miscellany

On Monday, while eating a salad, I bit down on my fork too hard, and felt my tooth hurt. I felt around and then looked, and sure enough, a flake had chipped off my front tooth! It was tiny, but it felt really weird. Like, you know how you play with your nail when it's broken? It felt like that. It was catching on my lip.

I called the dentist. It was 4.45pm; I figured they would be closed. Not only were they open, the receptionist said, do you want to come in today? I said, sure, I'll be there at 5.00. The dentist saw me almost right away, and polished the bottom of the tooth to smooth it out. It still feels rough and funny, but I guess I have to live with that.

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I can't believe I drove across the country this summer. I guess I've been thinking about that because it was an incredible freedom and adventure, and now that is completely lacking in my life.

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Class sucks, and homework sucks. But now only one class actually meets physically, which means that today I came home like normal, ate, watched tv, finished my homework, and took a nap, all before making my way to campus. That's much preferable to the other way.

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Saturday is New York Cares Day, and I want to recruit more people. So far no go. I feel sad.

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My birthday is two weeks from yesterday! Ee! Thanks to Nancy for the Evite. :)

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The next two and a half months of teaching is now gonna be all test prep. LAME!! Today we did start talking about poetry, and we analyzed Annabel Lee. They did a great job. We discussed the vocabulary--seraphs, sepulchre, kinsmen, dissever. Then we did sample test questions and they had to sit and listen to me do a think aloud. Boring!

Also, the mini-lesson and block structure is now obsolete (in my opinion). Test prep and demonstrating questions and strategies takes too much damn time. And somehow there's supposed to be group work AND conferencing too. I call bullshit. Actually, a lot of us are.

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My back, since Monday, is back to just about normal. Twinges here and there, but overall, it's good. Phew!

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I could not fall asleep last night! I tried going to bed at 10.30, and after tossing and turning for an hour, finally turned on the light and read for an hour. This morning I felt distinctly zombie-ish.

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Coordinating things sucks. I have no time and space to get organized and delegate to people to help. One person can't do it. But now, every free period, I could, and maybe should, be four places at once.

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Wednesday is now over. I suppose that's a good thing.