Sunshine Meets Rain Half Way to Hearing Aids

“All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.” – T.E. Lawrence

Every year SPU cancels class for a day so that faculty, staff and students can come together to learn about a certain topic. They call this day the Day of Common Learning and it consists of a keynote speaker in the morning and then seminars in the afternoon.

This year’s topic was Abraham Lincoln so naturally I was excited. Excited to learn about Abe, but maybe a little more excited to enter in the $300 bookstore gift certificate raffle. Last year I was unaware of this raffle, but won!  You can read about my excitement here. Being one of maybe three graduate students who attend the DoCL I knew my chances of victory were high again this year. So I went to the seminars, entered my name into the drawing, and waited. Monday afternoon at 12:12pm I received this e-mail:

Congratulations, Nicole!

You won! Your name was drawn in the Day of Common Learning raffle. As a winner, you will receive $300 to be used at the SPU bookstore for textbook purchases. Please contact Elizabeth Reed, manager of the bookstore, with any questions you might have regarding your gift card.

Please reply to this e-mail or call 281-2481 to verify receipt of this winner notification.

Thank you for participating in the Day of Common Learning!
-Stacey

You cannot imagine my excitement. I did a few pump fists and then proceeded to tell everyone in my office that I won two years in a row. This was indeed a special day….

That is until 2:18pm rolled around and I received this follow up e-mail:

Hi Nicole,

It has come to my attention that you are a full time employee.  I am very sorry, but you are ineligible for the gift certificate as a .8 employee.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

My apologies for the confusion,
Stacey

I then got a follow-up phone call from Stacy to make sure I read the e-mail and that I understood everything. I said I did, but that was a lie.

Start rant

I don’t understand why full-time employees who are also full-time students are not eligible. I pay more you in tuition (even with my 10% discount) in two quarters than you pay me in a whole year. Also, you raised my tuition this year, but did not raise my (or any staff member’s) pay this year. As a university you are making the claim that my employment trumps my education (a stretch I know, but go with it because I’m ranting). Isn’t this the exact opposite of what a university should strive for? Stacy, I know this policy isn’t your decision, but do some fact checking before you send out a congratulations e-mail okay?

End rant.

End post.

My friend Sara and I e-mail pretty regularly while at work. Our e-mails are fairly short, but cover a wide topic of things from school and work to clowns.  This morning conversation revolved around this and this.

Yesterday our conversation morphed into a discussion on adorable, preppy children. This led me to the Crewcuts website. In case you don’t know, Crewcuts is J. Crew’s children’s line and it’s fantastic.  I am not going to admit how much time I spent looking at the website, as it’s an embarrassing amount. Let’s just say that I might be on a child molester watch group’s list now. Not only are those kids so freaking adorable, but they also have good fashion sense. I mean let’s be honest, those kids are my kind of dressers.

During my perusals, I came across the cutest outfit and am not ashamed to say that today I stole an outfit idea from a six year old. I’m talking down to the fake peals I have on around my neck. And after I finish typing this post, I will probably go back to the site and look for tomorrow’s outfit.

Our teacher played this for us last night in class and I seriously had will myself not to cry. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it before from my friend Matt, but it never gets old.

Josué and I moved a month ago (which will be a different post) and because of this move, Connie no longer has a warm, covered, safe place to sleep. She now sleeps outside exposed to all the elements which has been quite an adjustment for me. I’m not used to dew on my window in the morning and am definitely not a fan. However, it’s something that I can and will get used to.

What I will not get used to is random acts of tagging.

Saturday morning Josué and I were leaving our apartment when I noticed something weird on the back on friend Danielle’s car. At first I thought she wrote something on her car with that window paint and wondered why she wrote on her car and not the window. I tried to rub it off and realized it wasn’t budging. I smelled my hand and realized it was spray paint and experienced this train of thought: someone spray painted Danielle’s car! What? Why? Oh my God, what if they spray painted my car? I looked over and sure enough FATS had marked his/her territory right on the shiny silver paint of my beloved car.

With the help of Goo Gone we luckily got all the spray paint off both cars and Connie looks beautiful again. I’m just seriously wondering why people would tag a car and why someone would voluntarily choose the nickname Fats.

The 2nd year of my masters program started this week. And even though I’ve been doing this grad school thing a year, I was still nervous as ever to start the quarter. The beginning of the 2nd year marks a shift in the program. The first year we just talked about teaching, we didn’t really do anything practical. This year we’re all practical all the time. We’re making lesson plans, practicing strategies, teaching our classmates and in March we enter the classroom.

I cannot even begin to describe how horrified I am of this. March? The month that is 5 months away from now? That March?

I learned in class Monday that teachers, as a profession, have the highest rate of UTIs because they can’t go to the bathroom during the day. We were asked in class on Monday what we were most afraid of about teaching. I could have rambled on for hours about my fears of becoming a teacher, but now, on top of my learning gaps, crazy policies, my insecurities about myself as a teacher, and being mistaken for a middle schooler, I have to worry about UTIs? Does God not know that I get grumpy when I have to pee and can’t go?

And here’s the kicker: I can’t drink cranberry juice as a preventative measure because then I’ll just have to pee