Random thoughts from a tired mind on "game day"

Imagine if you can:

It's eight-thirty on a cool Athens morning, with the temperature resting calmly at seventy-five degrees. In some towns, most folks are drinking their morning tea or coffee; children are settling in for their Saturday viewing of "Rug Rats," "The Wiggles," or even that pervert, "Barney"; college students are rolling over in their beds (or in the person's with whom they left the bar with the evening before); and everyone's Saturday is slowly, but surely beginning to unfold. Now let us shift the camera back toward our cool seventy-five degree town in Athens, GA where the aforementioned most folks aren't Georgia Bulldog fans.

It's eight-thirty on a cool Athens morning, with the temperature resting calmly at seventy-five degrees. If you head east on Broad Street with the windows down, the quiet morning of Saturday seems to have "left the building." Do you remember the phrase, painting the town red? Let me just state for the record: understatement. On each side of the road (beginning at least fifteen miles from the campus football stadium) there are tents. Red tents. There are red tents, huge red and black Ford trucks, old 1960's red and black busses taking up lawn space in every other chicken wing parking lot, and fifteen to twenty people filling each tent, bus, and Ford in all of those parking lots—the whole fifteen miles to campus.

It's now 10:30 in the morning. I drive my car (with the Florida GATOR tag on the license plate thanks to my Florida GATOR mommy) slowly up to campus to search out a parking space so my new friend from NYC and I (neither of us ever having been to a Georgia game) can tailgate with some other graduate students before the kick-off at 1:00pm. I'm thinking 10:30 is pretty early, but I know now that these tents, trucks, and busses have been there since 7:00am to make sure they have the perfect spot for their five hours of ...camaraderie before the game. To my left and to my right, all I can see is red and black: red and black hats, pants, shirts, pom-poms, car flags, flip-flops, pumps, and dresses --oh, the dresses.

If you think back to one of my emails about a month ago, you will recall my description of the college students' fashion these days. Now imagine that fashion painted-no, saturated-in red and black (albeit, white is obviously accenting those two dominant colors, making the outfit complete). I don't know if any of you are aware of it, but polka dots are back! And I don't know if I've ever seen so many polka dots in one place. Now, I don't know how it is at other college football games, but Georgia girls dress-up for the games. And honey, I don't mean they put on mascara and lipstick; I mean they put on their "Sunday best" for the "Saturday game."Strapless polka dot dresses, halter polka dot dresses, tank polka dot dresses, and if you can believe it,
t-shirt/jersey polka dot dresses,but wait, there's more...

Each and every one of these dresses, no matter if they came with them or not, was accented by the one and only, big, thick high-wasted 80s belt! It was the MOST amazing thing I've ever seen! Oh, and chunky round necklaces and bracelets (red) to accompany the enormous (red) 80s-style plastic earrings.

So there I am: tank-top (black), Patagonia shorts that are at least ten years old, Chacos, hair in braids, and my RED Georgia Bulldogs baseball hat fittin' right ol' in! Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Dawgs! Sick 'em huugghg, hugghghg, huuughghg! (That's the cheer)





I have to say the best part of my first Georgia Bulldogs game as a student was half time. Drunk nineteen-year-old comes slowly staggering up the stairs (and we're wayyy on up there in the student section) with her sistahs helpin' her up the stairs, to join their other polka-dotted friends, take some pictures on their cell phones and sneak some more Jack Daniels from their plastic bags, which they have hidden in their cleavage. Sistah is not makin' it up the stairs with the ease and grace that we Southern sorority girls like to see. Her eyes are glazed over and almost crossed because she's been slipped one too many polka dots, and here she comes, in all her glory. Her friends sit/set/place/unload her down and turn quickly to talk behind her back (like all good friends do, don't we, girls?); sistah looks around to see if any one of the hundreds of people will see what she's about to do, I imagine, and then gently brushes her polka dotted sash that's smoothing her hair back to the side and lets it all out. That girl threw up so hard and so fast that I thought it might lift her off her seat!..We moved -to say the least.

And here I sit at 9:00 on a Saturday night typing away and watching the Gator/Tennessee game, recognizing this as a conscious choice. I realized that after the game, those polka-dotted cuties were going to do the best they could to drink on into the night and it probably wouldn't have been that pretty and we who are here for different reasons, would get in our cars to go home (sober) and continue our readings for the week. Well, actually, I had to CLEAN OFF my car before I got into it because it had been rolled. Oh yes, rolled with toilet paper from the portable bathroom that I parked by so everyone who went in to use it saw my beautiful GATOR tag. Oh well, at least it was just toilet paper --and it was clean--and there were no key marks on my Florida Gator car. If that's the best the drunk Bulldog fans could do, good for them.

