the end...

I am blogging early this week because I will be out of town this weekend. The school where my husband teaches made it to the playoffs, and the first round is this Friday at Tad Gormley Stadium in New Orleans. So, I will be there cheering them on. I am so proud of this team and their coaching staff. Last year they had a pretty bad loosing season, and now they in the playoffs. Several of these kids have never been outside of the ark-la-tex, so its pretty exciting that they are playing in New Orleans... proof that hard work can really take you places.

For my classmates, happy last blog, and good luck in all you do!

Craziness

I feel that it is my turn to vent about a stressful week. I have exams, papers and all kinds of other stuff, not to mention, advising for the upcoming spring semester. I am beyond tired and am fully looking forward to next week. Hope next week is better than the last for everyone. I feel better now. One less thing that I have to do...

pretty colors

I thought this was interesting.

why do cars today have such boring colors?

Po-Mo-Renn

Way back in the day, there was a movement in Europe to revive classical antiquity. That movement was called The Renaissance.


I've recently begun to notice a revival of the 80's. A couple of years ago there was another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie(although it wasn't very good), The Transformers are back, and the Smurfs have made it to the movie theater. Star Wars is doing great with the younger generation because of the Clone Wars...and these are just movies. T.V. shows and pop music are even bringing back the 80's.

We currently live in a time called post-modernism. We have named ourselves. But, we keep looking to the past and commemorating it, probably because our own reality is not very pleasant. However, if reality is perception, why not perceive a better one?

Girls in the Galaxy...

As Halloween is approaching, my husband and I needed to decide what dress as for a party that we will be attending. My husband chose Star Wars characters, and specifically, a Storm Trooper. We like to match, so I looked up what kind of female characters there are to choose from. I was not all that familiar with Star Wars, and was a little surprised to find that in the movies, there are really only two female characters; Padme and her daughter Leia. Wow! patriarchy much?!

I am currently writing a paper that deals greatly with my appreciation for Walt Disney, and I find myself in a corner at times because of the over use of gender stereotypes in Disney films. But then I found Star Wars... I know that they are movies and that they are there for entertainment purposes, so I will not get too preachy, but really, only one female character in each film? No wonder there is so much chaos in that galaxy!

Youth Fiction

I recently finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I absolutely loved it! I don't want to say too much about it because I hope that those of you who enjoy reading will read this one. The story is great, but what I really appreciated was Zusak's style. It is unique. I enjoyed it so much that I have to ask a question. Why is it considered youth fiction? I am an adult and an undergrad English major and I found it to be very engaging. Is it called youth fiction because the protagonist is a child? When I think of youth fiction I think of children's books. What does youth fiction actually mean?

I do not ever want to be one of those people who writes a blog about nothing. I never want to end up writing, "I had a good week. Hope next week is good too!"...and that's all. But, I have been so preoccupied with school stuff that I when I sat down to write a blog, nothing profound came to mind. That is when I remembered my favorite teacher from high school who said, "When you can't think of what to write, just start writing and it will come to you." My English IV teacher from high school was amazing. In fact, amazing is an understatement. And, although I have always loved to read and write, I believe that this teacher changed my life, and the way that I see literature. She loved to teach and she was passionate about what she taught. I never had the opportunity to tell her what an amazing teacher she was; she retired the year I graduated.

My husband is a high school teacher and every now and then, a student will learn something that they think is amazing and they will say, "that's so cool, I'm gonna go home and tell my momma!" These moments of victory for my husband.

I realize now that regardless of what the school system says about a teacher and regardless of test scores, the true measure for a teacher is when they learn that they had an real affect on a student and they were able to transform that student into a life long learner.

I wish I had told Dr. MacArthur how amazing she was.

Epidemic

Today I saw something that I hadn't seen in a while and it made me think...

