Look At Me Still Talking When There’s Science To Do

In Grand Rapids… thinking about Barrow (among other things)

Archive for fire

You’re good at finding shortcuts around this part of town.

March 31, 2009 at 11:54 pm · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: , , , , ,

“Tell Mrs. B you want to keep teaching,” “Please, we like you better!” and “How about ONE more day” are among the things the tricky seventh graders are saying to try to entice me to keep them from returning to a teacher who doesn’t let them talk in class as much as I do. It won’t work for a minute though- I’m done. And untrickable.

The most remarkable part of my success was that I didn’t self-sabatoge. I’m notorious for having difficulty getting out of bed. Just ask Jobby, who took it upon himself to be my wake-up call in Alaska. There is almost nothing that sounds better to me than staying in bed 5… 10…. 15 more minutes. No matter how pleased I am about the upcoming day’s events, I still have to force it. So you can imagine that when my agenda included “7a.m. to 4p.m.: Student Teaching,” the feat was nearly impossible. I forced myself out of bed, I forced myself to go out in the cold ans scrape off my car, and I forced myself to keep driving the whole twelve and a half miles to the school. I even forced myself to go to bed by 10:30, which in itself is remarkable, but I couldn’t stop the constant internal conversation:

Jenny: I could just call in sick.

Other Jenny: No. She already doesn’t like you, don’t push it.

Jenny: I hope the school is on fire when we get there!

Other Jenny: I suppose that would be nice, but remember, you have an observation today, and it WOULD be a pain to reschedule.

Jenny: You’re right. Can I take a nap when we get home?

Other Jenny: Of course… not. You have 75 papers to grade and some science to do.

Jenny: Crap.

I hoped for worse than fire, but there’s no need to go into detail. Now that I have SEVEN days remaining that require me to be physically present at the school, I am coasting… and staying up later. But why shouldn’t I? I have television to watch and rocks to paint and the last month of college to catch up on, and as I’ve mentioned, I’ve done remarkably well until this point. So well, in fact, that some people might think I don’t hate student teaching as much as I’ve reported, but don’t let yourself be fooled. Oh no.

Staying up late on purpose is a novelty at this point. I haven’t even been able to sleep in for days and days, in part because of my trip to Nebraska this past weekend. Picture proof for now, words for tomorrow.

Goodbye Nebraska.

Goodbye Nebraska.

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I know all the games you play because I play them, too.

August 7, 2008 at 5:50 am · Filed under Barrow and tagged: , , ,

So…. we’re out of a truck again. UTEP was given specific directions to guard the keys to our truck with all their might while we were in Atqasuk this weekend. UTEP has ten people right now, after all, so we graciously suggested that they use it during our absence.

Then we get off the airplane. (This airplane wasn’t meant to get us back to Barrow. Our regularly scheduled airplane was weather delayed because of the treacherous rain and/or fog, but the charter plane full of Atqasuk-bound high school students was clearly immune to these dangers, and therefore able to traverse the skies with ease. It would have been empty on the way back to Barrow, so the pilot agreed to take us back. He ought to know us by sight, at least, if not by name, since he’s flown us at least a half a dozen times this summer, through rain and snow and dark of fog.)

Anyway we landed, it was really foggy, Jeremy was so scared, blah blah blah, and on our ride back to BASC we were informed that our beloved blue truck was donated to the truck pool, and of course we should feel free to sign it out whenever we please!

Guess how often the truck is actually available.

Since UTEP betrayed us, we now will have to smite them in some way, but we don’t know quite how. However, tonight at the beach Rob proved that he is a capable fire starter. Fire should work. Classic smiting tool.

The point of the fire was to watch the sunset, or rather the sun-ricochet, as it doesn’t stay put for long. We were invited by SDSU, but a Michigan/Minnesota Fire Team was assembled to orchestrate the actual burning of things. Tonight it turned out that the break in the clouds was at the wrong part of the horizon for sun watching. It was worth a shot, though, since this was the first day in a week that any kind of actual sky was visible. The fog is out in full force, but today it left us some fogbows for our nature-appreciating pleasure.

I really like fires, but this one was s’more free, since, reportedly, Hiroki already ate all the marshmallows in Barrow.

I really

really

really

like fires.

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