Saturday, September 24, 2011

Uh oh, Taylor Lautner's actually acting

And no werewolf business either.



Alfred Molina, you're so awesome, why are you here?

gravelly, sinister tone: "Listen to me, Nathan, we're going to find you"
Nathan's deadpan cartoon boy voice: "Not if I find you first."

WHAT?  Why?  That literally makes no sense.  RUN AND HIDE, NATHAN. RUN AND HIDE!


Good night.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

3 Things about the Cronkhite Private Bathroom

The automated paper dispenser is a little strange.  Sometimes I stick my hands out and the paper doesn't come out.  A friend taught me to just hit the bottom, and it comes out.  Someone else told me that I can just gently tug.. and it'll come out.  HOWEVER, SOMETIMES when I walk in and the light goes on, THE PAPER DISPENSER DISPENSES PAPER!  Or.... when my shadow hits it.  anyway, it's strange.

It has the water conserving toilet.  But I don't think it conserves water.  B/c every time I pull up (For #1), the toilet paper never goes down.  So then I have to reflush.  I feel like two #1s > 1 #2.  So.. they should just have it so that you flush it down normally.  But I do appreciate the green handle.. does it really kill germs?

HOLY CRAP I POO'D 4 TIMES TODAY!  <-- a tweet that I ended up choosing not to post.

the tendency to fall apart

I skipped my S005 class this morning (it's offered online, but that still doesn't make me feel better about it).  Last night went to bed around 1, and made the conscience decision .. to.. skip. :(
Woke up with a sore throat, took a much needed shower, hurtled it to class, came in at 10:40am and was confuse that class was in full gear.  Around 11am, I realized the reason why there were so many notes and people seemed so on top of things was because ..... class doesn't start at 10:30am, it starts at 10!  

Seriously?
-___-

I'm such a noob when it comes to things like this, and I fall apart so easily.
I don't know why "study services" / "student counseling" sessions are offered.  When you probably need it, you're also super busy and you don't want to spend time talking to someone for .5-1 hour.  When you DO have time, then you don't need it!

Instead of taking my lunch to my room, I sat and ate with people.  that was good.  I'm not more focused on this paper.

It's a puny thing, really.  500 words.  Not too much.  I think I'm freaking out unnecessarily.... pride?  perfectionism?   Am I a perfectionist?  I didn't think I was.  I think I'm more of a comparatist....... I compare myself to others, feel like I'm better, and get annoyed when I'm not.

Oh wait, what's that word again?

Oh yeah.

PRIDE.


Living off Sovereign Grace music, Proverbs and 1 John.  I try some Isaiah, but lately it's been really murky in those woods.

When I eat a meal, i eat A LOT, because lately I've been missing the times and skipping it.. and living like Lena and Kathy.. on fruit and nasty almond butter without salt.


Think about this often:


Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved in his sleep. (Psalm 127:1-2)
Pastor John from 1980:
I think the main point of these three verses is: "Don't eat the bread of anxious toil." It means just the same thing Jesus meant when he said, "Don't be anxious about what you shall eat."
When we grow up we must all work for our bread. And we can either work nervously, worrying about what men will think of us — and so eat the bread of anxious toil. Or we can work with serenity in our hearts, as serving Christ and not men — and so eat the bread of peace. God's will for his children, indeed the sign of whether we are children or not, is that we not eat the bread of anxious toil.
God does not lay down specific rules for how early we rise for work and how late we knock off at night. But he does lay down this principle for his beloved: Don't rise early and go late to rest out of anxiety, out of fear and fretfulness. If the joy of fruitful labor lures you to work 12 hours a day, so be it. But take heed lest you are really deceiving yourself, and in fact are being driven by anxiety, or by her twin sister, selfish-ambition.
Christians will work hard, but they will work more for the joy of all the good their work can bring to others than they will out of fear at what men will think if they fail. So,
Be diligent as God may lead
And eat the bread you earn,
But fret not over what you need
And let not worry burn.


http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/hard-work-or-anxious-toil-a-christian-understanding-of-labor

Sunday, September 18, 2011

la da da da da

I have so much to do and I'm so bad at doing it.

Thoughts and Updates

1) I'm not used to being in school.  Thus, it's been hard to balance readings and writings.  Plus, the classes are all so different.

