Day #7968 - And I'm back in the blogosphere

Hello there, friends and hypothetical readers!

I'm sitting here trying to think of an excuse that would actually sound believable to explain my one-year absence from this, my blog, but really nothing comes to mind. Sure there's the standard 'I have been so busy lately, I never had time,' but I'm always busy or at least pretending to be so that wouldn't work. I could go ahead and try to justify not writing here this past semester by blaming student teaching and saying that I didn't want to hurt my professional reputation and was afraid that my students would find this or something, but again, who are we kidding? No no, for this one I'll just have to go with the truth - I had accepted/come to believe that the only people reading this were my parents and the writer in me had been hoping to reach a wider audience. A break was necessary to regroup and hopefully this comeback will bring some people back, at least for a time. And if not, meh. That's okay, too. I've kind of missed spewing my random thoughts out into the great void that is the World Wide Web and then waiting to see what could possibly become of it. (I absolutely blame the Julie & Julia Project for that idea - I saw the movie and am unfortunately one of those people who seems to be a sucker for Nora Ephron movies.)

So! Twelve months is kind of a long time to be quiet, so I'll just give the reader's digest version of what I've been up to. Last summer I was never able to find a job or internship, however I was a Vacation Bible School counselor in August, which was fun. I finally turned 21, just in time for my senior year of college. Fall semester went well for the most part - living in a single room in Barton Hall was fine, though kind of lonely especially after being in the apartment with two roommates the year before, but it worked out since I was almost always up to my eyeballs in homework. I moved back home in December after final exams and student taught at a high school for 14 weeks. It's still difficult to answer when people ask me "What did you think of student teaching?" On the one hand, I loved getting to know my students - I have always felt that high school students have some of the most interesting perspectives on things (when you can get them to actually focus on what it is you're trying to teach them). On the other hand, it was really hard to get up day after day knowing that they did not like me, they did not think of me as their "real teacher", and being a person who has always had a hard time making friends, it was especially hard on me to be away from the ones I had while they were still at school and living it up during our final weeks as college students. But hey, I survived! I graduated last month, not all of my kids completely hated me (I hope!), and to say that my four years of college flew by is a huge understatement. If I could go back and do it all again, there are plenty of things I would change, but overall I think I turned out alright.

Which leaves us only with the present. What am I up to now? Still unemployed - some things never change. I applied to a lot of school districts last semester as well as around town for part-time work, however no luck. Hopefully I'll find something sooner rather than later, but I currently have my plate pretty full with GRADUATE SCHOOL. That's right, folks, I just can't get enough of learning. I applied to the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at U of I back in February (which is ranked as the #1 library school in the country) and I found out in May that I got in. I'm doing the program all online (at least, that is the plan for now) and am already up to my eyeballs in reading homework, but I think this will be a good fit for me.

In other news, my social life continues to be non-existent, my room is actually clean for the first time in forever, and I am slowly but surely getting my guitar skills back from last summer. Oh, and my boys, the Chicago Blackhawks, won the Stanley Cup! I'm sad that hockey season is over, but watching them all year was honestly one of the biggest helps in getting me through student teaching. Now if only the Cubbies could take a leaf out of that book...

So that's it for now, I suppose. I'm sure you're all terribly excited that I'm back online and I really do plan on making this a regular sort of column again. I think that's how I'm going to treat this, at least for a while, and see how it goes - sort of a random topic of the day. Thoughts? Send me your comments, per favore!!