Weather

I just wanted to send you all an update to let you know that the forecast for Sunday has changed to...

SUNNY! With a high of fifty!

Life is great. :)

My upcoming graduation has brought a lot of stress into my life, whether arguments and conflicts amongst friends, planning finances and career plans for the future, or trying to just enjoy my last few weeks. I can't even begin to name the number of stressors that are present in my life right now.

ANYWAY, I thought it might be good to take a few minutes to focus on some positives. So here you go!

1) Bathilda: I have this awesome green pepper plant that I adopted for two weeks as a part of an environmental and sustainability project here on campus. I'll take care of it and foster its growth and then return it to be planted in our campus garden (the green peppers will then be served in the dining services). Anyway, this little bugger of a plant is adorable and super fun!

2) Europe: I leave for Europe in six weeks! How great is that? I've been trying to make this happen for years, and I can't believe it's real. Life is great.

3) School: I will be spending the rest of my life in schools, but in three weeks I will be DONE WITH HOMEWORK! At least until grad school, but hey, we'll deal with that later.

4) Exit loan interviews: All of my friends spent the day today in exit loan sessions learning how to pay back their loans on a 10 or 20 year plan. Thanks to my awesome madre and padre, I didn't have to attend a single one of these sessions. In fact, today I was blessed to receive an $800 reimbursement check for my Chicago trip!

5) Clarinet: I still have the joyful opportunity to be playing clarinet both in Echo Band every Sunday evening and in my conducting class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I meant this whole thing to be a joke, but it's turning out that I'm not actually that bad at clarinet? Weird.

6) Jobs: I am going to get a job! I'm trying so hard. I did a mock interview this morning, which was really emotionally straining, but a good experience for me. I had my first interview with a school tonight, but there must have been some miscommunication because we weren't able to connect over the phone. We're hopefully rescheduling for early next week.

7) Beethoven's 9th: This music is great! I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to make wonderful music with such talented students every day. For four or five days in the last week, we've spend 45 minutes in sectionals, and I've had the chance to lead the Sopranos each of these days. It's been a blessing for me to take such ownership in pride in knowing that I am responsible for having taught the Sopranos much of the music.

There are myriad other things I could list, but this has already done its job - put me in a better mood and reminded me of all the things in life I have to enjoy during times of trial.

What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger, right? ;-)

Senioritis? Oops.

Also, I have Senioritis. Can you tell? I should be writing a paper that's due in the morning. Oops. Oh well.

We have this awesome thing called "Term Calculator" and it lists all of our classes out like this:

2 credits - Instrumental Conducting
4 credits - Religion 300
4 credits - Astronomy
2 credits - Counterpoint
1 credit - Yoga
1 credit - Echo Band
1 credit - Chapel Choir
1 credit - Voice
1 credit - Organ

And then, by each class, it has a little pull-down menu where you can pick letter grades. For instance: I can give myself straight A's in my music classes, but B's and C's in my gen-eds. It will then calculate my GPA for the term, and my overall/cumulative GPA for graduation.

Currently, my GPA is 3.81. The cutoffs for graduation with honors are as follows:

3.9 - Summa cum laude
3.7 - Magna cum laude
3.5 - Cum laude

So, I am on track to graduate magna cum laude.

If I give myself A's in all of my classes, my GPA will still only be 3.83. Clearly, there's no way I can graduate summa cum laude. Thus, I need to make sure to keep my GPA above 3.7 so I can graduate magna cum laude.

I know I will get A's in all of my music classes and in yoga. So the only classes I could even possibly worry about would be Religion and Astronomy. In order for my GPA to be exactly 3.7, I need to get one of these combinations:

C- / C-

D+ / C

D / C+

D- / B-

If I get below a D-, I fail and won't graduate. Boo.

Anyway, this is great news! I have never gotten below a B in any college class, so I think I'll be okay.

Just thought I'd share...I'm super impressed if you read all of this!

Countdowns!

With March quickly approaching (in fifteen or so minutes), I figured it's time for some countdowns...

