the field, do the research, and then finish up with analyzing our data, conclusions, and making a poster to present with. It's great to see the kids apply what they've been learning, and some groups require just a little guidance while others need you to pretty much tell them what they're question is while tactfully presenting it in a way so that they think they came up with it all by themselves:-) Then, after dinner, lead the goodbye campfire--ie thank you sticks (what you're thankful for from the week) and then s'mores + skits and songs. Lots of fun!
fri: 715 am meeting again, then after breakfast all the groups present their inquiry project, then we wrap up the week and send the kids off on the bus. After that, cleaning everything up and debriefing the week, usually done around 3-4 pm.
Academic Week:
pretty much class from 830 am - 430 pm every day. Much of it out in the field, and all excellent courses, but by 430 we're damn tired. What classes am I taking you might ask?
advanced teaching methods for environmental educators with KB (Karla Bradley)
community ecology with EC (Eric Carpenter)
outdoor leadership with GT (Gary Thompson)
for which I'll receive at the end of the semester a graduate-level certificate in environmental education. Pretty sweet huh?
Well, now I'm looking back and wondering why I thought it necessary to post in such detail what I do every day on a two week rotation...I think my point was that we're ridiculously busy, because somewhere in there we have homework, and quite a bit of it. I was just reading Mara's blog, about never having any time for homework during the week and having to crunch it all in on the weekends...and I know exactly how that feels. During teaching week I'm so exhausted at the end of the day that I'm pretty useless when it comes to homework, which means I have evenings during academic week and weekends to get all my work done. I was thinking about how in college I mostly loaded up my classes btwn about 10-1 or so, which meant that I could then go home, take a break to eat lunch, and then my prime homework times were from about 230-530, and 8-11...what this means now, though, is that during my first block of productivity I'm still mostly in class, and then by the time my second wind would normally come about, I'm exhausted and it's time for bed...
So my big challenge has been readjusting the entirety of my work habits. It's been tricky because for the past 5 weeks or so I've had a weekend taken out of that two week rotation--first for rosh hashanah when I went home, and was in schul all day or driving to and from mccall (it's about 5 hour drive to spokane), then the next weekend I was set back 6 hours because I went down to boise for kol nidre, and then a week later my parents were visiting, so not much homework done that weekend...so I had to squeeze two weekends of homework time into one twice in a row...not so much fun, and I got way behind on both work and sleep.
Well, the good news is that I'm now pretty much caught up on both. Last monday, as a result from the combination of being exhausted, behind, and then going over everything that will be due in the next month in class, I was, well, a little overwhelmed. I left class and said to myself "wow, I need to reorganize my entire life." so step one was cleaning up my side of the yurt, which had gotten a bit, um, scattered, and then my desk, because I couldn't start organizing all the work I needed to do when everything was piled under a foot of papers, books and folders. So, did that, got caught up on my work, and yesterday took some time to get everything I need to do in the next month all organized in one place (my computer, actually...ical is a wonderful thing). Today was quite productive, and I got in a good amount of homework, a short but good workout, and even a bit of R&R. Nice. Tomorrow I'm going to get up early, canoe down the peninsula to my phenology site in the state park, do some work there, and then hopefully canoe back, go on a run, eat lunch, and head to the coffee shop in donnelly to a) get lots of work done, including lesson plans for the week and b) pick up my mug that I left there accidentally last weekend.
So, I've rambled on for way too long already, but I just now remembered that I was going to include part of the incentive for getting organized. To echo a sentiment that a classmate of mine mentioned in our leadership class on friday, I've always known that I never worked to my full potential in college. I made decent grades and got my work done, but I was always scrambling at the last minute and turning in work that wasn't bad, and some of it very good, but rarely was it my actually my best. Well, that's all good and fine, and what're you gonna do about it right? It's in the past. But I can change that now, and I want to. I've mentioned often that right now I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. No more of the anticipatory feeling that I'm just prepping for the future (not that this isn't a stepping stone, but much different). It's remarkably satisfying feeling like you've actually started your life, and the life that you'll more or less be doing for, well, the rest of your life. Um, hopefully that made sense. How that relates to my coursework, though, is that sure, I could "get by." I could scramble, pull several late nights, starve myself of sleep, and get something turned in. (representative of our entire semester-long progression of teaching, leadership, and learning is our portfolio, which includes any combination of bits and piece from teaching and courses throughout the semester that shows that progression; and our phenology project, which studies one place and how it changes throughout the course of 4 months, both in a place-based education sense for teaching methods, and secondarily with a more scientific element with transects, plant ID, data collection and such) So yea, I could hash something together, get it turned in, get my certificate and move on to the next portion of our year, which is outreach in the spring.
But this is my life. And the first step of many. I want to start out right. I want to look back on this year, on the projects I did, and the teaching experience I received, and be able to say that I truly gave it my best. That I worked my ass off, but not only worked hard--I worked smart, efficiently. Part of that is getting enough rest, and getting enouch exercise to be on my best while I'm teaching and in classes. But the other part is dedicating myself to turning out work that really shows both my instructors and myself what I'm capable of, because I now I'm capable of a lot more than most of what I turned in in college. I think of some of my best papers that I wrote, and there's a few that are damn good pieces of work. But then I think "wow, what id I had started those 3 days in advance instead of 12 hours before they were due?" Or some similar extension of that--starting well ahead of schedule, rather than last minute, and giving myself time to complete my work in a relaxed fashion so that I'm not rushing to finish it 15 minutes before it's due with no time to even look over my work sometimes?
My point is that I can do this, and I feel like I'm finally ready to. I've told myself I needed to do this for a long time. But there's no excuses now. I think part of why I'm allowing myself to write such a ridiculously long post is so that I hold myself accountable not just by knowing what I should do, but by throwing it out into the public sphere. Now it's in writing. Now (theoretically at least, I'm not sure anybody will get this far...kudos if you're still reading!) friends of mine have read these changes I'm supposedly making, and the fact they other people are reading my thoughts and decisions give them a weight different than that which remains when it's only internal. So, yes. I'm now done, and, speaking of rest, it's time for bed. Long day ahead of me tomorrow :-)