How's this for an "attention-getter"?

Are you a jerk?

What if I were to approach your parents and ask them this question about you? “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So. Is your kid a jerk?” What would they respond? Well, let’s see…do you talk back to your parents? Do you remember to call them? Did you take your mother out for her birthday this year? What about if I asked your closest friends the same question about you: Are you around for them when they need a shoulder to cry on? Have they ever caught you spilling one of their secrets to other people?

More likely than not, you probably get along quite well with those in your family as well as your closest friends. Chances are, also, that over the course of your relationships with these people, you’ve exhibited some jerk-like behavior toward them every now and then. Do these sporadic moments of jerkiness cause these people to classify you as a jerk overall? In most cases, probably not, since with every episode of jerkiness you’ve displayed, you’ve probably also had a multitude of episodes that demonstrate your more positive qualities: perhaps you bought your friend the watch that struck her fancy for her birthday or did your parents’ taxes for them. Perhaps you sacrificed a whole evening’s worth or work in order to comfort a friend after she had been fired from her job. Whatever the case may be, those who know you well know that although you have your “moments”, you’re an overall-decent person.

Now let’s ask those who dislike you the same question: Are you a jerk? A larger quantity of these people would probably respond with a “yes.” Why is this? Most of the time, those who dislike you do not know you as well as your family and close friends do. I mean, you do not like one another, so how much time have you actually spent getting to know one another? Too often in life, a single negative interaction or annoying habit can lead to one person’s disliking of another one, which can eventually grow to a great tension – sometimes even the formation of enemies! - between two people. For example, let’s say Billy and Sally are complete strangers, and Billy accidentally trips Sally with his foot. Gasp! Guess what? Billy doesn’t apologize. After Sally becomes offended that Billy did not apologize to her, it is imprinted in Sally’s mind that Billy is “rude”, and she forms the rest of her opinion about him as a whole person based on his actions, or lack thereof, in this one incident. She starts noticing all of the “rude” things that Billy does – a time when he loses eye contact with a person he was talking to; a time when he is sending a text message to a friend when another person is talking to him; a time when he burps and doesn’t say “Excuse me!” – and tells her friends that Billy is just a rude person. Word gets around to Billy that Sally is talking about him behind his back, and Billy grows angry at Sally for trying to tarnish his reputation. He may start calling Sally rather crude names behind her back, starting a vicious cycle of rumors and name-calling.

The bottom line is this: Do these two people actually know one another well? No. Did they take the time to get to know one another well? No, because one incident (the accidental tripping without the apology) led one individual to form a negative opinion about the other individual. Since the negative opinion of the offender had already been formed, he can no longer redeem himself by showing off his more positive qualities in the future, as once an opinion is formed, it is not easily changed. Plus, by that time, the two individuals have had other conflicts with one another, conflicts that are much more personal than the initial incident, conflicts involving false rumors and name-calling and everything that people should have stopped doing at age eight but for some reason keep doing into our adulthood. Really, this stuff is gold for Reality TV, but pitiful in real life. (Side note: If you don’t believe that people start disliking one another for reasons as stupid as getting tripped by accident and not receiving an apology, you clearly don’t know people!)

In a story, there are characters who are “round” and characters who are “flat.” “Round” characters are the main characters: those who are developed, those with a back story, those with internal conflicts, those whose thoughts and actions affect the entire outcome of the story. Then there are the “flat” characters: think Friar John from Romeo and Juliet. You remember: “Oh, hey, Friar Laurence! You gave me one simple task to do, and I couldn’t do it because I was locked in a room, since some people suspected that I might have the plague. Better luck next time!” Friar John is a “flat” character. In the play, very little about his personality or background is revealed. He has one role, he plays it (or fails to play it, as the case may be), and then he disappears into oblivion. Great guy!

Too often, people have a tendency to think of other people as “flat” characters with no dimension whatsoever. Let's say a guy cuts you off in traffic. You write him off as a selfish road hog and drive on your merry way. Can you really determine if this guy is selfish? What if it turns out that the reason he cut you off was because he was rushing his son to the emergency room? Would that change your opinion? Do you still think he's selfish? Each person is complex, filled with a lifetime of experiences that shape who he/she is currently and a wide variety of positive and negative personality traits that come out at different times. It’s unfair to judge the whole person’s character by one incident or even by one context. Do you act the exact same way around your parents as you do your friends? How is that different from the way you act around your teachers?

