I think learning to teach is hard. Really hard. Because there really isn't anything to learn. Nothing that will prepare you for the real education world anyways. I can learn how to draw up lesson plans, prepare questions from Bloom's Taxonomy, memorize Vygotsky's educational pysch theories...but in the end, I just don't feel prepared. I get up in front of the classroom, and it all falls away. It's really the experience that seems to prepare you. I taught for the first time two week ago (a lesson on compound sentences), and everything I learned NOT to do from that session, I applied to this past Friday's. I might be armed with a lot of educational pedagogy and Language Arts tools, but in the end, all I can do is let experience be my true teacher.

I'm the kind of person who hates feeling helpless and unprepared, so...this is going to be difficult for me to work through.

So I went to Minster, OH for their annual Oktoberfest since my good friend Kurt is from the area. We had never been able to go before because every year, band got in our way. This year, it fell on the weekend the few of us who are still involved had free so off we all traipsed up to Minster for some beer-drinkin' fun. It was a fabulous time sans the part where I fell down the basement stairs and my left a$$-cheek is BLACK. I kid you not, I don't bruise that easily, and this bruise is the godzilla of all splotchy bruises. I've been staring at my butt in utter fascination this weekend because of the bruise...it grows worse as the busted blood vessels settle in for the long-healing haul. On the outside, I look just a little tired from the weekends festivities and shenanigans but deep down...my butt looks like I was beaten with a baseball bat.

On the way back to Cincinnati in between the sing-along with Heather's Disney CD's, the random topic of blogging came up. Heather commented that she wishes she had a record of things from her life...everyone asked me why I don't blog anymore. I do...except this blog has been kept a secret ever since the ex-President of my sorority read that I was having a very stressed out time and went to the Sorority sponsor demanding to know what was wrong with the sorority under my charge. That was enough of THAT. Anywho...I realized that it has become a chore for me to write and that needs to change. However, I have no desire to give up blogging and want it to NOT be a chore. I want write like I used to, spilling my guts all over the page (to a privacy degree of course) and enjoy going back to read my words and memories all over again.

Now to find that spark...I want it. I really do.

So after months and months of a long hiatus because I was feeling unmotivated to blog, I'm back with a vengeance. Well...not as big of a vengeance as I'd like because I'm still struggling to find topics to write on, but I'll take what I can get. Maybe I'll stir things up and write about subjects that our country ponders and is divided on such as...everything.

Oh well, c'est la vie and here I am again!