I wonder what other people are doing tonight in other towns, because I know that everyone in this town is either at home or at a bar watching this same game that I'm watching to see how we'll do when our Bulldogs play these two teams in the weeks to come. More to come with each new adventure. stay tuned.I'm off to buy some dots--polka, that is.

Turn out the lights...the party's over...

Okay, so the first month was new to me: lots of reading, understanding new meanings and concepts, creating those files in my mind that have never been there due to lack of reading adult literature for so long, and a new friendship with dictionary.com. But I think the party's over, folks. I have just signed on to try and submit a chapter for a book that one of my professors is editing. Not a comic book; not a flip book; and not an elementary school chapter book, or even a picture book, for that matter...and, this isn't a year-long project, oh no; I've made it my final project for her class.

What, you ask? How could one write a chapter for a research book for a final project? That would mean it's due in December, right? Good questions, Sally. And Yes, you are correct. I will be submitting a chapter on student-centered classrooms to some book with the words "research and middle school" in the title. Have you inferred yet what I have to do in order to accomplish this task? No, Millsy in the back row, the title of the book does not say "What Hilary thinks about her classroom," so that would mean I have to research it first. This is what we in my new world would call an "extensive literature review." MY MASTERS PAPER WAS A LITERATURE REVIEW! MY WHOLE MASTERS DEPENDED ON WHAT I'M ABOUT TO DO FOR A FINAL PROJECT!

To those PhDs of you who are reading this and chuckling to yourselves, you just go right ahead. Because I have been too. I mean, I'm just cruisin' through the grocery store isles at nine at night (because that's when I get out of class), and I think of what I am about to have to do in the next two and a half months and it literally makes me laugh out loud. Not the, bend-over-b/c-you're-about-to-pee laughter, but the oh-my-god-who-lives-like-this? kind. There is a difference, you know.

Now, for those of you who usually call or email me after I write one of these dramatic vignettes, please remember who you're dealing with: she-who-could-be-an-actor-she's-so-full-of.....drama, fo sho! I'm just adding a bit of pain to make my "creative fiction" more interesting. Thank GOD I'm not doing it on Oprah or she'd fry me like she did James (pun intended). Good Lord, she ruined it for him, didn't she? I heard on NPR the other day that if you feel like you were manipulated by him and you bought his book, you can rip out a certain page number, mail it to him, and he'll refund your money. If ANY of you on this list are doing that, you will NOT be my friend any longer. Do you hear me, Jake? You can't do that for fun--it's just not funny... (well, kinda, it is)

SO, the book chapter is for one class. That will be, oh, what? 30 or 40 pages? No problemo! For the other two classes, I'll be doing some other kind of research project where I get to go out into the community, do really fabulous work with teachers and kids, and not be able to publish anything from it because I'm only a doc student--not a professor doing research. WHAT the H&*&*&F*&68*?

Other than the classes, the radio stations here are still baffling to me. You've got 35,000 kids packed into one town and you have one or two local radio stations. The rest come from the surrounding areas. But that's not the baffling part: they ALL are "Southern Rock" stations. I mean even the hip hop station plays an occasional Linard Skinard song. I've heard so many songs by the Eagles and Linard Skinard, I feel like I've been beamed back to the seventies. Oh, and R.E.M--don't even get me started. UGA had a benefit concert here last night where TEN local bands came and played REM cover all night to raise money for some club. You know Michael was probably there--I, unfortunately missed that one. And on the W-U-G-A-N-P-R station, every other morning I hear, "We'd like to thank one of our major supporters, Widespread Panic." You KNOW your town has it goin' on when Widespread is a major contributor to NPR!

A quick update on the weather: it's been a cool 75-85 degrees here in Athens, Ga, which makes a sista very happy.

I have to go. It's five o'clock here and I haven't done one piece of reading today. I think my brain is actually beginning to get the DTs because it hasn't come across anything I don't understand all day long. Well...you can't count watching the slightly obese college girls walk around in there horrible strapless, elastic-waisted shirts, because that kills me every day!

All of y'all take care. I think about you often. It's not lonely here, because I'm too busy to be lonely. It's just....not what I'm used to. I do love every minute of what I'm doing (except this horrid author with the last name of Crotty--if any of you know him, I'm glad he's not alive or I'd call him and tell him he's a horrible writer), and I miss everyone everywhere you are.