Let’s take a look at this from a teaching standpoint: Have you ever had a student who was just hard to handle? Does she try to sleep in class in class constantly, fail quizzes repeatedly, talk back to you, and turn in assignments late? Did you find yourself dismissing students like these as “lazy” or “rude”? The fact of the matter is that the setting of your classroom is just one context. How do you know that Courtney doesn’t excel in math, even though she is nearly failing your history class? How do you know that the reason Russell doesn’t seem to respect female authority figures is because he doesn’t have a positive female role model at home? You don’t! Students will exhibit certain behaviors in your classroom which may not always be behaviors that they exhibit in other facets of their lives. By all means, you should most definitely correct the behaviors that are inappropriate for the classroom (it’s your job!), but do not be so harsh as to make judgments about the overall character of your students based on what you see in your classroom alone. Do not simply assume that a student's behavior in your classroom paints the full picture of who they are, and most definitely do not give up on trying to get through to them!

Remember: to each person, there is a juxtaposition of good and bad. On that note, some people also have a talking, chocolate goblin with three front teeth living in their brain and giving them orders, but that’s for another day…


This entry has been brought to you by peace, love, and common sense.

The B+ that bit me.

Have you ever had that dream where you’re alone in the woods, and out of nowhere a giant, fanged B+ jumps out of the bushes and starts chasing you around, vying for a taste of your blood? Yeah, neither have I; however, from the panic and chaos that receiving a B+ creates in many people, one would believe that this is a recurring dream for a large portion of the population.

It’s not too much of a wonder why this idea is implanted in the minds of so many. High schools, for one, create competition among students through class rankings, with the top prize promising special privileges: a special page in the newspaper, a marking on your transcript, a chance to speak at graduation, special stoles and/or chords…oh yeah, and bragging rights, everybody's favorite (although most won't admit it.) On top of this, there are lies about the expectations of the nation’s top institutions that are fed to innocent, naive high school students who tend to eat it all up without stopping to check the facts. Oftentimes, these false ideas are fed to them by those who are equally as oblivious and do not have the facts completely straight and therefore shouldn’t be talking, like classmates or parents who applied to college in the last generation when things were a little bit different. “Did you know that such-and-such school won’t accept you unless you have a 4.0 GPA?” Who are you, a spokesperson for the school? Each school has its own standards for accepting students, and GPA is only one element of the application. There’s a reason that applications consist of more than just merely sending in a transcript, you know.

When I was a senior in high school, Yale University invited me to attend an information session about the school. With no desire to apply to out-of-state schools, but still curious as to what an Ivy League school would possibly expect of potential students, I attended the session. The most shocking revelation to me was when the representative told the crowd that Yale rejects 64% of applicants with perfect ACT and/or SAT scores. He went on to say that many of the applicants accepted did not have perfect GPAs either. I wish I had tape recorded that part of the presentation so I can play it back to many of the parents I encounter over the course of my teaching career. Perfection does not necessarily equate to getting into the college of your dreams!

But students and parents are not aware of this. They are under the impression that a 4.0 GPA is an instant pass into any university of their choosing; therefore, some parents send their kids to school and expect perfection: answer every question on the quiz correctly. Receive every point possible on this paper. Get every extra credit point. While these things sound like a solid formula to mastery of the material, this mentality is ultimately making school itself into a “system” that must be “mastered” as opposed to a place where people learn new concepts and grow as individuals.

And what do grades truly say about the student's ability? Sometimes, they are an inaccurate indicator of a student's progress in mastering the skills that they are supposed to be learning. For instance, as an English teacher, I am naturally aware that almost every single piece of literature that is covered in the classroom also has a page on Sparknotes. I would also be naive if I said that I believe that every single student reads the assigned readings from the book instead of taking the "easy way out" by looking up the plot on Sparknotes. Sadly, as I observed in my student teaching, some can do this and still manage to pass the quizzes. Let’s say that I have two students who are given a reading assignment: Student A read the assignment from the book; Student B read the plot on Sparknotes. Both students were able to pull off an “A” on the quiz, and we move ahead in the curriculum. What ends up happening, though? Student B is satisfied with his grade because it is the “A” that he desires, but he’s ultimately not developing the same skills in analytical thinking, critical thinking, and vocabulary as Student A. Again, while both students received the same grade on the assignments, they are getting very different things out of them, and the differences in the reading and writing skills of these two students will increase as the years progress. Sadly, many students see school one assignment at a time and are not paying attention, or are oblivious, to the effects their choices now are going to have for them down the road. As in so many other aspects of life, everything you do (or don't do!) will come back to haunt you later on.