A) Managing Financial Resources in Nonprofit Organizations
GREAT Prof.  I realized he has to be great.  Because how am I staying awake for 1.5 hours listening to him talk about cash and accrual accounts and auditing and all that jazz?  Also, I realized that EVERYTHING I had been doing as a work-study student as an Accounting/Admin Assistant has to do with ... drum roll.............  CHART OF ACCOUNTS!!!!!!!!
So basically, things have been making sense, so I'm glad.
BUUUt I'm worried.  I have now .. accumulated around 250 pages of reading that I haven't done yet.  But... if I understand what's going on in class, do I need to do the reading?

B) Introduction to (Quantitative) Education Research
EASY prof.  Who basically said we'll all get A's.  Just learning basic stats.  I've started to check my email in class... and stuff...... but he's really interesting, and I think I want to do an independent research project instead of the class assignments.  Should I?  It's semi-over-achieve-y ...... meh.

C) Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Learning
AMAZING prof.  She used to teach at HBS and came over to the Ed School.  Case-based class and it's interesting.  It's interesting not having a lot of reading, but studying a case and meeting with people outside of class on my own time to discuss it.  I never thought I'd do things like that.

If you can't tell, classes A-C are electives.

D)  Reading Development and Instruction.
AWESOME PROF!  She's also the Program Director.  She's DONE it all and knows it all. lol.  About Reading, that is.  And I'm having a great time LEARNING, but I'm behind on the reading, and a little intimidated by all these people who seem to KNOW everything about reading.  I wish I'd taken my psych / ed classes..... oh well.  Anyway, I have my first paper due, and I'm worried since it has to be about how I learned how to read... and I HAVE NO CLUE HOW I LEARNED HOW TO READ!

E) Adolescent Literature (module)
I was going to also take the Children's Literature module, but I think once this is over, I'll welcome the extra time.  Love the instructor - she works in publishing and she's great.  LOVE the reading..... i love reading.... i love it.. i love it.....  Read some awesome YA books so far.  Dang it,  I want to take Children's Literature.  I think I should continue.  But that means I'm taking 20 units. o_O.

2) My job and internship are both pretty sweet.


A) The Harvard Bridge Program - Really cool concept.  Harvard offers classes for workers at Harvard to take literacy, ESL, citizenship, computer, and other classes along with tutoring opportunities and stuff to help them out in terms of job mobility.  The people I work with are great.  I'll be mainly doing admin stuff, tutoring, and social media development.  (8 hours, close to my place and the gym)

B) reDesign - a private, for-profit, small, education consulting company.  Again. Great people. Cool ideas.  Trying to get my feet wet in this whole "consulting biz" to see if I see myself there.  I'll be working mainly with social media platforms here too.  (7 hours, go to office 1x a week, and the rest from home)

3) I'm excited for church tomorrow!!!!

A) I visited Hope Fellowship yesterday and it was aiight.  Really liked the sermon.  But I don't know... I'll explain more later in person, if you want to know.

B) Excited to go back to Redeemer Fellowship tomorrow.  Because I just loved it.  And you know, I'd always be the girl telling people that when they're church shopping, they should try it out for 2-3 weeks at a time, really engage, and get to know a church.  But I think I'm at a point where I know what I want and the rest is kind of non-essentials.  It's the chem.  and so yeah.  I don't have too much time (I think.. i mean, who knows..) soooo I want to jump in asap. So yeah!  and I think, yeah, just being happy about going back tomorrow, makes me happy.  I love going to a church where people there love being there.  Yaddamean?

4) So much to do here, so little time.


A) I really need to learn how to balance school work.  I can't figure it out

B) I'm worried about my liver.  All people do here is go out for drinks.  I mean, the pubs and stuff here are REALLY cool.... historical, artsy, cultural, musical, etc.  But my wallet, liver, and gut probably can't handle this if it becomes regular... which I think it is.  Last night I tried just going to our cohort's happy hour and not ordering anything.  No calories, no negative dollar(ies), hooray!

C) Today I could have gone to a concert, a classmate's birthday party, and a live band swing dance thing with my dorm mates.  Instead, I worked out, helped out a friend by letting him do an assessment on me, and researched for my class.  I wish I were able to do more things in a day.   But today I have to work.. since tomorrow I'm going to Maine.

5) Interesting stuff up ahead!


A) I think I'm joining the HGSE for Haiti club and it's cool.  I like meeting the people there, and yeah.  I'll be treasurer, so that also adds to time commitments, but I've worked with grant writing before and it will be interesting learning this sort of money-managing thing.

B) This also means, this Winter, I may be in Haiti!

6) Little regrets


A) When I talk with people about classes they're taking, I wish I were taking it too.  I wish I were taking Catherine Snow's class (From Language to Literacy) since she's literally a pioneer in that field AND even though I ran away from the whole idea of linguistics, I wish I didn't chicken out.  Also I wish I were taking Chinese Comparative Education with Fong.  I had cool ideas for the research proposals in that class.

