In Which I Am Alive

Sometimes the warmth of summer vanishes so that there can be golden and vermillion and orange leaves, a maple-y autumn smell in the air and eventually, giant, drifting flakes of snow. Sometimes the days start to get shorter so that eventually it will be dark enough to see the Christmas lights. Sometimes the delicious crepe shop that used to be by my apartment moves far away so that the best burrito joint in Provo can take its place. Sometimes good things leave so better things can come. Here's hoping.

To any of my readers who are teachers, or parents, or voters, or planning to be one of those sometime in the future, watch this video. In my Educational Foundations class the other day, we were talking about technology in education. A few people made comments to the effect that they were terrified that new media and internet learning would dehumanize the classroom, essentially turning students into robots. According to this video, though, technology can have the exact opposite approach. In a "flipped" classroom, when students can learn at their own pace and in their own way, as facilitated by technology, teachers actually get more  time to spend one-on-one with students, and students get customized instruction to fit their needs. This makes me so excited to be a teacher. The present is an exciting time to live in, and it just gets more thrilling every second.

Confession: Some nights I stay up until 3:15 reading blogs and Wikipedia, and I don't let myself go to bed because there is homework to be done, and I can't not do my homework because then I won't get a good grade and I'll be a failure, and if there's one thing that defines my life it's that I don't fail at stuff, especially not school. But I'm too tired to focus on my homework, because it's 3 am and I haven't really gotten much sleep this week anyways and today was kind of draining. So I keep taking break after break after break, in an effort to clear my mind so that I can do homework after the next break. Yup.