One of my pet peeves about teaching is the fact that it takes me so much time to grade papers because I like to provide each student with a sufficient amount of feedback. Why? So they can take my advice and not make the same mistakes again. In the ideal world, where school is about growth and – gasp! – getting smarter, students would review their papers and think about the comments I left for them so that next time, their writing will be much better. What happens instead? I return the papers, and they are either immediately stuffed in a folder, crumpled up and thrown in a trashcan, or, in the case of those who want to show off that they did well on the assignment, “conveniently” left on top of the desk so that those with wandering eyes can get a look at the student’s superior mark. It’s all about the number at the top of the page, the letter on the report card, or the bragging rights that one has over his friend when he gets a higher score than she does.

So what do we do about this problem? Eliminate grades entirely? No, that causes laziness in many students (if it’s not graded, students don’t put effort into it…) I think it’s time to, first of all, dispel the rumors that parents and students are hearing about what colleges these days expect. Let them know that there’s nothing wrong with a B+, assuming that the student has put his or her best effort into the assignment. Secondly, we need to constantly remind students that it is okay to make mistakes. As much as I despise clichés, there really is a reason that there are erasers on pencils, and it has nothing to do with adding a pink flare of decoration to the otherwise-motonous yellow paint. To err is human, and unless you are some sort of robot or alien or super-sized, floating brain, you will err. Keep errin’! You’re good at it! Most definitely learn to fix your err, but don’t be ashamed that you erred! Okay, time to stop overusing one of my favorite words. (Well, okay, one more time: ERR!)

Additionally, remember that if you see a B+ on your paper, don't scream; it's for the best, I promise.

Ze passion, it iz gone...

When you were little, did you ever imagine yourself as a doctor? How about a lawyer? An astronaut? A pro athlete? Why did you imagine yourself as those things? When I was about five years old, I told my mother that I wanted to be a mitten maker. In my five-year-old head, cutting out mitten shapes from pieces of paper and taping them together (come on, I was five! Do you really my mother would have even let me near knitting needles to make real mittens?) seemed like a the perfect career for me. After all, I loved making paper mittens, and shouldn’t your job be something that you love to do, in an area of study about which you love to learn?

Flash forward eighteen years. I have both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree under my belt in areas not even remotely related to making mittens, and I teach at a learning center. I ask a class of sixth graders to discuss their future goals with me, and the responses I receive are more than a bit startling.

“I want to be a doctor because my parents told me it’s the only respectable job there is.”

“I want to go into science because that’s what all of my friends are doing.”

“I want to someday go to a school in the Ivy League because that’s what my parents say that my friend’s parents are making him do. I’m smarter than him, so if he can do it, I can do it.”

“I want to be an engineer because I want to show people that I’m smart enough to be successful.”

Excuse me, what? Why are these students’ career goals so strongly influenced by parent and peer pressure? Initially, I figured that maybe some of these answers came about by the fact that these kids are probably a little too young to have thought much about their career goals. Instead of actually thinking about what they wanted to do, they settled for the jobs that either their parents had or that their parents were perhaps encouraging them to do. Then, however, I made a very startling connection.

I have many friends from high school and college who are currently in either medical school, law school, or another doctorate program. The rigor of these programs is brutal, and it takes a certain strong work ethic and self discipline to get through them. Certainly, I once assumed, any person who opts to enroll in such a program must be very passionate about what he is doing. Upon talking to many of my friends in these programs, however, I’m noticing a very scary trend.

“I don’t want to do this. My parents pushed me into it.”

“I’m not really interested in this; I’m just doing it so my friends, peers, and family will view me as successful.”

“I want to live in a big house some day, so I’m going to get through this program.”

Okay, really? You are in these programs that eat up years of your life so that you can impress others? So you can create a certain "image" for yourself that may not be true to who you really are? So that you can live in a big house? Why do these responses, given to me by people with about thirteen more years of life experience, so closely parallel those given to me by the sixth graders?