Last year I began to notice several young people wearing Catholic Rosaries around their necks. For those of you who may not know: a rosary is a collection of beads that Catholics use for prayer. Each bead represents a prayer including the crucifix at the end. Rosaries are not meant to be worn.
When I first saw this new trend I asked my husband, who is a public school teacher, to ask his students about it. He did, and the student's response was, "Oh this is my chain". My husband asked if any of the students knew what it is actually called and what its purpose is. They did not.

What if a famous hip-hop star decided it was cool to wear a swastika? Would young people in turn follow their trend? Please understand that I am not comparing the meaning of the rosary to that of the swastika.

 In this age, there is no excuse for such ignorance. We live in a time where information is readidly avaiable at our fingertips. Who ever came up with the saying, "What I don't know can't hurt me." was a damn fool! History has taught us that it absolutly can.

There is an epidemic spreading through our society. It's name is Wilfull Ignorance.

The Question

Eariler this week I stopped by the office of one of my instructors to say hello and to get some guidence on a subject that I want to study on my own. During the conversation I found myself saying things like "this is fun. that is not fun". To clarify, studying linguistics does not seem fun to me. Nethier does post-modernism or algebra. While I understand the importance of such subjects, I must admit that I would rather be studying something that in my opinion is "more fun". By the end of the meeting the instructor posed the question, "because life should be fun"? To which I responded "this should be fun because I am paying for it".I realize that I was probably not meant to spend much time thinking about the question, but I did,and now I am writing about it. Later that day I thought about it some more and wondered if I was being naive in my belief that college and life in general should be fun. Maybe I am; I don't know. I seldome find that people who are being naive ever know that they are being naive until way after the fact. However, I did realize that what I said was not what I meant. What I actually meant was this: While life cannot possibly always be fun, we should do our absolute best to make choices that will make us the happiest, thereby, taking control over the things we can control, and making life fun.

Before I changed my major to English, I was a Secondary Education major. I hated the education courses and lothed having to drive all over Shreveport/Bossier to go observe classrooms, which I rarely found helpful. I made the change, and am much happier now for it. I know that I cannot control everything, and that as an undergraduate liberal arts major I must sometimes take courses that I do not like, read books that I am not intrested in, and write papers about topics that I may care less about. But, when given the opportunity I feel that it is my responsibility to make choices that will make my life "more fun".

So, Readers, what do you think? Should life be fun???

Roller Coaster

When I learned that I had to manage a personal blog for a class that I am taking, I spent a good deal of time thinking about what I should name it. Since this blog going to be about me, my life, and my experiences, I wanted its title to be as honest as possible. I wanted the name to fit. I remembered that my husband(whom I've been married to for nearly a year) often reminds me that our lives and our relationship are like a roller coaster. We have our ups and downs. Sometimes its thrilling and other times it can be, well...nauseating. I guess its a good thing that we both like roller coasters! When I sat down and thought about roller coasters, I remembered that when I was a small child growing up in the New Orleans area, my grandparents used to tell me stories about the old Pontchartrain Beach. Pontchartrain Beach used to be something like an amusement park and there was a roller coaster called The Zephyr. My grandparents also used to take me to City Park in New Orleans, where there was a section for children called Storyland where there were "talking" life sized animals that told stories, a carousel, a ladybug roller coaster, and a few other rides. My favorite was the ladybug roller coaster which I called "The Zephyr" because for some reason I assumed that all roller coasters were named this.  As I grew older I learned that I was wrong in my assumption. There was just that one Zephyr on Pontchartrain Beach that demolished before I was born. At least there was just the one until the year two-thousand when Jazz Land New Orleans(later Six Flags) was built. Inside Jazz Land there was a section called Pontchartrain Beach that they built to commemorate the Old Pontchartrain Beach and with it they built another Zephyr. It was a huge let down as their recreation did not by a long shot live up to the version that I made up in my head. But nonetheless, it was pretty cool.   So, when I was thinking of roller coasters, I thought of the Zephyr, but I didn't really know what the word Zephyr actually means. When I looked it up I found this: noun- a slight wind (usually refreshing). And that's my life. Sometimes the wind is at my back, sometimes its in my face, but usually, its refreshing.