A Fond Farewell.

I was in the living room at my house in Centerville tonight when my aunt called to tell us the news about President Hinckely. I'm not sure it's really sunk in, but I do know that the most touching moment of the night was listening to my brother Spence tell his son Cooper (4) that President Hinckely had died. "What can we do Dad?" he said. "Can we make him better? Can we give blood?" My brother explained the President Hinckely is with Heavenly Father now and that he will be resurrected someday while all of us tried not to cry watching this tiny boy become so sad over the death of a man whose significance he probably barely understands at this point.
I don't really feel like joining a facebook group is the way I want to honor this great man. (I was invited to five.) Maybe a blog isn't the right thing either, but I write so much that is frivolous that I feel like I should at least say something, especially since Jennie already got mad at me for pointing out the "cause's" in the article about him. (I'm sorry, but even in times of sadness or crisis it's hard to turn off the English major part of myself. In fact, sometimes it kicks up a notch at those times because it's easier to be annoyed about stupid things than really come to grips with the reality of the situation. But I digress.) So here we go.
I loved President Hinckley. I felt the spirit that accompanied him when he entered a room on more than one occasion. I feel very keenly the great privilege it was to sing for him more than once while I was in Women's Chorus. I will always find comfort in so many of his words. Last year his admonition to cultivate a spirit of happiness did as much as anything to pull me out of a real slump about a really hard time. I am grateful for his inspired words; I'm sure I will be finding comfort in them for many years to come.
The rest of what he did is so overwhelmingly exciting and progressive that I won't even attempt to address it, but I am grateful that he was the prophet of my youth. Perhaps it's time to take his advice with renewed vigor and make sure that I am standing for something - the right things.
Goodbye, President Hinckley. We will miss you.

ARGH!

I don't know what I want to teach next week. It is seriously a struggle. I've been sitting here forever and nothing. Sorry children. Nothing this week. Maybe next week.

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

I am very tired. I think it has something to do with walking around a classroom all day trying to coerce kids into writing. "What?" they shriek. "You want us to write three-fourths of a page?"
"Yes," I reply. "And no double-spacing on those wide rule lines."
I mean seriously. I'm not asking them to do anything hard, but I guess that asking them to do something besides sit and stare at me is unreasonable. It's days like today that make me wonder about this whole thing, days when I realize how much I'm counting down to the end of student teaching, how much I currently can't wait to be done and get my diploma so that I can do this forever. Yikes. I really don't know how I feel about that.
I have to admit that on those rare occasions when I get them writing and they're really writing - excited about what they've thought to write about, eager to share their ideas with me, writing twice or three times the requirement I set - those are good times. It's those kids who look at me like I asked them to drop their pants and walk into the front office who really get under my skin - the kids who scream wasted potential from the tips of their bleached hair to the soles of their inked up shoes. The kids who- when prompted by the promise of candy- give me really insightful answers and prove that some little part of their brain is getting it.
Yesterday I looked at some journals my 8th graders had turned in. One said, "I'm smarter than I act. I talk a lot and people don't think I'm smart, but I get all As and Bs." It makes me want to cry that in middle school it's a unwritten sin to act smart.
And I can't help but wonder what I can do to make learning more interesting, more exciting. Is there a way to make it something they want to do? I can't figure out how to make it more exciting, no matter how much I reference my textbooks and notes. Am I a boring teacher or are they just bored because they choose not to be engaged?
Meanwhile, there is a newly instituted bright spot in every week. My friend Kellie and I started having a weekly movie night and it has now grown significantly. She has several edited movies and we have a list of other things we want to see, and it makes me very happy to gather with other movie fiends to devour one incredible film after another. These are the same girls with whom I frequented international cinema last semester - now we gather in Kellie's living room. So far we've watched Pan's Labyrinth, The Motorcycle Diaries, and tonight The Shawshank Redemption. It's a bright spot of intellectual stimulation, where it's okay to watch meaningful, insightful and beautiful movies. (One of my pet peeves is the frequency- in a college situation, I might add -of comments like, "I'm too tired to think. Let's not watch (insert quality thinking movie title here) tonight." Which is inevitably followed by popping in some inane movie that I've already seen more times than is really necessary (once, in the case of some movies) and talking through it. Watching real movies doesn't make me nearly as tired; it leaves me uplifted and feeling more hopeful about the state of the world. Seeing them with other people lets me know I'm not alone on this, and for that I am grateful.

