powerpoint is not a necessity in 90% of its uses
“College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled “smart” classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked” — by which he means, sans machines.”
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i42/42a00103.htm
insomnia
its starting to get late and i can’t sleep. i’m not sure if its because of my nap today or all the stressors coming up. i have hula practice tomorrow which is definitely a stressor, seeing as i have two dances confused with each other and probably missed learning the exit. i also need to memorize the chant and am quite behind in learning it. and don’t even get me started on people who have the worst attitudes in the world who I would’ve hoped might have learned a life lesson over the last few weeks but instead are as bad as ever.
its supposed to be fun and i’m not having fun, so why am I going? I’m not sure when it went sour but it just keeps getting worse and I keep detesting it more which isn’t what I wanted. but i’m afraid to leave because i’ve invested so much and the friendships I have made I value greatly. Plus I don’t want to make my family look bad by being a quitter…
and then theres my job interview in San Jose on Tuesday. there are a lot of variables to factor in that I don’t know how to prepare for. Like leaving LA at 6am and probably being exhausted by the time I have my interview at 3:40pm but not drinking coffee which will make me a little loopy. The stress of needing this job so badly on top of the desire to leave California, or at least LA, and the added stress of the wrath of my family upon my leaving isn’t helping at all. I don’t want to seem desperate, but desperate is how i feel. The county budget has been practically sliced in half and everyone else’s budget is so terrible i don’t think i have many options left unless I want to deplete my savings account over the next year or two to nothing whereas right now I have a down payment on a small condo.
i’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.
the most horrible dream
usually i dream intensely. so intense that my dreams often affect how i feel when i wake up and how i conduct the rest of my business. If someone angers me or offends me or insults me in my dream, i typically will treat that person like they did it in real life because thats how real my dreams feel to me.
i often wake up after these extremely intense dreams not able to breathe, not able to get my bearings, and so upset that i am usually dry sobbing when i finally get myself to open my eyes and sit up. its actually quite scary.
i hadn’t had one in awhile. i think the last one i had involved my grandfather or someone dying and i couldn’t handle it. but today i decided to take a quick nap – that was the worst mistake ever. In my dream, my husband’s ex-girlfriend dropped by with his child who is about as old as our relationship, give or take 4-6 months. in my dream i was afraid of hearing the truth so when she showed up at the door with a cute little white brown haired kid i decided to go for a drive apparently on oahu. when i returned i didn’t want to know but grandma kept asking and christian said yeah, he’s mine and he’s going to be staying with us for awhile. it was during that point in my dream that i couldn’t breathe and started hyperventilating and immediately commanded my body to wake up. when i woke up i couldn’t get my bearings straight and was confused but knew for sure the last thing i wanted was to lie back down.
so instead i woke Christian up next to me and demanded to know if he had a child he hadn’t told me about. then when he denied i demanded to know the last time he might have been able to have a child without his knowledge and tried to determine if she would’ve been showing by the last time he saw her. he denied again giving me approximate time schedules. so then i demanded to know when the last time his mom saw her and if there was a baby around. he said not as far as he knew. he offered to give me her old cell phone number in case i wanted to call and offered the extraneous information that he was pretty sure she was married by now, which i don’t know has to do with their having a child.
so, like any good generation Y child, i took this information at face value and picked up my laptop and googled her. mind you, i sat there for a good 5 minutes asking myself if I really felt this was necessary, but apparently, i did, and cyberstalked the poor woman, who is in fact, childless and happily married in case you were interested.
half a bag of tortilla chips and some cyber stalking later, i can happily say that i am at ease that an adorable four year old step-son will not be placed on my porch anytime soon for me to raise. thank goodness.
Bars
So I rarely go to bars except to see a band or when forced such as for a special occassion but lately I’ve been finding some that I seem to enjoy. My pimary problem with bars aside from the annoying drunken assholes is the loud music. How can I expect to get to know you better when I can’t hear a freaking word you’re saying?
I must admit though that I enjoy the long beach dive bar the Reno room on Broadway and Redondo. And it’s not just because I got a ton of free jäger gear without spending that much money (it was a special occasion and I was the guest of honor). It’s because it was a friendly environment high seemed to welcome conversation instead of hindering it.
Right now I’m at a concert in Costa Mesa at the Detroit Bar on 19th street and although it’s loud right now due to the band playing in the background it seems to have a good vibe and kept the music level at a decent volume.
Alas, the intermediate act has taken the stage and I don’t wish to be rude so I must continue this analysis of me and bars at a later time. Because it was so interesting to begin with…
Addition: shawn wanted me to post just how much this intermediate band, telekenesis sucks.
iPhone mania
I jus got the wordpress iPhone app so hopefully this will inspire me to update more!