What happened to learning for the sake of learning? To going outside and asking questions about why the leaves are changing color, just to satisfy your curiosity? To asking your father where the sun goes at night time because you want to understand why the world turns so dark? To figuring out why the tiny snowman you brought in the house a few minutes ago is now a puddle of water? What happened to being a doctor or a lawyer so you can help people? Why not be an engineer for the love of creating and operating things? Where's the heart in your job? Why are students – who eventually become adults with a similar mindset – so greatly motivated by pressure from others or the desire to show other people up that they forget that learning can be enjoyable? Most importantly for me, what can I do as a teacher to bring a passion for learning, the acquisition of knowledge for the sake of simply understanding more about our world, back into my classroom?

Through the Eyes of the Tiny

First of all, this is my first education-related blog post since before my student teaching experience began. I recently reread this blog of mine and realized how much I miss sharing my ridiculous thoughts and opinions about education-related topics with others who can relate. I also miss creating cartoons to entertain the masses. Now that I’ve had one year of student teaching, several months of co-teaching at a privately-owned learning center, and a couple months of substitute teaching under my belt, I think now would be as good of a time as any to return to the edublogging world because there is just so much that can be discussed with regards to teaching.

The Issue at Hand
Today, I’d like to discuss a pet peeve of mine that has made a surprisingly large impact on how I am perceived in the professional world: my size. I have always been a very short, thin, light-weight person – it’s genetic. For years, those who don’t know me – and even many people who do – have been mistaking me for somebody much younger in age. When I was a child, their guesses were only mildly off.

But as time progressed, this problem got worse and worse.

One of my biggest pet peeves is people telling me that when I’m older, I’ll appreciate looking younger. As of right now, how I’m going to feel about this situation in the future does not matter to me – I have to learn how to deal with all the problems it’s causing me now because something tells me these problems are going to impact my professional life for a while.

Now, when I was growing up and going through school, I was always on the smaller side of my classmates. With the exception of middle school, when I had a sudden, six-inch growth spurt and was actually taller than most of my classmates for a couple years, I’ve always had to look way up to talk to most people my age. This was never something that bothered me, and nobody treated me any differently because I was a little bit shorter than most, so it’s not something I often thought about; therefore, I was not prepared for the enormous impact my size would have on my professional life.

So how, specifically, has my size affected my teaching experiences so far? Let’s just put it this way: while I was at my student teaching placement last year, I was mistaken for a student at least once a day. Yes, and these mistakes lasted the entire school year. Even in May, teachers would confront me about why I was parking in the teacher lot. The vice principal yelled at me for taking food out of the cafeteria, insisting that students were not permitted to do that. The cafeteria lady was hesitant to let me cut in line because she wasn’t convinced that I was actually a student teacher (the school at which I did my student teaching did not issue IDs to student teachers, so there was really no way of proving that I was.) The librarian would ask me where my pass was every time I entered the library. I would often hear students in the hallway whispering about me when I walked by, thinking I didn’t hear them, and talking about how tiny I am and how they thought I was a student. Although my year of student teaching was an overall positive experience in my professional growth, these particular episodes made me realize that if I wanted to be a high school teacher, there would be so many complications.

But it didn’t stop there. Every time I am called to be a substitute in a high school class, there are always a few kids who give me strange looks when they first walk in. I’ve had a few ask me whether or not I was a student. I’m always thankful when I see one of the kids I taught last year walk in any room I am the sub for because then at least one person in that class knows better!

The first time I ever did a substitute teaching job, I was assigned to an art class at the school at which I student taught last year. When the ladies in the office saw me trying to pick up a sub folder, one of them asked me, “Weren’t you a student here last year?”

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!

An Unlikely Solution

The best part about substitute teaching is that you can be called to teach any subject area at any type of public school in the districts that you choose. It was just recently that I was called to sub at a place that was familiar to me, but a place to which I never thought I would willingly return, a place of locker jams and lip gloss…a place of awkward height differences and changing voices…a place where “dances” consist of the boys standing on one side of the room and the girls standing on the other…a place where most people can claim that they spent the most awkward years of their lives…MIDDLE SCHOOL!!!

If I could go back in time and tell my middle school self that in the future, I would be thankful to go back there, my middle school self would most definitely question my sanity. She would probably ask me what would make me so inclined to return to middle school after earning a Master’s degree from a topnotch institution. I would like to think that perhaps my middle school self would be smart enough to put two and two together to figure out that my 23-year-old self is a teacher, but it’s been so long that I forgot exactly how strong my logical thinking skills were in middle school.

