Life is good.
Far cry from past posts, I know. But things are actually going well right now -- I'm adjusting to classes, finding time to get some studying in.. still haven't managed to not sleep through my "wake up and work out" alarm at 7:45am... but other than that, I'm doing okay.
I got a very, very exciting e-mail today. I actually started dancing around the kitchen screaming and singing when I read it (sorry, Al, for cutting your nap short..). One of the top professors I want to work with in grad school e-mailed me back about a contact e-mail I had made... and she wants me to come to Columbia to meet with her. About the program at USC. Next Thursday.
Somebody is actually studying autism in South Carolina. Praise the Lord.
I'm so excited.
Even better -- she knows the professors I worked with in Nashville very well... she's even working on an upcoming study with one of them. A research match? In state? In a great program? And a potential mentor who actually responds to e-mails? Who wants to meet with me?
I had to re-write my response four times to keep from sounding too enthusiastic.
AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
:)
Nanny-life is going well, too. I'm adjusting to life from the perspective of a spunky eight-year-old. We discuss the difference between a "boyfriend" and a "boy-space-friend," whether or not girls should toot, the logistics of how to score a pretend-olympic-dive in an imaginary game of pool olympics... and today, I learned why Diet Coke is Evil.
You see.. the girl is adorable, but slightly neurotic. Terrified of down escalators, always thinks she's getting sick, thinks canned peaches are healthier than fresh because the pesticides have been thoroughly washed off... etc.
So Diet Coke, according to Little Mama, is evil because... "Splenda stuff is in it. And the Splenda stuff goes through your blood and fills up your kidney. So nothing can go through your kidney so it just keeps getting bigger and bigger until it explodes...
(and in comes the conspiracy theory:) "And you can't get anyone else's kidney because theirs are all about to explode, too. So then you all die."
Right.
So no Diet Coke for Little Mama.
She came over today to bake some cookies with me (I'm learning that I cannot devote 12 hours a week to being a nanny without doing some multitasking.. so we've started running more errands together and doing more things that I would usually do at other parts of the day), and I had told her that my roomies would be around. So when she walked in and saw Matt, she got very confused as to why a Strange Man was in my apartment.
But we baked cookies and had a jolly ole time with Matt and Jessie... and LM just thought the whole "four best girl friends living together" sounded like a huge slumber party.. she asked if she could come spend the night. When we told her she could jump on the beds, a look of enchantment flashed across her eyes.
"REALLY??!!!"
And we listened to a Pandora station made out of Hannah Montana music. Who would have thought Pandora would have the Jonas Brothers?
So Little Mama and I are tight. She still doesn't know I'm dating her PE teacher (I had to do some picture-hiding before she saw my room), which keeps the whole thing very interesting. She can't figure out why Mr. T keeps teasing her nanny in the car rider line.
Oh, the life of a soccermomcollegestudent...
Classes are good. Except... I still have Brewer anxiety. He's the hardest professor at Furman, but I've had his class four times, so you'd think I'd be used to him. But no...
"KELLEHER. When I say "INSIGHT", you IMMEDIATELY think of WHAT?"
(no, seriously. that actually happened.)
To which I fish around in my head for 20 uncomfortable seconds for what aspect of insight relates to whatever learning topic we're discussing... and either stumble out an answer or respond with one of Brewer's infamous Brewerisms...
"Alas and alack, retention is not 100%"
(I actually got the insight question right... he was looking for Wolfgang Kohler, who dangled a banana outside of Sultan-the-ape's cage and observed whether the ape assembled a contraption to reach the banana using trial or error or actual instinct...)
Sometimes the game gets even more specific.
"When I say "COGNITION", you immediately think of the right hand column on page 63 of your General Psychology textbook, where WHAT TERM is outlined by Meyers?"
(unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating. Note: I took General Psych 3 years ago.)
I hate the "When I say" game. It's embarassing and discouraging. So I'm going to cheat and make flashcards and quiz myself on surface details of every learning theorist I can think of... and then I won't get Brewer anxiety every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. (which is probably what Brewer wants us to do anyway.)
Hooray.
I got my placement for my masters ed class, too (I'm hoping it will transfer, even though I'm just taking it as an elective now)... I am going to be working with a PE teacher (irony, no?) at the Washington Center... which is so exciting!! A TON of my camper friends go there, so I'll be getting course credit for hanging out with them! So my ed class for students with exceptionalities is awesome. Very applicable to my life.
Anthropology is going to be interesting... aside from the ridiculous amount of reading being incredibly overwhelming... the content is pretty mind-stretching. Lots of discussion of how Christian beliefs fail to replicate in other cultures, which always gets me thinking. I'm excited to have one last healthy does of college-campus-agnosticism before I leave Furman. It's always challenging to maintain faith while still having an open mind... but my heart thrives in those sorts of environments. I like the egotistical "I hate organized religion" professors. I find them enlightening... not necessarily convincing, but enlightening.
Okay, study break over. Back to reading.
Toss up prayers about the USC visit :)
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