Love, love, love,

Hil

Dictionary.com is a beautiful thing...

Have you ever sat down to read an intellectually stimulating book only to realize that you might as well have been sitting down to read an epic poem written in Japanese? Just curious. That's how my last two weeks have been. I wake up every morning, oh, around eight or nine--depending on what time my trainer is going to kick my ass--shower, and then head to my local coffee house (Jittery Joe's--great name for these freaky young nineteen and twenty-somethings who down two or three carmel lattes before they even finish reading the Red and Black, our trusty Bulldog newspaper) for the next five or six hours to take in the latest chapter or two for my next class. Yes, five or six hours for one class.

It's me. The one who's been reading adolescent literature for that past six years? Books where the largest phrase might have been, "So I told her, like, that totally sucked, and like I wasn't going to even like go there!" Those books. Full of adventure, teenage love, girl cat fights, boys' sixteen-year-old humor, and how to learn NOT to be anorexic, but lacking the vocabulary building that would lead me to this adventure, none the less.

But...I have discovered that if I keep my brand new computer open to dictionary.com, words like "epistemology," "phenomenology," "auto ethnography," and "theoretical pragmatism" flow much easier for me in my big squishy chair... and brain.

Mind you, while I was just typing those beasts, I had to stop and spell them as best I could using my old "spell it like it sounds" strategy--what a fantastic language arts teacher I made. :) So I circle those little words with my trusty pencil, look them up (over and over and over) and write their meanings next to them in the margins. I don't know why I keep having to look up the same words; you'd think after reading them in EVERY freaking chapter of EVERY book I'm reading, they'd stick. But, they haven't, so I'll just keep looking them up. That whole "put them in context" strategy I used to teach my students has flown out the ol' limited vocab girls' window for now. I'm sure in four years when I'm writing these short and sweet emails (because I will be, so watch out), I'll be a wealth of information and overwrought with vocabulary, sounding lyrical and brilliant. But for now, it's dictionary.com all the way, baby!

I am thoroughly enjoying my classes. My professors are knowledgeable, and they are so eager to hear what we have to say about our past teaching experiences mixed with our thoughts on the latest articles (100 billion pages, at least) and book chapters we've read for that class. There are some students mixed in one of my classes who are working on their masters degrees, so they have a different outlook on their work-load for class. They smile and look rested. Their eyes aren't blood-shot and covered in the same film as we who are working on our doctorate degrees. I remember those days...back at CSU...oh, those days...but I digress...

I found the most beautiful trail this morning. I mean, I didn't discover it on my own and post my sign naming it or anything. I finally went to the botanical gardens here in Athens and it is very pretty. A little reminder of Colorado on this 3 mile loop paralleling the river, hidden in the trees...plus 110% humidity, a few very large bugs I've never seen before, some mosquitoes, a few water moccasins, and I don't know, a leech? Just kidding. It was beautiful but humid. I was soaked to the bone when I finished my run. A contributor to that could have been that they mark their trails there, but not as well as we do in CO. I was on the "white trail," but it often merged with red, green, and blue, so I think I did about six miles instead of three because I got what I like to say in Georgia a little lost. It was nice, either way. I kept seeing people, but I was too proud to ask where the hell I was, so I just smiled and kept circling the botanical gardens, I guess.

I have met some nice people here. The other GAs in my department are very nice and we all enjoy going to the movies once a week to take a break from whatever it is we all do. I'm about to go meet them for a movie right now, so I can't fill you in yet on the cute little class I'm observing. More on that later.

I hope all of you are doing well. I am. :) Take care! Hil

I'm sorry, did I say I was going to get my Ph.D?

For all of you who weren't included on "observations 1," forgive me. And for all of you who aren't included on #3, forgive me. I should put you all in a group so I can just hit that, but it would then be too easy for me when I come sit here at this computer in the Athens, GA public library to script my life. If you would like to be removed from the "observations" emails, please contact my secretary immediately. Just kidding. You think you get a secretary when you're a doctoral student? You ARE the freakin' secretary!

Let us begin:

As I sit to write this manuscript, the temperature outdoors has dropped one degree to 104. I will let you know when there is sarcasm inserted in this email (for those of you who don't know, I'm a bit sarcastic sometimes). I have been working--in this New World--on daily meditations to accept the heat. I wake every morning (pretty late, I might add, because I can right now) telling myself, "Hilary, it's going to be hot today. You're going to sweat. It will seem as though you can't breathe, but you can; just keep inhaling and something will enter your system--whether it be a cloud of Dante's Inferno or a fly the size of Nottingham Lake, you must breathe in." It's working okay, so far.