Another Saturday Night...

So as far as awesome Saturdays go, this one didn't really measure up.
First, I did nothing all day, which I suppose isn't too bad, except that I should have. Oh well. But then the fun started.
First, Jennie's dog died today. She was very old and sick, but it was very sad.
Also, Marci is having her second bout of conjunctivitis, and today her eye was super swollen and she couldn't even be in a room with any light, so we took her to the ER. It was an exciting 3 hours of Discovery Channel (Dirty Jobs, Myth Busters, Some Assembly Required) and observations of freshmen who broke stuff sledding. Good times, truly. Anyway, they tortured Marci a lot with eye drops and dye and bright lights and tetanus shots (why?) and we missed the stake opening social, but in the end they gave her some new antibiotics and we hope she'll get better soon (again.)
So here we are, Saturday night in the emergency room with the memory of a dead dog hanging over us. Good times indeed.
Don't worry thought - we're totally salvaging the evening by watching American's Next Top Model. If you think I'm joking, you've never seen the show. We turned it on and Tyra was yelling at one of the girls. Yelling! The drama of hopeful models is so entertaining.

A rant.

So there are some things that bother me. This should not come as a shock to any of you who know me - there are actually many that bother me, and I often complain about them. I'm probably not going to apologize for that now.
So here's the thing. Have you ever noticed that when it comes to relationships (or anything related to them) everyone is an expert? And they expect their amazing advice/insight to be helpful to you?
For example, I've always had issues with the phrase, "You should date him." Oh, what a good idea! I never thought of that before! Well, I'll just get right on that and date him! I mean really, what does that mean?
But the one that was bugging me today was the answer to the (probably stupid - sorry) question, "How's married life?" "Oh, it's great. I recommend it!" Oh. Well, if you recommend it, I'll look into it! I wasn't sure it was a good idea before, but now I'm SOLD. Perhaps next they will write me a review. Give me the thumbs up. Four stars.
I realize that it's petty of me to criticize people in their utter newlywed bliss. I just think it's time for people to realize that just because they found a relationship does not mean they know how to get other people into relationships - nor should they worry too much about doing so. I've got it covered. Or even if I don't, that's my business. I need neither admonitions nor recommendations.
Thank you.

Hot roommates, etc.

1) I thought I'd better post these hot pictures of me and the roomies for your viewing pleasure. 2) A funny (or not so funny) story I have not yet told you is begging to be told. So the picture of Whitney and me is from Saturday, and we were on our way to Cedar City for an encore performance of the play Art, which I missed last fall. I am very excited about Whitney's willingness to run about for the sake of cultural improvement - this was our second cultural outing of the week, the first being our excursion to the MOA for a free BYU Singers performance. Mmm... Eric Whitacre.
Anyway, about 1.5 minutes after this picture was taken, Whitney and I were all set to go, and I put my key in the ignition and turned . . . nothing. And I looked down and suddenly realized that I had turned on my lights while driving in the snow the day before, but by the time I got out of Spanish Fork the snow had stopped, and I forgot all about the lights.
Luckily, Mike and Miri hadn't left to take engagement pictures yet, so we coerced Mike into giving me a jump start, and the battery was all charged up by the time we got to Cedar - no harm done.
Moral of the story: If you have a choice between going to Cedar City and not, go. It may save you the panic of a dead battery at 7am when you have to be in Spanish Fork before 7:30.

No. You can't use the hall pass.

Well, I'm now two weeks into my student teaching (note the use of my lovely student teaching picture here), and I think it's about time to post something about it, don't you? I'm not really sure what my aversion to posting has been lately (although it could have something to do with the brain death that occurs lately whenever I open a blank document. Can anyone say senioritis?)
I've now been teaching all day, every day, for three days, and I'm here to tell you that it is harder than it looks. Lesson planning is intimidating, classroom management has NO rhyme or reason for success (at least not yet), and making assignments requires all kinds of thought that I sometimes don't consider until I've already given the assignment. Sorry kids! I'll do better next time!
And I'm tired. I have never been a morning person, and getting to bed at a decent hour has proved itself to be nigh unto impossible some nights. The afternoon nap is my very best friend. (In fact, I think I'll visit it as soon as I finish this post!)
Things that I've learned from 7th and 8th graders:

• Once you put it on paper, it is perfect and untouchable. You dare not revise, for you just may destroy a work of unadulterated genius.
  
