Fulfillment

At school I’m surrounded by people who share my beliefs, support my passions, and encourage me to continue growing.  At home, I’m forced to defend those beliefs.  It’s frustrating to not be understood, to have to explain myself, and to be around those whose point-of-view will never converge with mine. 

However, the life I’m preparing myself for is one of advocacy, of being a voice for the voiceless.  What could be better preparation than practice? And here, it seems, I’ve met my most worthy opponents.  Sturdy brick walls who refuse to budge. These are the opinions I’ve always been guided by, the people I’ve aimed to please.  If I can’t speak up to them, if I can’t bear to hear them argue that there are more important things to worry about than the rights of my students, then what am I doing?

When I decided to devote all my energy and my college experience to minority students and English learners, I knew that I was entering a battle.  I was making myself a part of a system that doesn’t have room or time for these students.  I was signing up to be a quasi warrior, armed with my unjaded ideals, my heart of hope, and my unfaltering determination. 

I know some think I’m still childish and that my hopes are unrealistic, but I will always see students where you want me to see dollar signs and they come first.  I am not naïve enough to believe that I can change the world, but I’m confident enough to believe that I will change my students.  I will be their advocate, their voice when they need it, and most importantly their teacher.  The knowledge I will give them will enable them to take on this unforgiving world with the confidence to speak and the knowledge to succeed.

W.E.W.W.A

In case you are unfamiliar with this catchy acronym, it stands for Why-Easter-Weekend-Was-Awesome.

1.  Friday, Friday, Friday I had dinner with my mom!! And I learned that I have a mountain, which probably means I have pet bears. Yay bears! Yay dinner with Mom!

I'm clearly known for my photography expertise.

2.  Saturday my very dear England friend Lindsey visited!

3. Travis played Boggle with me in my car while we waited to see Hanna! (G.A.M....that stands for God-awful movie)

I won.

uh...HAHA.

OOPS!

So stonner is spelled stoner but, I mean, both of them are not in the Microsoft Word dictionary and it's not like the stoners minded the extra 'n' and it's not like I get paid to spell things right, and I mean phonetically, um, their like both the same and geeze, ya know?

4/20

In the last few minutes of this waning evening I think about how today takes a minute to chill and celebrate stonners everywhere while stonners everywhere take a minute to celebrate getting stonned.  Since I'm a just-say-No kind of gal, I decided to celebrated today by really honning in a picking my favorite stonner flick. 
...
....
.......
...........
So after much mulling, it turns out that I don't really like stonner movies.
But luckily for the sake of supporting a national holiday I was able to dig to the very far reaches of my brain to remember a movie that poked my funny bone and carved out a place in my heart for all the pot heads in the world.

AND THAT MOVIE IS...
Dude where's my Car
Pineapple Express
THE BIG LEBOWSKI

Aren't' these just beautiful men?

The Dude: Also, my rug was stolen.
Younger Cop: The rug was in the car?
The Dude: No. It was here.
Younger Cop: [eager] Oh, separate incidents.
Maude Lebowski: [on answering machine] Jeffrey, this is Maude Lebowski. I need to see you. I'm the one who took your rug.
Younger Cop: Well. I guess we can close the file on that one.

**I think we should honor the stonners of this country by adding the word "stonner" to the Microstoft Word dictionary so it doesn't have the negative connotation of an angry red line attached to it. 

A gorgeous No.

Today while slaving away (re: staring at) my incomplete portfolio, I decided to do something I never ever do.  And that thing is turning on my TV.  Because this happens so infrequently, I don't know the channels or what's where so it's a little overwhelming (but not as overwhelming as an incomplete portfolio).  But my remote took me to TLC where I spent a solid 13 minutes watching women cry in wedding dresses that for some reason or another weren't good enough.  It mostly involved the necklines.  Necklines apparently will make or break a wedding.

This made me cringe, think, and formulate this list:

Things I will not do:

•     Spend more on a dress I only wear for one day than I do on a pair of jeans or sneakers.
•     Get confused about which is more important, a wedding or a marriage.
•     Yell at people who are only doing their job.
•     Believe that my wedding day will actually be the best day of my life.
•     Ever watch TLC again.

This isn't really a crossroads, they're just tring to trick you.

This is my homework lives.

I can proof read it one more time.  It wouldn’t take more than twenty painful minutes of agony and sheer loathing.  I should just look at the words to make sure they are at least grammatically correct; I don’t have to pay attention to what it actually says.

Instead I’ve decided to have a love affair with T.S. Eliot.  Who knew he was so cool? Not this girl. He and I are going to climb mountains and we will know the evenings, mornings, afternoons.  We have measured out our lives with coffee spoons.

He, along with everything else in existence, is infinitely more interesting than my standards analysis blah blah blah.

"There will be time, there will be time
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of toast and tea."

This show

is my comfort blanket. 

and right now I'm reading:      

Both are fantastic.

And even better when enjoyed simultaneously.