Resolutions

Resolved:
In 2011, I will
Read more. For school and for fun. I got a few Dickens novels and some poetry with my Christmas gift card, I'm still working on Don Quixote and want to add more of Jane Austen to my repertoire.

Write more. Some of you may know that I've been writing a book for several years. It is nowhere near finished, and it is not in any form that I would show someone I didn't know yet (rewrites ahoy!), and so I want to go further with it. Maybe not finish it, just work on it more. Also, I want to really dive into my last semester of schooling (!) and write what I need to write well. Perhaps I will even try for extra opportunities!

Be more active. I am going to try to go to the rock climbing gym in town once a week. I might also do a pay-per-class for dance and I'm hoping to walk Penny more often. I have NO energy at all and on the few times I am active I tire so quickly it's embarrassing.

Be more creative. I have a new book called Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists by Carla Sonheim which has 52 exercises for boosting creativity. I was looking for something less along the lines of a "how to draw" book and more like a creativity guide. This fits the bill! I'm not going to force myself to use it on a weekly basis, but I will try! This also will force me to face a few fears, as one section asks that I go to a live drawing class for a few sessions (with nude models! EEP!) which I will do, because I am extra-bad at drawing people and this will help me to figure out the form (I really want to figure out how to draw backs, I think the upper part of the back is so very beautiful!). I may or may not blog some of the assignments, so look for some original Kate art coming to a screen near you! The first section is "inspired by animals" which I am much more comfortable drawing, so you will definitely see some of them!
I also got Squiggles: A REALLY GIANT Drawing and Painting Book by Taro Gomi. It has hundreds of pages to fill in! I want to get everyone to fill in one page. Perhaps I'll share scans of that.

Be more daring. And no, that doesn't mean going bungee jumping or skydiving (pointed cyber-glances at Carrita and Catia). It means not being afraid of things like asking people if they want to hang out, going somewhere and trying something new. I guess it fits in nicely with my other resolutions.

Graduate. That's right, this May I am planning to graduate! To do that I need to pass the Program Administration and Child Development content areas of my Comprehensive Exams. I passed the Theories section last semester and got conditional passes for Research&Evaluation and for Child Development, but the flu prevented me from re-writing both. Basically, this means studying (and we all know how good I am at THAT!). Beyond that, I am only taking TWO classes this semester and one of them is a practicum. I am super excited about this.

Get a job in my field. Wow. So, starting in January I'm updating my resume and sending it out to various organizations. I'm thinking something with United Way sounds good, but I'm exploring every option. My main trouble is getting the courage to put myself out there, so again this falls in line with being more daring. If any of you have connections to nonprofit orgs. that do family education and outreach, let me know! I am not going to limit myself geographically (which is SCARY! where will I be this time next year???), so even my Canadian and European friends can suggest something. Exactly HOW cold does it get there?

Get my own place. I am almost more excited about my first apartment/town home/rent house than I am about my first real job. And no, I'm not considering anywhere I've lived these past two years as my first apartments because I'm still in school and they aren't MINE (meaning I don't get to decorate outside of my bedroom). My main goal for graduation: NOT to move back home!


Help people more. Simple.

I think these are a bit easier to follow than really specific resolutions, so I'm hoping I will stick with them! We'll see. I hope 2011 is a good year for all of us, no matter where we are and what we may be doing.

Billy Collins is my new favorite.

Another addiction

I've just discovered a spectacular radio station. It is introducing me to all sorts of beautiful music and it's local (which means that I get it in my practicum but I don't get it at school. Ah well). If I don't get a job in this city, I will miss this radio station like none other. Thank goodness they have an iphone app!

yaaay, apps!

I love my iPhone. Specifically, I love the creativity I can express through the applications. My new favorite application is LiveSketch, and here are two of the drawings I did by fingertip with them. I think this is a moose. And these, of course, are some flowers.
It's like I'm drawing with charcoal, only I don't have to take off a layer of skin to get it out of my hands.
I really really miss drawing and sculpting and especially metalworking. I'm hoping I have time and space for that post-grad school.

Feeling poorly, so I will say goodnight. I have to finish my practicum hours tomorrow and then this semester is officially in the bag.

Go. Become addicted.

I have recently discovered this:The Book Spy
And I LOVE it. Bibliophilism meets Voyeurism (In an only slightly creepy way). It's amazing. Go, my chickadees, go and be addicted.
In addition, I'm ALMOST done with the first lace shawl I will keep for myself (out of baby alpaca wool that I dyed myself!). This sounds selfish, but first consider these:
1) the last two things I knitted were lace shawls I made as gifts.
2) those took my whole summer and the first part of the semester (not that I didn't enjoy it, because I did!)
3) My last knitting projects before those were all baby things for one of my friends
4) I'm facing an extreme lack of warm & pretty!