B) I wish I had taught more before I came to HGSE.  But then I couldn't get a job... so then I had to jump into grad school right away... it was kind of catch-22.  But still.  I miss teaching... but then, also, when I think about teaching, I think about Mrs. Chow.  I think about CCS.  I think about mean parents and apathetic kids.  I already start feeling tired.  One person said that she thought that maybe I'm a bit traumatized from my GCA experience.  Maybe she's right.  Anyway, I get anxious sometimes thinking about what I'm going to do for my job.  Is it a given that I should expect to work 50-60 hours a week?  Is it not possible to separate my job life from my work life?  I feel like to do anything interesting, I have to put in 150%.  To do anything tolerable and still have time for me to pursue my other interests, I'd be .. like.. a boring desk job at a university or something like that.  God doesn't want me to be anxious.  and I think about that a lot.

B) I'm eating too much and gaining the chubs :(

7)  I miss calling my mom whenever I want to.

A) I think that was hard.  Not just being able to call people on the spur of the moment to tell them about my day or tell them something cool.

B) I ended up calling Christy Pak a lot.
This is how I start my phone conversation, "Are you still unemployed?  How's the job search?  Okay, well anyway, let me tell you about ME!"

C) Anyway, I miss people. and it sucks that all my CLOSE FRIENDS have YET to email me ON THEIR OWN.  They're all either replying BACK or ASKING ME FOR A FAVOR.   (Do you feel guilty yet?)

8)  I need a haircut


9) Food is better in California


10) I feel like such a hippie dippie here


A) I feel overly dressed up whenever I go to class

B) I am a bit frustrated that there's no compost bins at restaurants and people don't recycle properly

Thursday, September 8, 2011

have to get this off my chest

You know when you do something embarrassing, and you still think back on it and you shudder, because you're embarrassed?

There's only a few moments like that in my life (the pure embarrassment, no humor, just embarrassment)...

today was a moment that wasn't THAT bad but my mind keeps replaying it in my mind.

In my H818 class, my prof opens it up to discussion and people have lots of ideas.  I kinda felt like a lot of people touted there "when I taught in X country.. blah blah" a bit, but it was fine.

When we got to "class norms" and the question was posed, what kind of norms should we have for our classroom, I thought (this was in the context of children and teachers and cultural biases) this question was directed to us as teachers with our own classrooms.


So... i open it up, stumbling and speaking too fast (when i get nervous i overspeak) about just my experiences dealing with cultural issues, identity, etc...... and how I want to open up my students for being able to dialogue not from just a "minority" standpoint and not to marginalize the "dominant culture" kids either.. (i can explain later.. this isn't the point)...

So then my professor nods and goes, so... open dialogue?  and i'm a little confused and go "yeah"

and the TF writes it down.

and then someone else says "I think people should say each other's names"
and then someone else says "i think we should try to be understanding of each other's viewpoints"

and THEN so on.

and THEN i realize.. after like the 4th or 5th point.. that.... WE WERE WRITING CLASS NORMS FOR THIS CLASS.. FOR THE CLASS I WAS IN..  SHE WASNT ASKING ABOUT HOW WE BUILD NORMS FOR THE CLASSROOM BUT FOR THIS SPECIFIC CLASS.
and i had NO REASON

TO
TALk
ABOUT
ANYTHING
THAT
I DID

I FEEL
LIKE
SUCH
A
LOOOOOOSEEEERRR!!!!!


gAH!



foot in the mouth

freaLZ!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Field Trip to Historic Concord Email

 It's all boring and normal until you get to the bottom. LOL LOL LOL.  I love being here.. I didn't realize how fun bookish nerdyness could be!

Meet:  11:15-11:20am on Porter Square commuter rail platform
(see entrance, separate from subway entrance, on plaza)

Depart: 11:30am sharp (arrive in Concord 12:03pm)

Return: 3:31pm from Concord train station (arrive in Porter Square 4:02pm)

Highlights: downtown Concord; the Old North Bridge (American Revolution battleground site); and the Old Manse (home of philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s family; residence of novelist/short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Additional sites to choose from, time permitting –or for those who’d like to return on the later 5:58pm train: Authors’ Ridge (gravesites of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts); Orchard House (home of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women); Emerson House (where an HGSE grad will soon be living as caretaker); Walden Pond (subject of Thoreau’s eponymous book); Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge; Concord Museum….

