I've been feeling so overwhelmed with everything lately it has been easier to just look at everyone else's blog instead of doing anything with my own. I was getting so comfortable being on vacation that it has been a shocking transition back to school. I'm loving being busy, but having 20 plus private students, teaching two classes at BYU-Idaho, taking 2 doctoral classes, and trying to get all of the little daily things done has become quite a balancing act. Here are a few highlights from this past week:
Monday- School started at BYU-Idaho. I love teaching my two history classes! They are so much fun. My Music Lit II class is a perfect size, but my Intro to Music History has about 70 students. They all seem to be really cooperative, so I think I'll be okay. I had kind of a rocky start to the Intro class. I got there early to get everything set up with sound, video, etc. Everything was ready with a few minutes to spare, so I started looking around at my students, wondering why there weren't very many there. As I looked around, I noticed the textbooks they were holding were the wrong color. They also had the word GEOLOGY written on the front. I was in the wrong class!!!! We usually teach Music 100 in the Romney (science building), but I guess they changed it this semester. I'm sure all of the students were wondering who I was, but fortunately the real teacher hadn't arrived yet. I high-tailed it out of there and got to my real class just in time. I told them all what had just happened, and it was a great first-day icebreaker. They thought it was hilarious.
Thursday- Tyler and I spent all morning at the Idaho Falls cannery working on our food storage. It was actually a lot of fun canning our own food. We bought a ridiculous amount of food, but it should last us a good 30 years!
Saturday- My 26th birthday! Tyler made it such a great day. We drove down to Salt Lake for the afternoon/evening. Tyler made reservations at my favorite place, PF Changs, for dinner. We also went to the Utah Symphony's performance of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto and 9th Symphony. It was great! I could go on and on about Beethoven, why it was a perfect pairing of pieces, the perfect timing for the Symphony considering what's going on in the world (Maynard Solomon has great insight on this subject), and all of the cyclicism, symbolism, and intricacies of the work, but I will control the music nerd in me and just say that I had a lot of fun. It was interesting seeing several people in the symphony who I play with during the summer at the Grand Teton Festival. I was a little jealous of them, but I still enjoyed just sitting in the audience.
Sorry, no pictures this time. Maybe next week when I get ahold of my crazy life a little better!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
They Always Come Back
This week we have seen the chaos and excitement of students returning to BYU-Idaho. We have had a nice break, but I think everyone is ready to get back to work. I can hardly believe that this will be my third year of teaching! It has been comforting to look back at the last few years and see how far I've come as a teacher. I am infinitely more confident in front of my students, and every semester I am able to make subtle changes to my teaching style that are yielding good results.
Some things, however, still have not changed.
Ever since I came here as a teacher, I have run into problems because of my age. I'm almost 26 now, and it's still happening! Here are a few instances from the past few days:
- I went to the library to check out a few books, and the student employee told me I could only have them for two weeks until the head librarian corrected him.
- I went to the bookstore surplus sale this morning to buy some shelves for our garage. While I was in line, one employee was quite condescending to me, telling me that he has priority for the item we both want, and he questioned how I even found out about the sale. When I went to pay for the items, I tried to put them on my account, and the employee didn't want to let me because student's aren't allowed to do that.
- I went to the gym today to check out a locker for the year. I ran into several roadblocks with this one. The first person asked me, "Are you in a P.E. class?". Sheesh. The second person, someone who has known me and my family for decades, kept telling me that lockers were not available until next week. I knew that wasn't true, so I asked her if there were any lockers left in the employee locker room for me to get next week. She gave me an incredulous look and said, "You're not a teacher, are you?!?" She had to look me up before she believed me. Even after that she kept asking me questions and acting surprised when she found out that my husband has a full time job on campus (I'm sure she was expecting him to be a student), and that we were actually homeowners. Once I convinced her, it was amazingly easy to get a locker!
I love working at BYU-Idaho, and I feel so fortunate to be in the position that I am. There are many wonderful people here, but even the best people sometimes act in a biased way towards gender, race, or even age. What I experience is really not a big deal compared to what others go through, but it has been a good lesson to me to treat all people with respect, whether they are teenagers, college students, middle-aged, or elderly.
I'm really not complaining. I hope I am mistaken for a student for many years to come! (knock on wood). It has just been very interesting to observe.
Some things, however, still have not changed.
Ever since I came here as a teacher, I have run into problems because of my age. I'm almost 26 now, and it's still happening! Here are a few instances from the past few days:
- I went to the library to check out a few books, and the student employee told me I could only have them for two weeks until the head librarian corrected him.
- I went to the bookstore surplus sale this morning to buy some shelves for our garage. While I was in line, one employee was quite condescending to me, telling me that he has priority for the item we both want, and he questioned how I even found out about the sale. When I went to pay for the items, I tried to put them on my account, and the employee didn't want to let me because student's aren't allowed to do that.
- I went to the gym today to check out a locker for the year. I ran into several roadblocks with this one. The first person asked me, "Are you in a P.E. class?". Sheesh. The second person, someone who has known me and my family for decades, kept telling me that lockers were not available until next week. I knew that wasn't true, so I asked her if there were any lockers left in the employee locker room for me to get next week. She gave me an incredulous look and said, "You're not a teacher, are you?!?" She had to look me up before she believed me. Even after that she kept asking me questions and acting surprised when she found out that my husband has a full time job on campus (I'm sure she was expecting him to be a student), and that we were actually homeowners. Once I convinced her, it was amazingly easy to get a locker!
I love working at BYU-Idaho, and I feel so fortunate to be in the position that I am. There are many wonderful people here, but even the best people sometimes act in a biased way towards gender, race, or even age. What I experience is really not a big deal compared to what others go through, but it has been a good lesson to me to treat all people with respect, whether they are teenagers, college students, middle-aged, or elderly.
I'm really not complaining. I hope I am mistaken for a student for many years to come! (knock on wood). It has just been very interesting to observe.
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