Anyway, middle schoolers. Interacting with them is entirely different from interacting with high schoolers. For one, I actually look like an adult compared to them. Because of this, I have noticed that when I sub for middle school classes, the students tend to treat me with more respect (ie: they quiet down when I ask them, they follow my directions, they are more likely to follow the usual classroom rules and not try to trick me into doing things their normal teacher would not let them do.)

I remember being in middle school and viewing many of my classmates as self-centered, outspoken brats. While I doubt that a whole lot has changed there, from the perspective of the students, as a teacher, I do notice a certain intimidation that middle schoolers have around authority figures that seems to wear off by the time they hit high school. It really makes my job a lot easier. There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to teaching the middle and high school age groups, but now that I am aware of the enormous difference in my teaching experiences based upon something as mundane as my physical size, I am leaning more towards applying to jobs at middle schools…at least until I am old enough for people to mistake me for a college student!

Now I extend my hand to the education community by posing this question: What were some challenges you faced when you started teaching that you did not foresee prior to the experience?

Shamelessly Promoting Myself

...I guess it's a way of selling out, isn't it? Especially after neglecting to update this blog for almost a year. Oh well.

Hello, followers in the EduBlogosphere! I have returned from my long hibernation (read: intense year of a master's program) to bring you a special announcement:

I have started a new blog specifically for my cartoons. On this blog, I will hopefully post a new MS Paint cartoon daily. If you are interested, please follow this link: http://baboonmuffin.blogspot.com/

Never fear, however; I will return to this blog occasionally to post thoughts on education-related topics whenever I feel the need to be (or "be") an intellectual.

Until we meet again, good friend, goodbye!

It's August 15th!

Ahh, where has my precious August gone?


Today I responded to a blog post by Shelly Blake-Plock on edutopia.org. In this post, Blake-Plock proposes the idea of getting rid of textbooks in the classrooms. On the whole, I would agree with his logic. Textbooks generally do not inspire motivation or imagination in students, because, quoting Blake-Plock, if they were, "they'd be at the top of the New York Times' best seller list." While textbooks do make life easier for teachers, as they organize material well and help those teaching different sections of the same class stay on the same page, they do not allow students to engage in active learning. Students are force-fed the text and don't always engage in the same higher-order thinking about the material as they would if they had the option of interacting with the material in another way, like responding to a relevant blog post by the teacher or finding their own, reliable, up-to-date texts about the material on the Internet.

Here's my take on the matter (I'm sorry if I'm basically reiterating what I wrote in my comment): textbooks are BULKY. Textbooks are EXPENSIVE. Textbooks need to be REPLACED every few years. Textbooks place too much emphasis on MEMORIZATION. Now let's explore everything I just said in a little more detail:

Textbooks are BULKY

Once upon a 2002, I was in eighth grade. I was short, thin, and not that much different looking than I am now (which I guess would mean more to you if you actually know me in person. Additionally, if you don't: hi! ) At the time, I weighed about 90 lbs. Like most kids, I had a textbook for every academic class, and I brought home every book with me every night for the sake of doing my homework.

Stephanie the camel has one hump...

I tell friends, foes, and acquaintances that I was a camel at that point in my life. Why? Because that heavy backpack of mine weighed me down tremendously. I remember my mom plopping my backpack down on a scale once that year. That darn backpack weighed almost 30 lbs., which was one third of my body weight at the time. Can you imagine what life for these poor students with heavy backpacks is like? Pre-teens have enough to worry about without being a camel thrown into the mix! But alas, with textbooks in the picture, this is a situation that can't be avoided.

Textbooks are EXPENSIVE and need to be REPLACED

You know what's great about the human race? We're always doing silly things. We can never just sit still and do nothing. The silly things we do have a name: history. Yes, the subject of history is basically the study of all our silly and never-ending shenanigans. Never-ending shenanigans, as the name implies, never end. The problem with textbooks is that the only way to add the most current information to them is to buy new ones. In a subject like history, there is always a need for updated textbooks. And English? People are always writing new and brilliant pieces of literature. Is it right to leave somebody's great work out of a curriculum because their piece wasn't published before the literature book went into print? What about science? Pluto was suddenly stripped of its planet status in 2006; too bad all those textbooks in the classrooms still had Pluto listed as a planet. It must have cost a lot of money for the schools to replace all those outdated textbooks...




