Tuesday, February 21, 2012

it was because of a doughut?

let me tell you about my life.

this blog is a life blog. i already do that.

let me tell you about my day.

if i want to get really fancy, it starts yesterday with a fun trip to walmart with four other RAs and me irrationally buying a large box of chocolate frosted glazed doughnuts with sprinkles from the bakery for two dollars and fifty cents. those doughnuts looked as lonely as i felt.

but to just put this out there: today i taught my first lesson as a future teacher.


in what i'm sure could be a whole entirely different post, to celebrate this monumental event that occurred this morning, i went to mt. pleasant with jacob (the boyfriend not the best friend) to buy a new hipster teaching outfit (because i am a teacher and a hipster) with money that i didn't have. i bought a cute dress, a new cardigan (now i have one for every day of the week!) and a pair of silver tights.

and some starbucks.

so last night i was trying on my outfit to make sure that i looked okay, and the tights were about five inches too short, already had a snag, and a hole in the crotch. that was slightly unhappy, and i'm hoping i can take them back and sweetly demand a refund. while i was running around in my dress and cardigan, i realized that i hadn't printed off the copies of the handout i made for my students. my RA in-service (which involved pajamas, stuffed animals, and blankets) was in twenty minutes.

so i went to the library in my RA staff shirt (which is black and teal), my maroon plaid alma college sweats, a green cardigan, and of course, i took my fifteen year old stuffed simba and my sorority blanket. i got a lot of funny looks while i was stapling all of the copies of my handout together and i had simba mounting the counter like pride rock. it didn't help that i was humming the conquering of pride rock music while viciously stapling handouts. about the lion king.

the directions look something like this: Read each paragraph from an essay on the movie The Lion King. In your groups, on a separate sheet of paper, discuss and answer the questions at the end of each paragraph. Refer to the essay model on the board.

this morning i woke up late (loss of teacher points) and i ended up sitting around in a towel on twitter after i showered waiting for my hair to dry. i then put on my dress and tights but not the cardigan because i keep my room at eighty-five degrees constantly. i sat in my chair and i snarfed a bowl of cheerios and lord, did i go to town on that walmart chocolate doughnut. it wasn't even seven thirty in the morning yet and i was licking frosting off all ten of my fingers.

i slipped elegantly on the president's lawn on the way out to my car, which i will remind you, is parked next to my brother's frat house. i had everything that i needed. my lesson plan, my index cards, my handouts, my ball, and my tape. i had my name tag (ms. hollenberg, i'm so official). and of course, i had excitement! i always have excitement!

i pull out of the parking lot onto the road. and as my car is shuddering violently while i crank toward the traffic light, i remember very vividly the big BUMP that my car made while coming back from walmart with my prized doughuts.

upon arrival at my high school at approximately seven forty-eight am, i check. my rear passenger tire is blown.

i walk into school and go straight to my placement classroom, gather the skirt of my dress around me, and wait in my computer chair. nervously wait. this is my first time teaching a bunch of eleventh graders who don't know how to spell the word "torture". they don't talk. not even to each other. and my lesson is entirely discussion/lecture based. and i have a ball to throw at them.

after they finish their grammar, it's my turn in the sun. so i walk up to the board, pick up a green marker, and write my word bank on the board. then i turn around the classroom is mine. this is what comes out of my mouth.

"so. this is my first lesson, and i hope that you guys enjoy it, and i really hope that you don't eat me alive. we're going to do a lesson reviewing five paragraph essay structure and what goes into a five paragraph essay. and you had a long, wonderful three day weekend, and i want you guys to get moving. so i'm going to throw this ball at you and make you answer a question. your word bank is on the board. if you don't know the answer, you can phone a friend, but i'll expect you to listen to their answer. now, toss the ball gently back to me, please, because i can't catch to save my life, and i have a feeling that the most entertaining part of this lesson for you is going to be you watching me run around the room in this dress chasing a stress ball."

and then i was teaching.

it was so absolutely wonderful to have my own classroom and my own students. they were actually participatory. they enjoyed the ball activity, they didn't particularly like having to stick index cards up onto the board in the proper order to fill out the essay model, but boy did they like the handout on the lion king. it was the first time they'd ever worked in groups in that class, and they were actually talkative.

they did not expect me to ask "why" every time they gave me an answer. when i asked who could identify the thesis and mary read it to me, i asked her why it was the thesis. she looked at me like a scared bunny.  so we reviewed what was in a thesis again to make sure that they all had it down.

the lesson took half an hour, ten minutes over what i was supposed to teach. extra points gained back from the ones i lost oversleeping. and when it was all over, i felt so accomplished and just... ready. ready to be a teacher.

i cannot wait for my future.

fast forwarding through my senior class (in which i graded awful punctuation packets and dreamily thought about eating another doughnut when i got back to my room), i went back to my car with the flat tire. my placement teacher absolutely insisted that i could not drive back to campus with it without risking damage to the rim.

here was the dilemma.