Also:

Fall in love!

Furthermore, my beloved brother is coming this week to stay with me for a whole week! Hooray! This is the FIRST time he has come on his own to see me ever. He came once for pageant when I was in college and visited for my birthday this year. I don't think it will be the two of us on the town or anything, but it will be good to see him! He's taking the train down here and then he will ride home with me when I go HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS! Yes, that's right, friends, I am going to go home! I have not been home since labor day, and I get to be with my family and friends back home for two whole weeks! I'm almost surprised how very much I miss home (not because I never miss people, because I do, but I'm usually pretty good at being "all there" and focusing on where I am). I'm also looking forward to not having to WORK for two weeks. That will be very nice.

To those of you who will be in town, I can't wait to see you! To those of you in the grad-school area, I will see you when I get back! I don't think you read this, though!

RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

Ever turn in a final paper that was so stressful it feels like you just had a baby? I don't know how else to describe that.
This final I just turned in is one of those papers. It was for my grant writing class and it was all of two pages long because it was a grant proposal. We have no idea what our class standing is, and up until class time last Wednesday we did not know what our final was. A lesson in flexibility? Yes. A lesson in how many times I can hyperventilate without causing brain damage? A little bit, yeah. A lesson in Kate's hyperbolic skills? A little bit, yeah.
I freaked out for about ten minutes when he gave us the prompt: propose a program, project, or initiative which will benefit the graduate students in your particular field. Then I figured out what I wanted to do: a mini-research conference which teams professors with students who present posters. Members of the community who are professionals in our field will judge the event (science fair style) and award the winning group with a scholarship ($2,500 for the next semester, which is all but $500 of a semester's tuition). Hooray! Encourage research? Check. Encourage student-faculty relations? Check. Encourage inter-cohort relations? Check. Encourage community involvement? Check. Encourage networking and future employment? Check. Awesome.
I got to the computer and totally lost confidence in the program. All these new issues popped up. All these insecurities about how the program would look if it needed a mini-research conference to get people involved (it does). About how silly the whole thing was. But I stuck with it because it was too late. I had no other ideas. And I really had been psyched about it until I sat down to write the proposal.
So now, yes, I feel like I just went through labor. For that tiny tiny thing. I hope I don't fail, I hope I get an A in the class, but there is really no way of telling because we don't know any of our grades. ANY of them. This is the problem with laid-back professors. They drive their students insane.

To everyone else completing your finals, remember there is an end in sight! So soon! We can do it!
I'm still not sure I did the right thing, but everything he said needed to be there was there.

*Charlie Brown Sigh*

So, last October, I really hated the newsletter my workplace put out. It was disgusting. It was disorganized. It was twelve pages long. We had to print out copies for all the parents and teachers of the center. Something had to be done.
(Hi, I'm back)
So, on a day where I didn't have a lot going on, I took my copy of the newsletter and plugged it into a publisher template. I got it down to three pages front and back. It sounded like someone who speaks English wrote it. It was beautiful.
Showed it to my boss.
"This part needs to be changed. But you're right, it does make it more readable."
That was it until yesterday.
"Kate, here are the submissions for the newsletter. You did such a good job with making it more concise last time I thought you could do the same thing."
Sure.
Typed everything up. Shortened it so it would all fit on three pages. Perfect. Showed it to someone who suggested I make the font size smaller, cut out all this old information, take one reminder all the teachers put in their sections out and just put a big reminder on the front. Done and done. Excellent.
Showed it to my boss:
"Font size is too small. I don't think I want that on the front. Don't cut anything the teachers say because the others don't write anything."
Frustrated. Changed it back. One class takes up almost a whole page of three columns telling us what they did in each and every center. I even leave in their stupid poem. Surely the teacher who got bumped to the back page won't be mad. Filled the empty space with a very VERY generic "happy holidays" message. Done. Printed off 103 copies. Put them in every single mailbox in the center. Hooray. It's OVER.
About to get in the elevator and go down to my office to leave finally after a long week. Run into a teacher who looks upset. Asks if one of the admin is here. No. Why? She's holding the newsletter. My beautiful newsletter. She starts crying. She is offended because her employers spelled her name with an "ie" instead of a "y" and that means that they still don't respect her after all these years.
Apologize to her repeatedly. My fault. Didn't mean to. It wasn't my boss at all.
Took all the newsletters out of her classroom, changed the ONE place where her name was, reprinted it and redistributed.
Have I ever mentioned that I go by my middle name and many people I have known for YEARS call me by my first name on accident all the time? And it really doesn't bother me now because I'm an adult? but no, We have to get upset about everything all the time because "ie" really is so very very different from "y"
*Charlie Brown sigh*