A note to Khalida, Sydney, Brandon, Jessica, Frank, Miranda, Ashley G., Carly, Max, Kyle, Kristin, Mike, Jodi, Morgan, Kayla, Kelly, Brandi, Jack, Sarah, Bernard, Ashley S., Chelsea, Abbi, Kevin, Chris, Tony, and Jenna:
I am lucky. I get to go to work and do something I love. And I get to meet new groups of students on a regular basis. The downside? I get pretty attached to those students and when the class is over I have to say goodbye. I hate that.
J-Term '11 class? I am really going to miss every single one of you. I wish you all the best and I hope you keep talking about HIV and educating people. I know you all have the courage within you. I hope someday you all are lucky enough to have a job you truly enjoy and I wish you a life filled with fulfillment. Be safe, be well.
I hope our paths cross again very soon. Take care.
Love-
Marla
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Kindergarten Information Junkies
We're heading out to yet another Kindergarten information meeting. This one is at the actual school our child will actually attend. We're deep in the midst of last minute trip preparations and I'm also frantically grading but nothing can keep us from our quest for information.
I suspect the information will be identical to the previous meeting. If this is the case, the quest will end abruptly and we'll rush home to finish packing and watch Cake Boss.
Here's hoping.
I suspect the information will be identical to the previous meeting. If this is the case, the quest will end abruptly and we'll rush home to finish packing and watch Cake Boss.
Here's hoping.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Fun at a Price
January is fun for me. I get to teach everyday. I have a chance to eat lunch with friends. I get to ride public transportation. I get to teach subject matter that is important to me.
Of course there is a down side. I end up having to plan class in the afternoon when I am stupid or in the evening when I'm even stupider. My house is a total mess. The weekends are anything but restful.
I wouldn't say my child has suffered although Eric has done the lion's share of childcare this month. Sarah loves her daddy but I'm missing out. I am only support staff when it comes to parenting this month. I think the extent of my quality time with my child today consisted of me putting a Hello Kitty temporary tattoo on her while I was writing an exam at the same time. This feels like a pretty big price to pay.
Almost every mom I know talks about trying to achieve the balance between motherhood and work. Almost no mom I know has achieved that balance.
Of course there is a down side. I end up having to plan class in the afternoon when I am stupid or in the evening when I'm even stupider. My house is a total mess. The weekends are anything but restful.
I wouldn't say my child has suffered although Eric has done the lion's share of childcare this month. Sarah loves her daddy but I'm missing out. I am only support staff when it comes to parenting this month. I think the extent of my quality time with my child today consisted of me putting a Hello Kitty temporary tattoo on her while I was writing an exam at the same time. This feels like a pretty big price to pay.
Almost every mom I know talks about trying to achieve the balance between motherhood and work. Almost no mom I know has achieved that balance.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
No Time to Blog
Wow - Blogging is totally time consuming. I'm actually enjoying much more than I imagined but it's also much more time consuming than I imagined.
I'm packing (still) and finishing an exam so I'm taking a "Get Out of Blog Free Card" today.
Just so I am not totally free of content for the day, I'll suggest the iphone/ipod app "Paper Town" if you need a little stress relief.
Here are some samples, courtesy of my daughter. I'm impressed with her ability to put together cute outfits.
Have a nice Sunday!
I'm packing (still) and finishing an exam so I'm taking a "Get Out of Blog Free Card" today.
Just so I am not totally free of content for the day, I'll suggest the iphone/ipod app "Paper Town" if you need a little stress relief.
Here are some samples, courtesy of my daughter. I'm impressed with her ability to put together cute outfits.
Have a nice Sunday!
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Magical Update
Vacation Update - I'm trying not to overpack for our trip to Disney World. This is no easy task. Several members of the Polley family like to bring a lot of stuff on vacation. You can try to guess which ones and I'll give you hint -- it is the family members who are not me.
I spent some time today trying to thin down the number of princess accessories (hers) and the amount of gadgets (his) when I remembered we have The Disney Magical Express!
This is by far the best travel invention ever. Here's how it works. We got magical yellow tags from Disney to stick on our luggage. When we get to O'Hare, we'll hand our luggage to a person at the curb and it (we hope) will go on its happy little way to Orlando. We'll go and get on the plane. When we get to Orlando, we'll scamper over to the Magical Express Bus and ride without our luggage to our hotel watching promotional Disney videos that are (I'm guessing) designed to brainwash my child into wanting things from the 10,000 Magic Kingdom gift shops. The luggage will get there on its own somehow and a nice person will bring it up to our room. On the way home, the whole thing will happen in reverse and our luggage will arrive in Chicago. Yay!