• The exclamation mark is a noble piece of punctuation that should be used often. You cannot have too many exclamation marks after something exciting, and The End should always be punctuated with at least 8 or 9.
  
• Capitalization is optional at the beginning of sentences, but is always a viable way of adding emphasis to any word.
• "But I have a question" is always an acceptable reason for being out of one's seat, and even if the teacher is talking to another student, your personal emergency must be addressed immediately. It can't even wait until the end of the other student's sentence.
• It's always someone else's fault. Always.
• Lines that are clearly sublime pieces of literature to the average human being are probably gross. For example, from William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" : "My head is bloody, but unbowed." Gross. (Also, today I told them to read the poem with me, with gusto. The same girl who had issues with the above line said, "EW!" Um . . . yes. She was okay when I explained that "gusto" was not something dirty, nor did it relate to a bodily function.)
• No matter what your performance was, you always deserve a motivational Starburst. (Today I told a kid to get out his assignment four times and then started giving Starbursts to the kids who were working. He asked if he could have one and then was confused when I said no. Yesterday another kid asked if he could have one after I'd been passing them out for comments on the book we were reading. "No." "But I talked!" "Yes, while I was reading to the class. Get out of here.")
• "Stay in your seat" (rule four) applies to everyone but you.
• Even if you just barely got to class, it's a good idea to ask to use the hall pass to go to the bathroom. Even if you just came from lunch.
  

They are a joy, truly. Anyway, I'm getting the hang of some things (sort of) and I'm feeling less and less competent about others. I'm not convinced that junior high is going to grow on me yet, although there are some points of light here and there. Most of the kids are pretty great - and then I want to smack the select few. (I haven't though - no worries.)
I wish I could remember all of the funny stories for you, but I come home and my brain just kind of melts. I'll post more as it comes.
Also, if you read any of the blog links on the side, you should note that I just added Aaron's blog -and did I mention Makayla's? Both are worth checking out.

All the time in the world to get it right...

Because I'm still not feeling like posting something real but I want to post something, a playlist! Because you know you love them. I'm not quite sure what the theme is for this one, but it probably has something to do with my feelings of confusion about what to do post graduation. And if you can get that out of this list, you are amazing. But I personally guarantee that by the time it is finished (probably not this time) it will be QUALITY.

• "Detlef Schrempf" - Band of Horses
• "Evaporated" - Ben Folds Five
• "Cold Water" - Damien Rice
• "Follow" - Brandi Carlile
• "Sightlines" - Rogue Wave
• "Secret Meeting" - The National
• "Winning the Battle, Losing the War" - Kings of Convenience
• "Should've Been in Love" - Wilco (don't read too much into this one)
• "All My Days" - Alexi Murdoch
• "My Body is a Cage" - Arcade Fire
• "Is It Wicked Not to Care?" - Belle & Sebastian
• "I Don't Know Why" - Ben Kweller
• "Whatever It Is" - Ben Lee
• "People Get Ready" - The Frames
  
• "Three Little Birds" - Bob Marley & the Wailers
• "The Motion Waltz" - Rufus Wainwright
• "Don't Stare" - Pilot Speed
• "Time Has Told Me" - Nick Drake
• "When the Pain Dies Down" - Chris Stills
  

Happy Birthday David Bowie!

There are two things that are sad about this post:
1) I haven't felt like posting for awhile, mostly because I don't feel like writing anything substantial. Since this trivial item came up (David Bowie's birthday - thanks, Karissa) I decided to post.
2) This is the second Bowie video I've posted. I don't even love Bowie that much, but he sure is funny to think about in the birthday sense. Thanks to Lindsey for celebrating with me by sending me clips from the Flight of the Conchords Bowie EP. (I sent her Bowie's performance of "Wake Up" with The Arcade Fire. Of course.)
Update: You'll be happy to know that I pulled out both The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Seu Jorge's studio sessions from The Life Aquatic, and I came to a conclusion. I kind of like Bowie, weird as he is. But I may like Seu Jorge's versions of his songs better - his lyrics are so darn out there that they are kind of better in Portuguese. In any case, the Life Aquatic versions are quite pleasant, and also awesome. You should all check them out.
Anyway, I decided to give you this video, because you can't go wrong with Labyrinth Bowie.
For your blast-from-the-past viewing pleasure: