Hey, all. Let's see if this posts. My net access is being all coy; it thinks it's cute, but it's not.
Went to Ebil School o' Doom today and all was cool. No one even raised an eye at my quitting. Good luck to 'em, I say, and I truly mean that.
I Have revamped my teaching resume into a more general resume, and written two letters, one for a domestic violence advocate position, and one for a sexual abuse educator position. I think I'd like the sex abuse position the best (and god, doesn't THAT sound wrong?). But I'd go to schools and organizations and do education on sexual abuse and violence. I'd also have to do some hospital outreach, which is depressing as hell, but it's useful work.
I like being helpful. I won't mind an office job, but I'd like something that makes me feel I am making a diff. I've worked in 2 DV shelters and the pay is shite. But at neither place do I have to do lesson plans for 8 hours for people who won't let me teach them. Wish me 'ma.
I am also contemplating going back to get my doctorate. I dunno if I qualify for more loans, tho. Shall cogitate and investigate.
No nightmares, no migraines, no panic attacks, no suicidal ideations and a general sense of being happy and excited when I wake up. MUCH the hell better. Right choice.
Love,
Me
Much the hell better, indeed. It is so good that you are out of the soul sucking school.
DH doesn't like graphing calculators. He doesn't think people should be able to use them until they have the basics down.
But what counts as "the basics"? And there are plenty of things that using a graphing calculator will help you learn. (You can see things like slope and intercepts and intersections much better on a graphing calculator graph. Graph y=x and y=2x and y=1/2 x on the same axis, and you can immediately see what changing the coefficient does to the slope. Try the same thing with graph paper, and by the time you finish drawing the graph (with lots of smudges and erasures and a few mistakes, because if you're learning about slope, you're probably about 12 and not necessarily very good at drawing things accurately), you've probably forgotten what the point was to begin with.)
Also, graphing calculators are great for teaching proper use of parentheses, which is really important for keeping track of things in long calculations on paper.
Hugs and job ~ma for you, Erin.
I am also contemplating going back to get my doctorate.
I'm on this path as well. Starting to investigate what could be an amazing dissertation topic that would be a look at theatre and race issues in a specific little known of roadside attraction that was near here in the 1940's.
No nightmares, no migraines, no panic attacks, no suicidal ideations and a general sense of being happy and excited when I wake up. MUCH the hell better. Right choice.
So happy to hear this.
Oh, the calculus course that I'm TAing this semester is using WebAssign for certain homework assignments. It's a web-based system that lets the students see the homework problems on the screen, enter their answers, and immediately be told whether they're right or wrong, with a few chances to try again for the right answer. And it records all their scores so that they can be averaged into their final grade. (There are some problems that won't work with just entering an answer, so there are some written assignments, too, but a lot less grading than usual.)
I'm kind of iffy on this system. I can see both good and bad sides of it. Also, the design is horrible -- nothing is where you'd expect it to be.
But anyway. It costs something like $15 per semester for each student to use it. That's supposed to be included in the textbook price -- the textbook comes with a card with an access code. Judging by the number of "I can't find my access code" emails I've gotten today, I think the bookstore ordered the edition without the access code card.
My application essay would look something like this, unfortunately: I wanna read books and talk about 'em, and stuff.
Definite cogitation needed!
Yeah, I've only been using WebAssign for two days, and it's already irritating me.
From an educational standpoint, I can see that it could be a good idea, maybe. I can see pluses and minuses. From a program design standpoint, it's horrible. Worse than Blackboard. (Which we're also using, but I've pretty much learned by now where everything is there.)
Someone tell me to stop watching the RNC before either my eyes roll out of my head or I throw my TV out the window.