The moral to this story? Polley family - pack as much crap as you want as long as it doesn't weigh over 50 pounds! We're going on vacation!
Hmmm - Do you think it would be possible for a person who weighs 36 pounds to pack over 50 pounds of stuff? Stay tuned.
I spent some time today trying to thin down the number of princess accessories (hers) and the amount of gadgets (his) when I remembered we have The Disney Magical Express!
This is by far the best travel invention ever. Here's how it works. We got magical yellow tags from Disney to stick on our luggage. When we get to O'Hare, we'll hand our luggage to a person at the curb and it (we hope) will go on its happy little way to Orlando. We'll go and get on the plane. When we get to Orlando, we'll scamper over to the Magical Express Bus and ride without our luggage to our hotel watching promotional Disney videos that are (I'm guessing) designed to brainwash my child into wanting things from the 10,000 Magic Kingdom gift shops. The luggage will get there on its own somehow and a nice person will bring it up to our room. On the way home, the whole thing will happen in reverse and our luggage will arrive in Chicago. Yay!
The moral to this story? Polley family - pack as much crap as you want as long as it doesn't weigh over 50 pounds! We're going on vacation!
Hmmm - Do you think it would be possible for a person who weighs 36 pounds to pack over 50 pounds of stuff? Stay tuned.
Friday, January 21, 2011
The Wails on the Bus
As I mentioned in my previous post, there were no actual wails on the field trip or even whimpers for that matter. That is due to the heroic amount of restraint and positive attitudes exhibited by my students. Here was our day:
-Everyone arrived by 7:30 am. In fact, several students arrived before I did since I had to stop for another cup of coffee. (I left Evanston at 6:00 am.)
-The bus driver met me before I climbed aboard and reminded me he used to portray Santa. He had informed me of this on the phone the previous day and it must be a selling point for him as a driver because his ability to drive certainly was not. More about that later.
-Next I hopped on the bus. My students looked horrified.
Wait -- I have to take a break from describing our day to describe the bus. On the outside it looked like a normal bus that could fit 28 people. But the inside was sort of a cross between a stereotypical bad bachelor living room and that van that takes people to prison. It had a DVD player (we didn't have any DVDs though), radio, a connection for a ipod, and a useful feature which was a button that could close the window between us and Santa. It also had buttons that could activate the disco lights which were not very appealing at 7:30 in the morning. We had benches to sit on which caused us to be close together in a way that is only comfortable if you're in a romantic relationship, or if you are a preschooler.
-OK - back to the day. Santa informed me that the bus was only authorized to hold 20 people but he'd let us all get on the bus. (I had mentioned that we had 27 people in three separate phone calls to the bus company and again on the phone to Santa the previous day.)
-Despite Santa being willing to break the rules of the bus company 28 adults would never fit on that bus unless they were adult elves and even then it would be a squeeze.
-Two groups of students offered to drive and practically sprinted to their cars in relief. The students who remained on the bus, who will from this moment forward be referred to as "Team Disco" looked miserable.
-Everybody took off. Team Disco had decided to keep the shades down on the bus so they could nap and we rode all the way to Chicago in darkness other than the faint glimmer of the disco lights and the glow of 17 students texting "this bus sux" in unison.
-When we arrived at the field trip, many of us were rather carsick from Santa's driving. One of the students was following in his car and he said something like "Dude, he was totally swerving."
(As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the field trip itself was totally awesome and was a nice distraction from the horrifying reality that eventually we would have to get back on that bus.)
-When it was time to get back on, Team Disco maintained a positive attitude which I think they should totally mention at all future job interviews.
-The Team seemed cheery and even tried their best to educate me on current music even though I thought Justin Bieber sounded like a girl and I was disturbed by the song about having unsafe sex with multiple partners and I helpfully suggested the sequel would be a song about chlamydia.
-I hopped off at a mall in Skokie and felt guilty and held my breath until I got text messages from all three groups of students that they had arrived back to campus safely.
To conclude, three important things:
1. The bus company cut the price in half when I called to complain so at least we did not pay full price for that nightmare on wheels.
2. The students all seemed very enthusiastic about the field trip and hopefully the trauma from the bus will eventually diminish.
3. I'm almost positive he isn't really Santa.
-Everyone arrived by 7:30 am. In fact, several students arrived before I did since I had to stop for another cup of coffee. (I left Evanston at 6:00 am.)