My week in Athens has been....um...how can I say this PC? Productive. I have been working on my new house (located in what we like to call the PROJECTS), I have joined a gym (where, I might add, they are VERY serious about your self esteem and you working out as often as possible). This gym is an old Kroger, so it's pretty f'n humongous! They are going to give me a one hour session with a trainer where they check my body fat (it's there, I have already assured them), check my flexibility (it's not there, they can count on that), and give me some sort of goal to work on (my only goal, of course is to get in there and watch that flat screen TV in the ladies lounge. I went to run yesterday and the cleaning lady said, "Have a nice workout." and I replied, "I don't think there is such a thing, but 'Thank you.'" She FOUND me after my workout and said, "I just wanted to say to you that there is such a thing as a nice workout. It is inspirations for something that gets you here, and it's energizing once you've finished." I said, "Wow, thanks for your positive mental attitude gym lady." That's pretty inspirational, I'd say.

My house is coming along just fine. Just to keep myself entertained, I switch ALL of the furniture from one room to the next each day b/c I can't seem to make up my mind about where I want to duck from the bullets the most. ;0

Today, however, my life significantly changed. I had a "come to Jesus," as some of us like to say. No all of you hopeful Chuck Lowry's out there who said, "I just KNOW you're going to get to GA and meet your husband," I haven't met Bubba just yet. I had my first meeting with my Ph.D. adviser--oh, Louann, how it made me miss you so much! Dr. Gayle Andrews is the middle school woman and she just so happens to be in charge of my life for the next year. She's pretty small, so I could take her, but she's pretty powerful, so I"d have to take her out and then move.

We met for three hours so she could "go over" my classes and explain my assistantship. That's all I have to say about that. I mean, what else can I say? I quit today. I'll be moving back to Colorado and begging for my job back, along with my condo and my car. Anyone who would like to assist in my move can meet me at 116 Tamara Ct. on Monday. I'll be there, ready and waiting.

Okay, not really. BUT, I did have to excuse myself to the restroom so I could have a good "knee" talk with God, reminding myself that I am actually smart enough to do this freakin' CRAZY program!

Let me begin with these two simple words: Quantitative Qualitative::::: There,I said it. Six of those bad boys and I'm home free. Oh, that's right kids, SIX research classes for the little girl who can't even take attendance with sixteen kids in a room and figure out who's absent. :) I'll be entering a course called "Baby Stats" this fall to "ease me into things" if we can beg them to let me in. Baby Stats? What the hell is that? There is no BABY when it comes to statistics, that's for damn sure!

Other than the six (really seven, but one won't count) courses from Satan's Den, I have a plethora of course work that will be fascinating. All will take place once a week for two ours and forty-five minutes in the evening. Four of them...
Not bad, you say? I have all day to study, you say? Oh, but wait, there's more...

During the daylight hours (all of them, I'm pretty sure) for my assistantship, I will be supervising FIFTEEN student teachers in the fall. No, not five...FIFTEEN. I will give them each two formal observations, and then meet with each of them and their mentor teachers to tell them how badly they suck or if they should stick with it. (Just kidding Louann and Cindy, I won't say the word "suck"). These 15 students will be placed in 8 of the surrounding counties, so I won't have to drive more than 35 minutes each day...Half will be seniors and half will be juniors...so I won't be 'too overwhelmed'...whatever...Gayle said here she wanted to go ahead and "toss me into the deep in so I'd get comfortable." Really, do any of you know how long it took me to learn to swim in the first place? I think when I started with Marti and Molly at the age of 30.

I think I have to help her with the writing of some eight thousand-million page report for accreditation for the whole department (she probably decided I should do this since I'm such a skilled writer...) That report will be due October 1st. (Insert visual of slit wrist number uno here, along with not much, but some sarcasm).

Thirdly, and oh, I will say Thirdly, I will be observing the 5020 Methods course to juniors who are in their first year of the teaching program at UGA. There are two of these courses offered in the fall, and it's my job to watch both. I am instructed to sit in on all classes (which meet on Fridays for three hours--25 students in each course). If I get to "guest teach" I can teach something cool, maybe. Anyone have any ideas? I was thinking, "How not to make kids feel horrible about themselves during the first months of school," or "How to recognize when you really suck at teaching and you should change majors."
No, no, the GAs teaching the course will tell me what I'm to do--not to worry.

