Simmons College

Student Blog

Comfort.

One of my all time favorite shows is Scrubs for its slapstick humor, relatable messages, awesome soundtrack, but mostly slapstick humor. In one episode, a character talks about gathering up the courage to mail his wedding invitations saying "You know those lame-ass couples that get engaged but they never actually get married - they just cruise along, year after year, without making any real kind of commitment? Man, I wanted to BE one of those couples!"* Boy, can I relate.

Time and Place

According to a great book I've been reading, Dissertations and Theses from Start to Finish (Cone & Foster, 2006, if you are writing a dissertation check it out on Amazon) it's very important to write at the same time of day in the same place everyday, because your brain will start to associate the environment (light, temperature, sounds) with productivity.

Less future-talk and more jokes, please.

Oh hey there blog, it's been a while. Lately it's been hard to find a few minutes to write, and when I do, well, I don't think anyone wants to read what I pass for sentences at 9:30pm when I walk in the door after a 13 hour day of work and class, or 5:30am when I stare bleary-eyed at the teapot, willing it to produce something a liiiitle stronger than tea. But I promise, I will make up for it!

First Day

Yesterday marked my 21st first day of school, and most likely, my last since by this time next year, I will have completed classes and will be teetering on the edge of insanity while trying to compose a meaningful dissertation. I hope that you, my imaginary internet friends who read this, (comprising a grand total of mom and husband) will stick with me.

Halfway

It was mid-May, things were starting to warm up, and we were coming off of a pretty intense semester. Was it naivete, arrogance, or maybe that extra glass of Sauvignon Blanc I had to get me through some particularly gnarly statistics modules that made me think "12 credits this summer? Suuuuuure, why not?" So I signed up for three classes.

A binder and a hole punch.

I am not a particularly organized person. Case and point: I recently found my sunglasses in the refrigerator. I have left important articles at people's houses so many times that now whenever I visit, we have to go through a checklist before I leave: Sunglasses? Check. Cell phone? Check. Keys? Check. Shoes? Well, you get the idea.

For those of us just starting out

The wave of college graduations has crested, with our own Simmons Commencement on May 20. Reading the stories from the ceremony gave me that little boost of motivation that I needed as I ended my one-week vacation between Spring and Summer semesters. Eye on the Prize. Now the high school graduations begin. The June class of 2011 will graduate from Boston Day and Evening Academy will be walking across the stage next week.

Day to Day

I had a long rant planned out about No Child Left Behind's school accountability measurements, but the leaves are popping out, I don't have to wear a hat and gloves outside anymore, I'm two weeks away from completing my first year at Simmons, 67 days away from marrying the most awesome man in the world, and life is good. I'm not going to ruin it. Instead, I picked up the camera in honor of all of the little things.

William Shakespeare's Facebook Page

Man...education is depressing. Six of the top eleven stories on the NYT education page are about budget cuts, mismanaged funding, students with terrible eating habits, and misplaced priorities. Yikes. Maybe it's the fact that the end of the semester is on the horizon and I haven't un-clamped my jaw since I started trying to understand logistic regression (I've wikopedia'd the irrational number e about 7 times and I still don't get it) but I just don't want to hear about another crisis in education.

Powering Through: What is Balance?

I once had a 5-year-old camper who had some trouble remembering rules. His earnest explanation to me was "My thoughts just fall out of my head - I think through my ears."

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