-The bus driver met me before I climbed aboard and reminded me he used to portray Santa. He had informed me of this on the phone the previous day and it must be a selling point for him as a driver because his ability to drive certainly was not. More about that later.
-Next I hopped on the bus. My students looked horrified.
Wait -- I have to take a break from describing our day to describe the bus. On the outside it looked like a normal bus that could fit 28 people. But the inside was sort of a cross between a stereotypical bad bachelor living room and that van that takes people to prison. It had a DVD player (we didn't have any DVDs though), radio, a connection for a ipod, and a useful feature which was a button that could close the window between us and Santa. It also had buttons that could activate the disco lights which were not very appealing at 7:30 in the morning. We had benches to sit on which caused us to be close together in a way that is only comfortable if you're in a romantic relationship, or if you are a preschooler.
-OK - back to the day. Santa informed me that the bus was only authorized to hold 20 people but he'd let us all get on the bus. (I had mentioned that we had 27 people in three separate phone calls to the bus company and again on the phone to Santa the previous day.)
-Despite Santa being willing to break the rules of the bus company 28 adults would never fit on that bus unless they were adult elves and even then it would be a squeeze.
-Two groups of students offered to drive and practically sprinted to their cars in relief. The students who remained on the bus, who will from this moment forward be referred to as "Team Disco" looked miserable.
-Everybody took off. Team Disco had decided to keep the shades down on the bus so they could nap and we rode all the way to Chicago in darkness other than the faint glimmer of the disco lights and the glow of 17 students texting "this bus sux" in unison.
-When we arrived at the field trip, many of us were rather carsick from Santa's driving. One of the students was following in his car and he said something like "Dude, he was totally swerving."
(As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the field trip itself was totally awesome and was a nice distraction from the horrifying reality that eventually we would have to get back on that bus.)
-When it was time to get back on, Team Disco maintained a positive attitude which I think they should totally mention at all future job interviews.
-The Team seemed cheery and even tried their best to educate me on current music even though I thought Justin Bieber sounded like a girl and I was disturbed by the song about having unsafe sex with multiple partners and I helpfully suggested the sequel would be a song about chlamydia.
-I hopped off at a mall in Skokie and felt guilty and held my breath until I got text messages from all three groups of students that they had arrived back to campus safely.
To conclude, three important things:
1. The bus company cut the price in half when I called to complain so at least we did not pay full price for that nightmare on wheels.
2. The students all seemed very enthusiastic about the field trip and hopefully the trauma from the bus will eventually diminish.
3. I'm almost positive he isn't really Santa.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
No Day But Today
OK - I admit it. I have an irrational fear of field trips.
It seems like potential disaster lurks around every turn. The transportation seems fraught with disturbing possibilities. The places we visit can sometimes have a lack of chairs, or they forget we're coming, or the guest speaker will decide to go horrifyingly off-script. The students can occasionally have made the unfortunate decision to stay up way too late the night before and they spend the whole trip crabbing about the previously mentioned stuff.
Today's trip to TPAN? In a word - Great. Really.
Was it perfect? Well, not exactly and you'll see why when I blog about the bus in a few days. (Really - I need to heal before I can write about it.)
My students? Fantastic. They listened, spoke, treated our speakers with great respect and were treated with respect in return. The politely ate the donuts and pizza the agency kindly provided. They completed their service project with speed and enthusiasm usually reserved for Santa's elves.
The speakers? Awesome. They shared their information and stories with great honesty and humor. I could not believe how many incredible people work at that agency. They were so nice to us.
To TPAN and to my students -- many thanks. I am totally exhausted, but in a good way.
It seems like potential disaster lurks around every turn. The transportation seems fraught with disturbing possibilities. The places we visit can sometimes have a lack of chairs, or they forget we're coming, or the guest speaker will decide to go horrifyingly off-script. The students can occasionally have made the unfortunate decision to stay up way too late the night before and they spend the whole trip crabbing about the previously mentioned stuff.
Today's trip to TPAN? In a word - Great. Really.
Was it perfect? Well, not exactly and you'll see why when I blog about the bus in a few days. (Really - I need to heal before I can write about it.)
My students? Fantastic. They listened, spoke, treated our speakers with great respect and were treated with respect in return. The politely ate the donuts and pizza the agency kindly provided. They completed their service project with speed and enthusiasm usually reserved for Santa's elves.
The speakers? Awesome. They shared their information and stories with great honesty and humor. I could not believe how many incredible people work at that agency. They were so nice to us.
To TPAN and to my students -- many thanks. I am totally exhausted, but in a good way.
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