Currently I am enjoying 30 Rock. I really liked season 1 but season 2 is kind of lame. the season of the writer’s strike kind of sucks for all the shows….I guess that was the first line of protest!
the first real job interview
so over the last two weeks or so i’ve had my first real set of job interviews. i won’t say where to save face when i probably don’t get the position, but i thought i’d blog about the experience in general.
i interviewed for an entry-level children’s librarian I and man was it a tough series of interviews! the first interview had none of those general, tell me about yourself, tell me about your strengths and weaknesses kinds of questions. no. these questions wanted programming ideas and booktalking ideas and quite a few problem-patron scenarios. They were asked by a panel of 3 outside librarians and no on-the-spot storytelling or booktalking occured – even though i brought a bag full of tricks just in case. The second interview (which I was lucky enough to be called back for) was much of the same stuff, just with a panel of librarians from the actual library who asked more questions about programming, collection development, and Web 2.0 which totally killed me.
now, obviously i’m a fan of web 2.0. i blog, i have a facebook, i enjoy wikipedia, i make websites, on and on and on. but did i talk about any of that in my interview? no. i gave some lame answer about parents, kids, and myspace and teaching them how to use it properly and blah blah blah. if i wasn’t doing poorly before, i’m pretty sure that answer put the nail into my coffin on all four sides of the box.
i must admit though, i came up with some programming ideas that impressed even myself. like a non-stereotpyed native american program centering around absolutely true diary of a part time indian. and i remembered the super cool santa monica public library program with the salad iron chef challenge which was sponsored by the local farmer’s market. now if only these programs would give me an in… but i’m not holding my breath
and i have to admit i’m grateful to have that first interview experience out of the way and now i know what i need to work on for the next one!
googling in vain
so i’ll admit, i google myself regularly. i like to see what’s out there about me and what kind of information people can find. i also like to make sure only things i’m proud of and approve are out there when people google my name… u just never know. i didn’t do it as often until i found out other people googled my name to find out information about me, much like i did them. Except that one of these people was a Caldecott-Award winning illustrator and he saw my wedding pictures. Luckily I really liked my wedding pictures. lol. but it got me to thinking, if people can see my wedding photos what else can they see? so i googled myself and found out that people could see my livejournal from my high school years, which I decided was definitely NOT okay. although it could show people the personal progression i’ve experienced over the last ten years or so, I’d rather they just know me as who I am now and not the angsty teenager i was back then.
but anyways, i have to admit i am kind of proud at what comes up when my name is googled. there are like 5 pages, and at least 2 of them are filled with relevant links that actually deal with me and aren’t just someone else who happens to have pieces of my name. those are reserved for pages 3-5 or so… but anyways, i think its pretty cool thinking about how one can manipulate the seemingly open information that is out there about them. i’ve figured out how to move some links closer up and how to get rid of some and i even learned how to make my livejournal invisible to the public eye without deleting it or making all of the entries private. although i must admit it was kind of a hassle and took quite a few months to do so…
although there is a word of caution – if you go to images, eventually you’ll come upon pictures of a very naked gentleman wrestling with another naked gentleman. that is NOT me. lol. and i have no idea who he is… i think i eventually deduced he was a male model with the last name Lessa which is common in Spain… lol.
oh the dangers of googling!
the melting point
in the last two weeks, my brother in-law was involved in a fatal car accident (thankfully he is alive with miraculously moderate to sever injuries), my aunt died – going into the hospital originally for an inner ear infection during which she developed a staph infection, and then her organs failed, i finished classes for graduate school (aka i need to finish my thesis/find a job in the midst of a hiring freeze) – on the same day my aunt died, and i have been involuntarily transferred to a new library branch for at least the next three weeks. and, on top of it all, in three weeks i have to get on stage and perform numerous hulas, some that i really know some not so much.
the emotional taxes that the last few weeks have taken on me is slowly mounting to the point where i don’t know what to do. i am constantly anxious and worried about one thing or another, i blew up on several people today, and my poor husband is ready to go stay at his parents until mid-April when hopefully things will begin to settle down. he says that upon finishing school, especially for those who great straight through and have a large time lapse, much like myself, people often fall into a depression. as much as i am trying to avoid it, i don’t know that i can repress my emotions anymore. i feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and i really don’t need people trying to play mind games with me or yelling at me right now.
i thought blogging might help, but i’m not so sure now…
the death of newspapers?
an editorial from my public libraries professor:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-letters7-2009mar07,0,3828811.story
i keep subscribing to the LA Times cuz i figure they need all the help they can get even if i don’t read it everyday i get it.
boring presentations
i think student presentation days are painful for all involved. There are always the stars (often times just one) and then the ones who are boring (but usually know their stuff) and then there are the crazies who are always all over the place. then there’s always the apologizer who keeps sayig sorry for being unprepared or technical difficulties or a million other things. i know that i’ve fallen into all of these categories at least once or twice in my life, and i have to hope that more often than not the class isn’t glazed over and actually cares what i have to say