As the Athens public school system has just let out its students and I am taking up their space, I am going to give you a break from my manuscript and give them some computer time. The library is right next door to a middle school-- they're just so damned cute!


I (will grow to) love this place! I am excited about my program. That is the honest truth! I've NEVER felt this honored to be in a situation than I feel today. Let's just all pray that I can keep up and hang in there. Can anyone send me some speed to take on top of my Ritalin? Cuz 20s and 10s ain't gonna cut my fifteen hour days.....

Love to you all! HEH

PS, I just corrected at LEAST five words that I should have known how to spell. Do you think they'll kick me out when they realize I can barely spell my name? :0

A whole new life...in new world

Day One Observations in the new world:

These creatures are interesting to say the least, here in this new world. They speak several different dialects as if they live in tribes they can call their own. With words like, "Imma," "R-yah," "thnkee," and the ever-so-popular "fixin," I am certainly learning a whole new language again. It's been a while since I've been here in the jungle...oh wait...I mean...home, so my ability to pick up the dialects of these creatures is quite difficult or...rusty, shall I say...

The weather here in the rain forest (or the beach...same thing) is an eye-opening change as well. One cannot possibly think of leaving his/her dwelling after 7:30am to do anything outside (even walking to the car or mailbox) or one will surely perish in the flames of the sweltering and smothering air. Air...what a concept. I remember when I could actually breathe the air in Colorado. Now, I just open my mouth, suck in, and hope for the best.

There is this amazing thing here in the new world called humidity. Yes, I know you think you've heard of it, but you really haven't. In my old surroundings, I remember once or twice hiking with my friend Marti and our comments of how the air felt humid....oh, chuckle, chuckle, what a childish remark that was....

On a good day, here in the new world, when the humidity is 70%, one might only have to shower twice within a few hours; but, when the humidity god is angry and annoyed with all of the weight-challenged indigenous people here and he cranks it up to 80 or 90%, well, one can only hope that one's sweat glands are working properly because then there are no showers needed.

Indigenous peoples: interesting...
As my research team and I worked our way across the plush green South to the new world, I made note of several people of this land. Weighing no less than 200 pounds (on a light day), many had very few teeth at the petrol stations and several could have been carrying a banjo...if you know what I mean...(begin theme music here)
One of them actually asked me to help him read a map when we were near Chattanooga, but he had to ask me three times because I don't think I ever saw his lips move so I could read them to understand him more clearly. As I glanced at his map wishing and hoping that one of my team would come out of the bathroom, I could actually feel his humid breath resting on my neck and it reminded me that I needed to not leave the car without a partner.

I also have noticed that the options for comida (that's food in Spanish) here in the new world are so very different than my past home-land of ten years. There are several choices on every corner if one is looking to achieve heart attack before the age of 37, and there are even more if you are trying to kill yourself before I get married. The "healthy choice" in the new world seems to be the ever-so-famous Chick-Fil-A, where everyday from around 11:00 till 2 you will see cars lined up for miles so the people can have chicken that's fried in canola oil instead of car oil.

As for the outdoor life here...well...enough said...
I'm sure my "love" of mountain biking and tele skiing will be well supported here just as it was in Colorado with everyone pushing and prodding me to do my best, even if it wasn't fun. Or, they'll just all invite me over to sit in their air-conditioned houses and watch Oprah until it's time to go to the gym for our hour and a half workout. Training for my next half marathon in CA will be really interesting...in the gym...

As for my adventure at the University of Georgia...it will begin on August 10th. I have so many really exciting sessions I get to attend to learn how to be a graduate assistant. Classes like "the future of teaching undergraduates" and "how to be the best GA you can be." You all know I'm a nerd like that, so I'm lovin' that stuff! Then I get to meet with my team from the education department to see what I'll be doing for them. YEAH!

Hope all is well with all of you! I'm off to go get a fresh chaw...
Love, Love, Love, Hil

Sshhh...

Yes, I realize the contradition of "secret" and "blog"; however, I must explain. My friend Hilary, a beautifully intelligent women, decided to start her phd program in the fall of last year. Since then, she's been emailing quite regularly about her adventures. People keep telling her to get a blog, but it hasn't happened. So, I've taken it upon myself to publish her musings -- um, without her knowledge... well, at least not yet.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be going through and posting her emails --many of which are hilarious and many that remind us the difficulties of school -- be it middle school, high school, undergrad, grad school or phd hell. ;0