3 days until the Chapel Choir retreat
8 days until National ACDA Conference in Chicago
15 days until Chapel Choir tour
20 days until my last Chapel Choir concert
41 days until I turn 22
41 days until the education career fair in Minneapolis
46 days until my big sis turns 26
48 days until my last performance at Concordia
61 days until my lease is through
62 days until graduation
62 days until my last worship service at Grace UMC
78 days until Europe
92 days until Support Staff training begins at camp
96 days until Staff training begins at camp
101 days until Holly graduates

Many great things are drawing near! I've got so much to look forward to...

Teachers' pay

A friend posted this on Facebook, and I think it's great! Bear with me through the first bit - I know it's painful. :)

Are you sick of high paid teachers?

Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations. LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year. Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is! The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Car!

Having a car in college is a blessing and a curse. I could fill pages upon pages about how it has been a blessing, but here are some particular was in which my car has been interesting lately:

Monday: Drove a roommate to the doctor

Tuesday: Drove a friend to the car doctor, stopped by the guitar repair shop for another friend

Wednesday: Lent my car to a roommate to take licensure exams

Thursday: Drove back to the guitar repair shop to retrieve fixed guitar

Friday: Drove a friend to the airport

Yikes! Some times, I'll go a month without having to fill my car up with gas. Other times, I drive all week and have to fill up each weekend. (sad face!) BUT, I guess I had my time of lynching rides off of others, so now it's my turn to give back a little!

Highlights of the weekend!

1) Leading a small group

Much to my surprise, I arrived at camp this weekend to find out I was in charge of leading one of the small group Bible studies that met three times throughout the weekend. I was assigned a group of thirteen year-old kids, and got to read the Bible, play games, and do art projects with them for a few hours each day. They were quite the group to handle, but it was fun! I like being silly with kids. :)

2) The office

I spent an average of four hours a day in the office this summer, and it was fun to be able to retreat back to a place I remember so well and so fondly! I enjoy having a place to go when meals get too loud or when I'm overwhelmed with crazy kiddos. I have the special privelege of hanging out in the office!

3) Yelling

Due to an unfortunate circumstance involving a bunch of curse words and physical violence, I yelled at two kids. I've never yelled at camp before - never, in three and a half years...crazy! I guess my patience is tested when safety is a concern.

4) Puzzles

In a 48-hour span, we finished THREE 1000-piece puzzles. They kept us up until the wee hours of the night (morning??), and I may have gotten a little crabby, but we did it!

5) Volunteers

We have approximately twenty-five people on our summer staff, and we had nineteen people volunteering at this retreat. It was a volunteer-camper ratio of 1:6. I thought that was pretty impressive! It was great to see such good friends that I haven't seen in months. Anyway, we were all stacked in the basement of a lodge for living quarters. We had two toilets, three sinks, and ONE shower for the nineteen of us. Yuck! Saturday was honestly the first day in my entire life that I have noticed how bad I smell. Needless to say, I found a way to fit in a shower.

6) Snow fort

We built two awesome snow forts. As in, the kind you see in the Hoover playground where there are a bunch of tunnels intersecting and enough room for people to sleep! A few people slept in one of them Saturday but had to leave halfway through the night because it was so cold...oops!

7) Food

Mmmm, food is so much better when it is free! And when it's made for you. And when it comes from camp. Camp oatmeal is probably my favorite thing in the universe (okay, not really, but pretty close!). I even got to bring home a tupperware of extra food!

8) Banangrams (Scrabble)

I like games...a lot. I like words...a lot. I like word games...a lot! Friends at camp sure love word games a lot, too! It was fun to play and make silly words and make up rules and laugh.

9) Boot hockey (broomball)

There was an excellent full-size hockey court cleared on the lake, and we played a few rousing games of broomball. SO COLD (turns out it is windy on the lake??), but so great!

10) Sledding, skiing, snowshoeing

I couldn't bring my cross-country skiis to camp because I had five people in my itty-bitty car. But, luckily, camp has some awesome skiis (from the '70s), that we could borrow. Similarly, camp has a bunch of old snowshoes that are great to tromp around in. And, we made this sledding hill from the lodge all the way down to the lake (thankfully there was a clearing in the trees) and sledded down on inner tubes.

It was a great way to spend a weekend! Some day, I am going to have to stop working at camp for the summer, and that's going to be really difficult for me. It really is one of the best places on Earth!