Foodie

I'm going home this weekend for the first time this semester, and it's not seeing my family or my dogs that I'm the most excited about. Nope. It's not attending the baby shower for our crew chief's wife either. It's going to the grocery store and getting the foods I can't find here that I'm looking forward to the most.

Seriously. I miss so many foods. There's these peach candies that only one store around the city sells and they only have them every now and then and I've been craving them since the beginning of February. And there's this type of cheese that my mom gets sometimes that I can probably take half a block of. And there's this bread that I bought once at a bakery downtown and it's all herby and wonderful and it's the perfect size for sandwiches.

I don't mean to make you all hungry, though I certainly am while writing this. And I don't mean to neglect all the wonderful foods that can be found around campus either. But I'm a foodie. It's what I look forward to when going places - the different foods you can find. Like when I pass through STL, I try and have lunch with B. And we usually go to a sushi place near his house. When anyone comes to IN with me, I bring them to a famous local burger joint. When I visit Chicago, I always always stop for a Jamba Juice on the way. Going to California? Round Table is a must, if I can't make it all the way to Willow Street or that place up in Truckee. And when my brother and I visited Colorado, we just walked into different food places for dinner until we found a place we wanted to eat at.

But none of this seems very typical "foodie" to me. When I think of a foodie, I think of someone who eats organic 90% of the time and goes out for fancy lunches at local non-chain restaurants (still haven't broken my habit of spelling that in Japanese first) and upon seeing a menu in French, can order without much difficulty pronouncing anything. They cook dinner every night and there's always some new recipe that they're trying out...that's a foodie, right?

But I think there's this sub-section of foodies without means, and that's where I place myself. I don't quite have the time to be cooking fantastic meals every night, though with a little practice I have no doubt in my abilities to do so. I suppose I could start going to the farmer's market and buying fresh produce every week, but it just seems such a waste when I end up having frozen meat taking up space for months at a time.

It just seems sad to me that I satiate my desire for exceptional foods by snacking on pita chips and gouda and nice dinners out with my dad when he's around on business and perhaps spoiling myself every once in a while by going to my favorite local deli. This is a college town and they totally cater to our hipster appetites. I should be able to be a successful foodie here. Any ideas for me?

Note to self:

When you're sick, please don't drink. It only makes things worse. Now you can't go to the junior high tomorrow to help out. I mean, really? Not cool.

Should you be sick again and choose to drink, please don't decide to sing songs at the top of your lungs past 1am. Please don't sing songs you really can't sing, including (but in no way limited to) 1985, Free Falling and Santeria. Now what are you going to do if you get called on in class, huh? You sound like you're about to cry, if you can even make noise at all.

Should you choose to do these things anyway, please don't put off your two essays, reading analysis, 100 pages of reading and studying for your test on Tuesday until Sunday. Night. At 11. I mean...really!

Seriously self? The hell were you thinking this weekend?

...oh, but it was worth it. XD

V-day D-day

So I'm seeing someone. Yeah, it's going pretty awesomely. But here's the problem. It's almost that stupidly romantic commercial holiday that I've never really done anything for.

No, I take that back, I've done stuff for Valentine's Day. Just one. When I, a high school senior, went to my then boyfriend's college midweek with brownies and roses. That was fun. But the rules were a lot clearer then. We'd been dating for quite some time and had plans for a nice dinner the following weekend. That was also 3 Valentine's Days ago.

But this Valentine's Day? There's no guidelines. It's a reasonably new relationship and while we like each other a lot there's still a reasonable amount of distance between us. Sure, the guy would like brownies and roses, but driving 15 minutes is not the same as driving an hour. Even if it is a surprise. Besides, I've done that before. And I'm a bit less of a romantic than I was back in high school, so that sort of approach, even if done completely different, doesn't appeal to me anymore.

But it's Valentine's Day! I'm expected to do something! I feel like Valentine's Day is turning into my day or reckoning or something. I know I'm placing too much emphasis on this, it's not like it'll determine anything about the relationship or have any real effect but, damn it, it's the first holiday and it's the most stupidly romantic one and I'm allowed to stress a little, okay?

Question 3: Energy Levels

It's been a long week. After having three snow days last week, it kind of felt like we were back on break. But now professors are getting back on track and there's projects and speeches and papers to be done, on top of the regular readings, and usually topped with a bit more because we fell behind so much.

And everyone is drained. Even the teachers lack the enthusiasm of the pervious weeks. In an 11am class on a Friday, the teacher stopped and just looked at us. Two people were asleep. More than usual had laptops out and were on other sites (myself included, as I opened this very page). Despite 13 people (little less than half the class) commenting on the discussion board before class, very few people were speaking up. The professor stopped, addressed the fact that we're acting kinda dead, and changed his approach a bit. Dropped his strict guidance through the discussion and let us have more control. Which got more people speaking. And suddenly 75% of the class was contributing and more hands were raised and responses were generated without prompting.

I'm stunned. As a future English teacher, I'm quite impressed. I thought he was going to just switch to full-on lecture mode and just let us be bored. Or maybe try too hard to get us to talk about what he wanted us to talk about. He seemed really focused on this one thing he wanted us to talk about. But he just dropped what his main concern was and let us talk about what we took from the text. He tied it in when he could, but for the most part we completely changed directions.

And this is what dictates what will be on the test. What we talk about, what we're interested in, will guide the entire class. It's a completely different approach than I'm used to. It requires a lot of faith in your students. I need to learn how to do that. I want to be able to sense the energy in the room and know how to let students guide the conversation without them getting out of control. I think if I tried this right now, we'd end up talking about pop culture, not about early American literature. Which is all good and fine for 5 minutes in a 3000 level college course on a Friday afternoon, but I'm not sure it'd quite be appropriate for a high school course. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's not.

So how do I find that happy balance between running a classroom and simply gently pushing them in the right direction? I need control but I need energy and excitement and those two seem to be conflicting points, at least in my head. I think this is one of my biggest concerns as a future educator. The general classroom management concept...it's something we haven't discussed much in my education classes and, even though I don't get into the classroom for a while, I really really need to learn it. Any preliminary suggestions for me?