1. it was eleven thirty.
2. i had class a one.
3. my paper that was due at one wasn't titled. or printed.
4. i had to print it. and title it. and eat lunch. and get back to campus.
5. AAA, however great, is slow.
6. my boyfriend does not have a car and could not be my knight in shining armor in his rusty station wagon.

so i holed myself up in the main office, called the tire place, and urged them that yes, this was an emergency, i was stranded with a paper on the line, and i had to get back to campus asap. the guy on the phone assured me he'd be there in ten minutes.

i then sat in the office for ten minutes, hungry, and watched kids eat mcdonalds.

the tire guy was a young looking guy. when i waved excitedly at him, he rolled his eyes, gave me a high-five, and said, "i bet you have no idea how your car works, do you."  he got that pretty much right.

he told me that my tire was pretty well blown, and the other rear tire had barely any tread, so he was just going to replace both of them. he was going to take my car away, fix it, and bring it back, all by twelve thirty.

that gave me half an hour to get back to campus, eat something, title and print my paper, and make it to class. i began to panic.

i hurriedly called jacob, told him that he needed to break into my room, title my paper something terrific, and then print it off and keep it. if i didn't make it to the cafeteria by quarter til, he told me that he would get me a to-go lunch to snarf in class. i was then once again sitting in the office, starving, watching seniors eat mcdonalds that they probably didn't have to pay for.

elation of teaching my lesson- gone.

after i spent nearly an hour waiting nervously in the main office while scrolling twitter on my phone and the superintendent asked me gruffly if i was being helped by someone, the tire guy came back. it was about time; the secretaries were bitching about some girl that was in the bathroom throwing up everywhere except the toilet, and lo and behold, the custodial staff wasn't there to take care of it. i repeatedly told mr. alma tire that he was my hero of the month and i was forever indebted to him, and then he handed me my bill.

$236.36.

i paid that with my credit card. you know, the one in my name but it's full of my dad's money.

the name on my invoice says "holly hollenberg." i'm not sure why you'd do that to your child. but i really think i have a relative named holly hollenberg. i don't think we've ever met.

to make this long story short, i careened back to campus, ran to my room, grabbed my stuff, ran to the cafeteria, snarfed a grilled cheese and some macaroni, and made it to class in time to discuss james wright's "a blessing" for an hour and a half while still having my nametag on.

today has been a successful day.

i have told you about today. and in a sense, told you about my life.

i hope you've enjoyed the ride. and now that i'm done with this, i think i will go eat that doughnut that i was  dreaming about eating.

mmm. doughnuts.

Monday, February 6, 2012

i tape things. a lot.

i've blogged about being an RA before.

i'm about to do it again.

i feel the need to do this because right now they're selecting new RAs for next year, and some of my friends are applying. naturally, that means that this happens.

friend: my interview is next week!
me: that's exciting! did you read the blog i wrote about the RA selection process?
friend: no. i figured i'd talk to you. there's a college blog?
me: oh. well i wore mismatching socks and had a kick-ass funny story. dress up nicely. and yeah, there's a college blog.
friend: oh that's cool. is being an RA hard?
me: um. i tape things a lot.

i speak nothing but the truth, my dear readers. i go through rolls of packing tape like toilet paper. and my suitemates and i tend to go through a lot of toilet paper.

everybody wants to know what it's like being an RA. is it fun? is it scary? do you get lonely living by yourself?

i don't get lonely. but i also pretend that my room is an apartment, and i spend entirely too much time watching the lion king with my stuffed simba. so maybe you'll get lonely, but i'm doin' just fine, thank you very much.

every time somebody asks me what it's like to be an RA, i never know exactly what to say, because it's such a strange experience. sure, it's a lot of work and i think eventually i will lose my finger prints from taping stuff everywhere and pulling out staples, but sometimes it just feels like this giant accumulation of interesting experiences.

it's kind of like this.

LAST WEEK


i planned my hall program according to my evaluation, which said that i needed more community builders. well that's fine with me, trying to do other programs is a giant pain in the butt. so i took a survey from my hall, made a facebook event, made posters, and emailed every single person in my hall about the date and time.

we were going to color, watch a movie, and eat popcorn in the lobby.

ten minutes to hall program. there is no DVD player at the lobby TV, and i have a sign hanging from it that says the lobby is reserved for a hall program tuesday january 31st from eight until nine thirty. i run and grab my DVD player from my room, take out chuck season one, and then my boyfriend spends five minutes hooking it up with his head squashed against the wall. while this is happening, i go upstairs and start to pound on doors shouting, "hall program, come color and eat popcorn!"

not a single resident was home. three residents from another hall came and colored and watched toy story two with me. i colored a really beautiful fish.

