New foods: Papaya!

One of my little goals for the year is to try some new foods.  In general, food and I do not get along well, and I’m often content to eat exactly the same thing day after day forever and ever.  But, there are many foods out there that I haven’t tried, and I’m not getting any younger, so I’ll give some a try.  Perhaps one each month for the whole year.

Today, I bought fresh papaya!  I love dried papaya (it makes me squeal, which is unusual for food!), so I thought this was a safe bet.  It’s good!  It looks like canteloupe and has a similar texture, but it isn’t quite as perfumy as canteloupe.  I looked up info about papaya online and found that papayas can be anywhere from one to 20 pounds (!), and they have good nutritional value including having fiber and a little protein.  So, yay papaya!

I think my next attempt will be mango, which is another fairly safe bet for me (I love fruit!).  Then I think I’ll go for some kind of squash, and then some kind of grain.  This could be fun.

Grad School #23

This was a much better week at school than last week.  Last week was just a bad week and I was monumentally crabby through the entire thing.  All of my classmates are pretty much in the same boat, as though we wonder how in the world we ended up in this stress pool when last semester was pretty OK!

But I had some nice moments this week, including getting helpful and positive feedback from my professors about my work and thinking.  Even at age 35 and in grad school, it’s really nice to hear your teacher say, “That is a great question!”  Of course, the difference is that in grad school, great questions aren’t answered by the professor — the next sentence out of their mouth is, “Why don’t you research it!”  Umm, sure, I’ll get right on that…

I feel like I’m endlessly griping about school so far this semester, and I don’t mean to.  I really do still appreciate this opportunity to learn and dig into my questions about math teaching.  I like what we’re learning in my classes, as we explore the psychology of learning and learn to do qualitative research (like interviews).  I got to play with data for my advisor again, which is always fun.  (I love data!)  By semester’s end, I will have actually prepared a research proposal for a piece of my dissertation work!  Can you believe that?  Five years ago today was my master’s thesis defense — perhaps four years from now will be my dissertation defense!  That would be quite something.

Progress (or how 10 minutes equals 30 minutes)

Our prof let us out of class 10 minutes early this afternoon, which meant that I could catch a bus 30 minutes before my usual bus, and this made me so happy that I practically danced and skipped and wanted to kiss everyone on the way to the bus stop!  That 30 extra minutes meant that I would likely get finished with my schoolwork for the night before 10 o’clock (which I almost did — I finished at 10:15).  And despite being in class for six hours today, followed by another several hours of homework, my brain did not explode this Tuesday, as it did last Tuesday.  So I’m making progress.  If you can call this progress!  What am I progressing toward?  Insanity?  I’m thinking that might be the case.

Only one more six hour day at school for this week.  I think I can, I think I can…

Dancing (yay!), Day 24

Our winter session of line dancing finally started today.  The dance we learned was too fast, but we still all had fun — lots of interaction, laughing, and clapping.  I got to be a wall leader, which I am always excited about (geekly dancer that I am!).

So, hooray for dance class!  I have so needed to dance lately!

Ice Show

My Mom and I both wanted to escape town for a bit today, so we headed out to the Plymouth Ice Show.  It’s very hard to get good photos of ice sculptures (you have to see them in person!), but here are a couple that we especially liked.  The first is a giraffe that looked like crystal (it was amazing!), and the second was a carving that said “Think Spring.”  Given that it was something like 15 degrees when we were out there, I think everyone was happy to Think Spring!

 

Figure skating!

The U.S. Nationals Figure Skating competition has been going on this week.  The ladies finals are tonight!  Yay!  We have such a nice mix of very artistic skaters now — it’s a pleasure to watch them and I’m so thrilled that Alissa Czisny is having a great year!  I look forward to seeing who rises to the challenge in the year ahead to make the Olympic team.  The Olympics start in just over a year!!!!  I can’t wait.

Grad school #22

I am crabby about school this week.  I had a (mostly internal) temper tantrum about school on Tuesday, in which my train of thought went something like this…

I don’t want to read research papers with a critical eye for the rest of my life!  And what does analyzing text have to do with teaching math anyway!  What am I doing here???

