Graduation and Beyond

On Saturday the 19th I somewhat graduated from BYUI. Somewhat because I still have to do my student teaching in Las Vegas. Graduation was pretty much uneventful, but good at the same time. On the Friday evening before graduation my parents and I went to the graduation banquet. We had some great food and I really enjoyed listening to the music and President Clark’s talk. He is a pretty good speaker. Then I went back to my almost empty apartment to finish packing things up and stayed for my last night at BYUI. I woke up super early to get ready for the days activities and before I left my roommate, Shelley, gave me flowers and a BYUI Mug. It was so sweet of her. I was very glad to have her still there and she was able to come to my commencement as well. I struggled greatly to stay awake during commencement. Elder Richard G. Scott was speaking and even though I was enjoying the things he was saying fatigue took over as well as being very cold in the auditorium. After commencement I went to take pictures with Shelley and then marched for convocation. It was a nice short ceremony where I got my “fake” diploma and a rose. After that my parents took me to Wingers and then to get a few more pictures. That was my last day spent at BYUI.

 This Saturday I am leaving to go to Las Vegas for 3 months. I am both excited and scared out of my mind. I have an apartment in Henderson that is 2 bedrooms and a bathroom in each. I will have 3 other roommates and they are all teaching English as well, but at different high schools. I am teaching at Desert Oasis High School – the Diamondbacks!

This high school seriously looks and seems more like a college, but I will know more after I actually get there. My cooperating teachers are Mrs. Welch and Mr. Gibson. They are both department chairs of their subject. Mrs. Welch is the English and Mr. Gibson the health. Mrs. Welch called me today and she just seems so nice and helpful. She really helped calm some of the fears I had. She scared me when she said that she had heard I would be teaching math as well. I said “Oh no, no, no I don’t do math!” She laughed and said she better talk to the health teacher about my schedule then. I know it sounds like my school will be quite the commute, but google maps says it is only 6.6 miles away. I guess the traffic is bad. I will keep everyone updated on my upcoming adventures via Las Vegas!

This isn't my actual apartment but it is one of the apartments at this complex...It gives a good general idea of what it looks like. :) It is nice huh!