LAST NIGHT

last night a few things happened.

1. i went on rounds with my stuffed simba.
2. i made my bulletin board.
3. i popped awkwardly into rob's apartment.
4. i had an interesting conversation with a "friend" i hadn't talked to in nearly a year and a half.

here's how these went.

1. simba accompanied me on my rounds. it was very hard to open doors with the duty binder in one hand and a giant stuffed animal in the other. when some friends watching the superbowl asked what simba was doing, i replied, "he's helping me turn off lights. his dad taught him to be a part of the circle of life."

2. my bulletin board is a cliche bulletin board about love. i have three definitions of love; wikipedia (to cite your sources!), miriam webster (i used that picture from the blog about terrific being a terrific word) and of course, dr. spencer reid.


yes. this is on my bulletin board.

and i am so excited to look at it for the rest of february.

this already has five facebook likes and six tumblr notes.



3. while on rounds in wright hall at ten thirty, i was walking by adam and rob's apartment. they are fellow RAs and bloggers like myself. right when i walked past, i heard steph, another RA on my staff, say my name. i paused outside the door and she said, "look at emily hollenberg's facebook status, it's about how she effectively watched the end of the superbowl on twitter!" (which i did. who needs to watch the actual game when your friends tweet about it every five seconds?) so i knocked on the door, threw it open and yelled, "I HEARD MAHH NAME!" i do not remember if rob screamed or not. but he was right by the door and i'm pretty sure he almost dropped what he was holding. which was a soapy baking pan.

4. still on duty, i was on facebook chat with my stuffed simba after barging in on rob and steph (and probably adam in his bedroom) and i decided that i wanted to troll a quote unquote "friend" from high school. the friendship that i had with him cannot be accurately described, and i'm not too worried that he'll read this at all, so i feel like i can say what i want about him. but what went through my head was "omg i can totally troll kevin right now."

i don't know how to troll. so i just said hi.

after we got through the basics of "how are you" "oh i'm fine i'm not at purdue anymore i work at an oil refinery" "wow that's so neat i'm still in michigan becoming a teacher" it went something like this.

me: i think there's a drunk girl in my stairwell, i'll be back in a minute.
kevin: what? no! let them stay drunk!
me: what?!
kevin: let them be drunk!
me: do you want me to get fired?!
kevin: you gotta be good at not seeing stuff.
me: i think i did that when our frat burned down last week!
kevin: that's some deep shit.


LAST MONTH


last month i got an email asking if i would like to blog for the student life office about the RA selection process. i, of course, jumped up and down, screamed, and was so excited. this was like... professional blogging! it was going to be fantastic! i called my mother and the first thing she says is, "do you get paid?"

um. no. BUT I GOT TO BLOG.

so i blogged about the whole selection process the way that i normally blog. i got an email back saying that my lack of capitalization didn't look that good on an official college website. i had to put in some RA statistics that had to do with my paycheck. then i sent it to them and the hall directors said it was great! they put it on facebook! they put it up on the website!

i went to go read it and they cut out all the parts that i thought were decently funny. (i had to try to make the scary selection process sound fun, right?) but they left in the part about my interesting socks that you could clearly see through my tights when i went to the interview. i think the best line that they kept was "I debated and debated until the last minute, finally decided that having my own RA fill out my reference would be awkward, and hiked up three floors to an RA, who I really only knew through my brother, to ask him to fill it out. He did not judge the bowl of oatmeal in my hand or my fluffy green slippers when I asked him." they cut out the part about my failed drawing looking like a batman mask.

there are two other blogs on this website by "guest RA bloggers", and mine is by far the longest. by about five times.

THE PRESENT WHERE EMILY IS BLOGGING ABOUT BEING AN RA

see, none of this really has anything to do with being an RA. if it did, i would've told you about the times i've called the cops, knocked on people's doors at odd hours of the morning because they were being noisy, and the time that i took down my bulletin board without a staple remover. i still don't feel like my fingernail has sufficiently recovered, and i did that in october.

i will leave you with two videos. one is dr. reid explaining love (and peas) like i have on my bulletin board

the other is shit RAs say. i have said every single one of those things. including "i don't know, i don't know what it smells like."





"i can't, i have duty."

"it's also found in peas!"