The difference is...

Today has been stressful. I had to perform twice and then endure a 2 and a half hour night class tonight that overwhelms me more than anything else I have ever faced. For next week, we have about seven assignments due. Like I said, overwhelming. Not to mention, I've only been scheduled for five hours next week because the two managers need to work...it's frustrating. I need the money. I don't know what I'm going to do. It's stressful.

On another note, I'm extremely addicted to TiVo. I love it. It's nice to have the background noise sometimes when I'm cooking dinner or moving around the apartment, and it's nice to have background noise of things that I enjoy. No more flipping through the channels attempting to find something to watch, it's all there recorded in a nice package.

As I said last night, I think my body is either fighting off sickness or just exhausted and ready for me to take a break. Today after I left class for my 40 minute lunch, I finished eating and I felt extremely sluggish, sore, achey, and extremely blah. It was weird how sudden it happened. Even now, I'm fighting sleep because I have a few things to do before I go to bed. I'm hoping writing some of this out will help me concentrate better. Either way, I'm exhausted and looking forward to sleeping 12+ hours if necessary. I've been drinking orange juice and eating yogurt and cereal this week, hoping that some of the natural health benefits will help my body ward off anything that comes at it, and I think that my body reacts by saying, "Okay, thanks, but I also need rest."

So I'm going to finish this up and then head off to sleep. I'm hoping that I feel back to normal in a few days.

Anyway, I made mention of being "open-minded" a few days ago and promised to elaborate, even though I never did! I do not like the term open-minded because I tend to think of it as a term like saying, "I don't like hypocrites" because it in turn makes you a hypocrite. It's just one of those things that I try to avoid saying because it implies that when I state that I'm open-minded, I'm implying that I believe there are others who aren't, otherwise, I wouldn't feel the need to specify. Again, it makes me close-minded and judgmental when I say that I'm open-minded, which in my belief system, is the opposite of open-minded.

But then that begs even further questions, such as can we trust the language we use at all? You know, the English language has the most words in it (I believe that's right) and yet, we still have trouble saying exactly what we want to say. We have so many words for angry, while other countries only have one or two. I think that language is fascinating (likely why I chose my profession), and I think that it is so amazing because children are born with internal language. When a child starts speaking, he/she understands and uses subjects and verbs properly without ever being taught. Such as "I want that" instead of "that want I!" or something to that effect. It's fascinating that it is the one thing that people have the hardest time grasping and using properly, yet we use it everyday and are born with internal language systems.

I guess it could easily be compared to computers. We use them daily and the internet daily, yet there's so much more that they're capable of that we don't know, and there's so much that we don't understand about them.

I don't know. Maybe it isn't all meant to be understood, but I think it's much more fun attempting to figure things out rather than let someone decide for me. I've learned so much in the past two years as an education major than I have ever before, and I don't want the students that I send out in the world to realize two years AFTER school what it means to learn. I want to teach students that learning and exploring are okay. I don't want to teach them that memorization and regurtitation is a learning method. I want my students to know not repeat.

And with that profound explanation of my method and plans for teaching, I'm off to bed. Good night.