Costs: $12.50 train fare ($6.25 one-way fare to and fro Concord); $6 admission fee to Old Manse

Reasonable Suggestions: *Wear your walking shoes, because we’ll probably be walking three miles or so (five or more if you go to Walden Pond to swim afterward and catch the later train). *Bring your lunch—or enough change to buy a quick sandwich on the way to the Old North Bridge and the Old Manse— so that we can picnic in the meadow by the river. (We have a 1pm tour scheduled at the Old Manse.) *Do a few minutes of online research about Concord if you’re not familiar with the American Revolution or the Transcendentalist literary movement!

Unreasonable Suggestion: *Read the complete works of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Alcotts (Louisa May and her father, Bronson), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and all of the Abolitionist poets and philosophers who were tromping around eastern Massachusetts back then!

Monday, September 5, 2011

The Church Search

So, I initially was sold on the idea of relocating because I thought I'd be attending a church with most of my friends from college.  But as time passed, I realized I wanted to see what else was out there, and I wasn't super keen on going to a large church with people I already knew from the past.

Besides, I'm not the type of person that needs to "feel" comfortable at a church to be there.  I look at the church's genuinity/sincerity, the Pastor's humility and integrity... and that's that.  Honestly, even with EBCB, I didn't LIKE PJ at first, but I really admired his sticking to his guns, and I was blown away by the sincerity of the members... I was surprised that people actually read the Bible and liked it. haha.

Anyway, in California, I looked through the EFCA and 9Marks websites and just browsed the net.  Came across a few and read through their statements of faith, emailed one, listened to a few sermons.

The church I *really* wanted to check out first (I really enjoyed the sermon) is actually no longer meeting - they don't have a building anymore!

Then it turned out that last Sunday, because of Irene, the public transpo was shut down and churches were closed!  (Apparently, a very rare thing).

So, today was my first Sunday.  I boarded a bus that was pretty close to my place, and it took around 15 minutes straight down the street to get there.  Where?  Redeemer Fellowship Church in Watertown, MA.

It's in this large historic looking church that was beautiful and people were warm and friendly.  Actually, they were VERY welcoming (although sometimes, there WERE patches of awkward standing by yourself, feeling awkward... feeling awkward.  Sure, it's seriously less than a minute, but. it. feels. so. long. . . !) It's a smaller congregation (apparently around 80ish people), started 2 years ago..... and basically (as one lady put it) a cross section of many cultures and stages in life.  There were older families, young families, just-marrieds, singles, kids, various ethnicities (mainly Caucasian, few Asians, few everything else).

The acoustics in the building was amazing.  I could barely hear the praise team because I was overwhelmed by the gustily singing congregation around me, voices echoing off the high roof and floors.  The songs were familiar hymns, but we sang verses that are normally omitted at EBCB.  I also learned a new song.

The pastor is sincere, and he preached on church unity in John 17.  I wasn't too blown away by a sermon I had listened to online, but I really felt fed during today's sermon.  It was part of Jesus' high priestly prayer, and he spoke about how Jesus makes 5 requests, and only 1 refers to us (" those also who believe in Me through their word").  And that prayer is for unity.  He spoke on different causes for disunity (the most obvious being SIN, and then elaborating), and then explained how TIGHT this unity ought to be (Jesus compares the unity among the brethren with the unity between the Son and the Father).  I sometimes feel like unity is overemphasized, but after this sermon, I'm glad that my church back home also emphasizes it.  Pastor Chris also talked about unity in the context of the local church, which is also helpful.

As I was speaking with people, especially since this is a starting church, I'm realizing just ... yeah, the wisdom in going slow.  This church also had a separate board of elders until recently (past January) when they finally got their own elders.  It's great to hear about people being enthusiastic about being "biblically-founded" and "Christ-centered."  For me, it was wonderful to hear, and at first I thought that well, these are buzzwords that people would love.  But then I realized, they're only buzzwords to a crowd that WOULD want that.  I don't know, do you follow?

Anyway, I plan on coming back a few more times and then I am going to check out Hope Fellowship Church and maayyyyybe Heart Change Fellowship.



Sorry, this is really disorganized, and the paragraphs aren't real paragraphs anyway... but yeah, I hope you can overlook that.
 

Some Learning Points:
- EBCB isn't weirdly obsessed with unity
- EBCB's elders are bonafide
- NEVER let a new person alone.... those minutes feel really long (Even if you're extroverted like me)


I mean, I REALLY liked it here, and part of me feels like well, it's fine, it's Biblical, I'll stay... rather than check out another one.  But maybe I should look around?  Even though at EBCB, all I did was come and stay.  Hmm Hmm HMM