My Life this Semester

So most of you know that this semester is my last semester at BYUI and man it has been a busy one. I do have my student teaching still in Las Vegas, which I still have not received my placement for so I’m a bit distraught about that. I am really excited to go to Vegas and try out something new and I can’t wait to teach, scared to death, but still very excited. I have been so worried about my ability to do this, but after this semester I feel so much better about my competency to teach. I have had some great English classes and health classes, plus an amazing class called personal achievement that is meant to help anyone about to go through a transition in their life. I will talk about that one more later. I have learned and done so much this semester that I want to write all about it. First side note: I went through 9 semesters at B YUI without ever giving a sacrament talk. I thought this was a bit interesting. Anyway, so I’ll start by saying I took the praxis in November, which is a test that is 120 questions long and takes 2 hours determines whether you can teach in the state you test for or not. I took one in Health and English and I passed them both! I got a 780 on my Health one and I needed a 630 to pass. So I did awesome! I was 40 points above average. When I got done taking it (it only took me an hour so I stared at the wall for another hour) I felt very confident and said that was a way easy test. The English one; however, I was not so confident about. I got a 171 and needed a 158 or something like that to pass. I was cutting it close. So in my English 430 class I was able to do a few really cool projects that will help a lot when I become a teacher. I wrote a two-week lesson plan on comparing literature to movies based on literature. It was fun to do. Then I wrote a unit on the new up and coming young adult fiction The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I also created a lit link for that book which means a website that has URLS for all the websites that might help a teacher when teaching that book in their classroom. The most intense class was probably my English 450 class. It is Rhetoric Studies, basically the study of writing. For this class I had to apply for a job as either Editor in Chief of a magazine board or a sponsoring editor. I have not had much experience in editing so I wanted to be a sponsoring editor. I had 4 other people on my magazine board and we “competed” business wise with 18 other magazines that were being created in this class by other students. We had to do everything that we would if we were out in the business world proposing a magazine idea, convincing the publisher the need for this magazine and then actually creating it. We also had to write for all the other magazines. We needed at least 1200 words published in other magazines by the time the semester was over. For my magazine we created “Jubilee!” It is bases on traditions throughout the holidays. The edition we did was for Christmas since it got published in December. We had a great start, but really struggled later on in the process, let’s just say if you don’t have an editor in chief that knows what she is doing and isn’t very good it is very hard to work together and get it done. In the end it turned out fairly ok, but if I hadn’t been so busy and so shy about standing up to the “boss” then I know it could have been designed a lot better, because surprisingly I’m actually pretty talented in that area. I will post the link to my magazine so you all can see it.  I will also post the links to the three magazines that I got published in. I wrote an article for the Graduate’s Grind on the BYUI learning model, one for Now and Forever on unique gifts for bridal showers, and one for Fitzen on 5 steps to preventing the freshman 15. I had a lot of fun writing for the other magazines. It made me almost want to write for a magazine for a living, but not quite. The health classes were normal and I learned a lot, but nothing that special. Now for my favorite class of the semester, Personal Achievement. When I registered I had 12 credits and that’s all I needed, but I have a scholarship so in order to keep it I had to take 14 credits. So I added a two credit religion class. I looked at the syllabus and it looked awful, so I dropped it for a general studies 101 class. I thought it would be so easy and probably a waste of time, but I didn’t care I just needed two more credits. Well, I was in for a big surprise. It ended up changing my life. I was given some very thought provoking assignments that were very time consuming. I was a bit mad a first that this class took so much of my time, but after a while I didn’t mind because I loved it so much. We read an amazing book and wrote a Personal Creed Document. This PCD is a guide for the rest of our lives and helps us during any transition in our life. I loved this class and I can’t even express how much I learned from it. I am very happy and grateful that I made the switch and took this class. It not only helped me learn and grow, but it taught me a way to teach my future students values without religion. For our final we had to take all the parts of our PCD and create one cohesive document that we could always have and refer to, but it had to be electronic since it was an online class. I decided to make mine into a website. I spent 3 straight days on it, but it looks great and I’m really glad I have it. I will also post a link to that. Well that about sums up my semester! In just a few more days on Saturday, December 19, 2009 I will be graduating and moving on to my next adventure in life. And yes, I will be completely single with not even a guy in mind to marry, but that is ok I now realize after almost five years that I wasn’t supposed to come to BYUI to find my husband, but to gain the learning experience I did, to change my spiritual life, to gain amazing friendships, and become a better disciple of Christ. Thanks to all who have helped and supported me throughout this long, challenging adventure.


This website is to the one I created for my PCD
http://www.wix.com/bubblecam/personal-creed

This is the magazine my group created
http://www.wix.com/Chicera/Jubilee-Magazine

This magazine has the article I wrote on freshman 15
http://fitzen.weebly.com/

This magazine has the article I wrote for the Learning Model
http://graduategrind.weebly.com/

This magazine has the the article I wrote about bridal shower gifts
http://www.wix.com/FarWest/NowandForever

Crazy Face-Painting Date

So I’m usually good about making sure I have plenty of dates throughout the semester and I have had quite a few this particular semester, but my roommate, Shelley, has not. In fact, I hope she doesn’t get mad that I wrote this on my blog but, she hasn’t been on a date since before her mission. That is until last weekend when I use my magical powers to ensure her a great date with a great guy! I have this friend, Mitch Empey, who is just a great guy. He is so good and someone that I knew Shelley would like. He dates all the time so it wasn’t hard to get him to call Shelley up and ask her on one. Well, this easy set up of course can’t ever be that easy. Turns out I got set up as well by Mitch. He called up his friend Nick Horton and we doubled. Mitch has a knack for coming up with the most fun, practical, economically great dates. He planned for us to do face painting. I was pretty scared at first, but it was tons of fun. Shelley got to paint Mitch’s face first and she turned his face into a huge beautiful butterfly. Mitch turned Shelley’s face into the British flag, which was so completely awesome. Nick painted a bunch of Mario kart symbols on my face. Then it was my turn. Despite my lack of artistic ability I painted an amazing rainbow and cloud on one cheek followed by a leprechaun on the other. Mitch was jealous of it, but Nick was less than thrilled to have a rainbow and little green fellow on his face. We then went to Broulim’s, where of course we were forced to go with our unique painted faces, to buy things for a dessert competition. We got some pretty funny looks. We came back, made dessert, watched the movie Elf and then ate the banana cream pie and Oreo pie. It was rather fattening, but we had a lot of fun. Shelley, I think even likes Mitch a little and might be hoping for another date possibly. I’m such a good matchmaker. :)