Part of the cause of the tantrum was my own fault, as it hadn’t occurred to me that if the early part of my week is packed with thought-demanding classes (one right after the other) that I probably shouldn’t read for the better part of ten hours straight the day before.  (Ya think?)  And I hadn’t touched base much with “normal” (that is, my non-school friends) lately.   And part of it is that our work this semester feels much farther removed from what I want to do than our work last semester.  That happens in grad school, especially when the first year is foundation courses that you have no choice about but that lay out the entire field for you. 

Fortunately, my schedule allowed me to be home all day today (yay!), so I did a mix of school stuff and also had a chance to touch base with normal.  I cleaned my bathtub too — it’s shiny!  *grins*  So hopefully when I return to campus tomorrow, my brain will not explode.

And hey, my next session of dance classes starts Monday (*squeals*!), so that is bound to help!

Equity

I feel very fortunate to have been born in the U.S. at a time when the country was finally starting to come to its senses and realize that issues like race and gender are not attributes that determine someone’s worth or qualifications.  The fact that there was ever a time when people weren’t able to vote because of their race or their gender is so foreign to me that I hardly believe it could have been true.  It is hard to understand what would have prompted people to think that way, to make laws that way.  I am glad that I don’t know that world first-hand.

Through my current schooling, I’m learning a lot about the remnants of the past and the degree to which funding for schools, for example, is determined by where you live and how wealthy your community is.  Children are guaranteed an education through 12th grade in the U.S., but they are in no way guaranteed the same quality of education as their peers in other states or districts.  Education is seen as the ticket out of poverty, but if a child lives in a high poverty area, they will likely attend a school that have fewer resources and less qualified teachers than most.  So the kids who need the best education that money can buy are the least likely to get it.  There are schools in the south where spending per pupil is about a third what it is in the northeast — how is that even possible?  And why is it allowed to persist?  We seem to have replaced all of our previous -isms with a whole new set, including the classism that seems to define the opportunities that people will have.

A year ago, if someone had said that equity would be high on my list of issues to think about in grad school, I would have been surprised.  But, there it is.  In one of my classes last week, we each had to pick from a list of topics that we’re willing to lead discussion on, and I was the only one who chose equity, so the topic is mine.  I am a big believer that everyone should have an equal opportunity to succeed, to learn, to pursue their dreams, to be listened to, to be cared for, to fail and try again.

Two birds, one stone

My weekend has mostly been spent reading (and reading and reading and reading). The sad part is that I am not finished with the reading for even one class yet.  *sighs*  What were my professors thinking?  (They were probably thinking about phenomonology and epistemology and all these things I don’t understand – ha!)

Anyway, as I was contemplating quiting school and joining the circus today, I was looking over the reading assignments for next week.  Perhaps there would be a glimmer of hope that things will get better??  And YES, there was a shiny, glimmery, huggable thing of hope because one of the readings I have to do for this week is also the reading assignment for a different class next week!!!   So when I do that reading tomorrow, I’ll also be ahead of the game for next week in one class at least. *happy dance* 

Tuition:  a gazillion dollars
Textbooks:  $500
Meeting two assignments with one reading:  Priceless!

The Arctic Car of Wonder

My car is 13 years old.  It was my Mom’s car first, and I bought it from her almost eight years ago now.  I don’t drive long distances and I use the bus a lot, so my car still only has around 85,000 miles on it.  Someone said that I’m a really good second owner on a car because I take good care of it (almost always getting the oil changed ahead of schedule, etc.) and don’t expect too much from it.

Every winter, I go into the season wondering if my car will make it through another winter.  And earlier this winter, my car was giving me some issues, requiring a second try on nearly every start when the temperature was below freezing.  Uh oh.

On Thursday, arctic air came to our area.  Temps in single digits and then below zero.  Brrrr!  I hadn’t started the car since Sunday and wondered if this was going to be the end.  But I went out to start my car, and it started right up!  Seriously better than it’s been starting all winter.  Tonight, I went to a gymnastics meet (fun!) in this crazy arctic weather, and again, the car started right up on the way there and after the meet.  The engine sounds very strong!

So apparently, I have some sort of funny car that will only start well in sub-zero weather.  Thus, I think it should be named The Arctic Car of Wonder.