Textbooks place too much emphasis on MEMORIZATION

This one is from my personal experience. I remember in fourth grade, my dad used to stress the importance of memorizing material to me, so when I studied for science quizzes, he made sure that I had every definition of every bold word in the book memorized. During a conference with my fourth grade teacher, I proudly demonstrated my knowledge of the material by spewing out definitions of every key word in the chapter. She gave me a look of great concern and asked me if I truly understood what I had just said. It was then that I first learned the difference between knowing material and understanding it.

Textbooks, in my opinion, are set up to encourage learning by memorization. Most of them have key words and concepts in bold. It is easy, then, to extract the definition of these words. A simple definition goes very well on a notecard, which can then be memorized in a short period of time. Sure, I can know that a cat is a small, furry mammal with pointy ears, a tail and whiskers, but does that mean I can point one out on the street? Sure, I know the method I am supposed to use to solve this math problem, but does that mean I can apply it to another problem? How about a real-world situation?

Textbooks are AFTER YOUR BLOOD

Okay, this one is a lie. I just wanted to see if you were still paying attention.

So...
Most of these issues can be resolved by replacing textbooks with either the Internet or some other form of technology (iBooks, anyone?) With technology, the schools don't have to throw away a lot of money to buy the most up-to-date textbooks; the Internet is constantly updated with new information for free! Also, students wouldn't have to lug textbooks around to and from school, which reduces the camel population. Plus, utilizing these new mediums encourages students to engage in a different kind of thinking with the material, especially if the teacher decides to set up a class blog or Twitter page or somewhere that allows students to engage in the material in ways other than simply reading it from a book.

This assumes, of course, that acquiring this technology is within the school's budget, but that's an issue entirely of its own.

Anyway, I'm off to move my stuff out of my current apartment. Now there's a situation in which being a camel would be useful...

It's August 1st!

This entry is brought to you by crows.

You know, I feel pretty great right now. Not just because I've been out of classes for two days, but because a real, live edublogger responded to a comment that I wrote! I'm usually very nervous about posting comments on weblogs, especially if they belong to people I don't know in my life outside the Internet (notice how I am refraining from referring to said life as "real" life. Internet life is "real" life, too.)

Basically, the Cool Cat Teacher encouraged me to start my own blog so I have it to look back upon later in my teaching career. While it's too late for me to take her advice about starting my own weblog (thanks, Jeff and Kristen!), it does encourage me to keep updating this lovely weblog of mine in the future. I'm going to try to keep it strictly related to education, which may be hard at times, knowing how much I love to go on tangents. I'll just try to make sure that the starting point of the tangents will be related to education.

I really enjoyed having former MACers as guest speakers on Friday. Each of them had interesting stories to tell about their use of technology in the classroom. The most memorable part of the presentation for me, though, was when the second speaker mentioned that when he was in school, he was a special education student. I wonder if his students know that. I feel that if they did, he would be a great encouragement to the special ed students, as he is a living example of a special education student who has grown up and accomplished many great things. What a great role model.

This particular speaker also talked about how he makes technology wish lists. Oh man, that sounds so exciting. I hope I get to do that when I'm a teacher! It sounds a lot like writing Christmas wish lists for Santa back in the day, only instead of asking for a pony or an Easy Bake Oven, I can ask for computer programs that can help me create electronic ponies and bake electronic food for my students. These things can totally help me enhance my teaching, if I use them correctly, by which I mean creatively. I wonder if writing these technology wish lists in crayon and delivering them to the technology person at my school with a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of cookies will increase the likelihood of me getting the pieces of technology I desire. I mean, it worked on Santa all of those years... Also, do technology people have elves that slave away all year making electronics? If yes, where are they hiding? Also, can I keep one as a pet? Man, I am going to have so many questions to ask the technology person at my school in the fall. I think I'm going to need to start making a list.

This concludes my reflection of Friday's class. Now run to freedom; the whole month of August lies ahead of you.

Also, on your way out, please enjoy my angry crow wallpaper inspired by the lovely piece of art at the beginning of this entry (one of my friends is actually using this as his desktop background):

Enjoy your time off, everybody! I'll update this blog periodically when inspiration strikes, so check back from time to time.