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