Volunteers

Life has been extremely busy, between school and work, but I finally have the time and energy to blog, so even though it will be short, it's something.

One of the main parts of my job is to recruit volunteers. I have been doing that for most of this week, and I am starting to get results. Almost too many to keep up with, in fact. It is wonderful how many people want to work with ESL students! I'm just looking for substitutes, so it's not a huge time commitment, but I've been getting a lot of responses from students from the U of M. I'm really excited to have new volunteers, and hopefully soon they will be able to come in and we'll see how well they do teaching the students. It's been a hectic week for sure, but my job is going very well and it's good to have results to prove it!

"So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life."

An, Auf, Hinter, In....

Working as the volunteer coordinator of ESL programs, I have had cause to reminisce on my own 2nd language experiences. Yesterday, one of the teachers was looking at some of the games available to use to help with certain particulars of a language (i.e., verbs, certain categories of nouns, etc.). The game that this teacher was getting excited about had to do with prepositions. She made the comment that she especially liked to use the ones that the students could act out.

Immediately I thought of my early years in German class with Frau Vickerman. She had actions for all of the prepositions, and she not only acted them out, but she had us do it too. She would first teach us the word in German and what it was in English, illustrated by her version of what it looked like acted out. Then, after a few repetitions, she would do one of two things. She would either act out the preposition and we would have to guess the word, or she would say the word and then we would have to do the action for it. Even though I was in high school, it was actually pretty fun, and sometimes funny. And though it may have seemed silly at the time, it was a good way to learn the prepositions. And let's face it, prepositions are an integral part of any language, so a strong knowledge of what they mean and how to use them is vital in learning a language. Looking back, I really appreciate Frau Vickerman's attempts to get us physically involved with learning German, not just with prepositions but with other parts of the language as well. Still, I can even know see her moving her arms at a 90 degree angle on either side of her body for "zwischen", or raising her arms up for "uber." As some of my siblings know, she could sometimes be harsh, but she really drilled the German language into us, and she had a way of making it enjoyable. The quote today is in memory of wonderful German classes and Frau Vickerman's strict yet effective way of teaching.

"Jesus Maria Mutter Gottes!"

Checkrs

Last night was Game Night over at Kendrick and Lindsey's. Gina and Josh, Theresa and Famoso, and Eric and I all went over. We played a bunch of games, ate some snacks, chatted, all in all had a good time. It was nice to get together with some of the family for a fun evening. Overall the whole weekend was pretty relaxing, not too much homework yet since 3 of my classes haven't even started. I do have homework for 2 of those already, but nothing too strenuous yet. I'll find out soon though how much work they are going to be since I have all 4 of my classes this week!

In addition to starting most of my MAT classes this week, classes for the ESL program at the church where I now work start this week as well, tomorrow in fact. That means things are going to be very busy at work as I figure out what exactly that entails for me. I know the first 2 days there is a lot of registration and figuring out who is supposed to be in what level class, so I am going to be helping with that a lot. I have not really had the opportunity yet to do one of the main things they hired me to do--recruit new volunteers. In fact, I've only had contact with volunteers once so far. I've only worked 3 days, so I guess that isn't too bad, but I hope my other workload decreases enough so that I have time to recruit volunteers!

"Oy! Ten thousand years can give you such a crick in the neck!"

School, Yet Again

It is that time of the year again. School is starting. Actually, for most people, it already has. The day after Labor Day is the beginning of the year for most schools (or earlier). For St. Thomas, the first day of school is 2 days after Labor Day. Gives more time for orientation and whatnot. So tomorrow, I start my first day at my new school, as a student in the Masters of Arts in Theology program. I have a full schedule, plus one. A full courseload for graduate students is 3 classes; I am taking 4. Of course, the 4th one is not for credit, I'm just auditing it because I have a lot of interest in the topic. It is John Paul II and Humanae Vitae, and if you know me at all you know that during the past year at St. Kate's I did an honors project on Catholic Sexual Ethics. Humanae Vitae is the major encyclical on contraception, and therefore pertinent to what I did on my project. In fact, I used that encyclical widely in my paper as well as secondary work, particularly by on author, Janet Smith, who in fact is the guest professor at St. Thomas this year and the professor for this course. That is the second major reason I am taking this course-I am very excited to have a class taught by a well-known author/professor whose books I used for my project. It should be a very interesting and enjoyable class. Unfortunately, that class has 37 students in it, mostly, I'm guessing, seminarians.

That class will normally be held on Tuesdays, so unfortunately I will not have it until next week, nor will I have one of my other courses, Theology of God. I'm hoping that one shouldn't be too bad, it's average sized and I took a course on the Quest for God in Contemporary Experience at St. Kate's so hopefully not all of the information will be new! Plus, when I purchased my books I realized that some are on christology, so that is not completely new terroritory for me.

The classes that I will actually have this week are the Eucharist, which somehow only has 2 students in it. Hopefully that means I will learn a lot since there will be more individual attention. Of course, it also means I better be well prepared since there will be fewer people to contribute! My 4th and last class is Christianity in the Middle Ages. It sounds very interesting; however, I could only purchase one of the more than 10 books for the course at the bookstore. The others I had to search for online, and even then I still couldn't find a few, and some of the others were over $100. I will not be buying those but instead will hopefully be finding them on course reserve at St. Thomas. Many are out of print and the professor himself could only suggest where to find them. To me, that is ridiculous. How are we supposed to do the required assignments if the professor cannot even guarantee we can find the books? Hopefully by the time I need them, I will have found all of them or have access to them at St. Thomas.

That is my course schedule for the year! 4 courses, all at night, Mon.-Thurs. During the days I will be working 2 part-time jobs, one at Allina, the other at Holy Rosary. It is going to be a busy year and I will be working hard but I expect to learn a lot and hopefully not explode by the end of the semester!

"You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they are acting retarded."