I'm kind of...

I'm kind of stressed out right now so I figure blogging may help. Pretty sure school is going to kill me. This is by far, the hardest semester I've ever had. Well, at least convinced myself of that so now I believe it. I can do that to myself sometimes. Jeff has been trying to work on that with me. This is my last semester so I guess I should expect that? I have two writing intensive courses, two American studies courses, and Spanish 2. I think part of the problem is I have put extra pressure on myself to to really well. I mean, I've always tried to do well, but getting all A's last semester combined with decent semester before that has raised my overall GPA to a 3.7. At Fullerton I was always around 3.3. I just want to stop at last semester so I can have my 3.7. Here's the deal, I'm not the most intelligent person, not that I'm an idiot, but probably about average. A 3.7 is slightly above average so I am pretty excited to have it. With all that being said, here are my classes:

The Gilded Age in America (AmSt): Pretty cool class. Reading some good novels, well, the first half and then we always stop halfway through. The thing is, I would like to find out what happens in the end but have no time to do the extra reading. We have a lot of reading for this class. At least it is pretty light reading. Then we usually have to do a write up with every reading. I guess that not so terrible. I haven't' started my paper due for that class. It's actually pretty cool. My teacher gave us a list of items that came out during the Gilded Age and we are supposed to research and analyze them for their worth in the past and today's society. The list includes: bikes, gloves, sewing machines, Kodak, and other neat things. The teacher talks a ton. It would be pretty cool to have a more discussion based class (which I think he thinks he's doing). We did two truths and a Gilded Truth the second day of class. No one guessed my Gilded Truth. Yay. I consider that as a victory. They were 1) I am running my first half next month 2) I was raised by a single mother who adopted 5 kids 3) I grew up going to the beaches of Orange County. My classmates thought my first two were the lie. Nope. I am not really a fan of the ocean so I didn't go to the beach much growing up. This one guy was hilarious. He's from Ghana. The teacher asked for who wanted to go first and his hand shot up. He then proceeded to tell the teacher he didn't feel comfortable doing the game because in his country he was taught not to lie. Taken aback, the teacher stammered, "Well, this isn't something I am advocating for real life. It's just an exercise". So the guy, Alex, told his 3 truths but somehow were all about how ignorant American's are for believing what they see on the news about his country. Haha.

Radicalism in the U.S. (Am St): this class is about strikes and unions in the late 1800's. It's. Kind of boring and over my head. The teacher was rude one day. First of all, he always cuts people off and doesn't let them finish. One day a kid had a question and the teacher started to answer it and the kid said, "But..." and the teacher said, "Don't cut me off. Let me finish." Rude! (Or as Bon Qui Qui would say, "Ruuee"). The professor will often pose a question, call on someone to answer it, and then argue with them about their answer. Pretty annoying. I am not sure if he realizes this isn't court (he's a lawyer). Perhaps I should tell him? What do you think?

Spanish 2: Yikes. They expect you to talk in Spanish the whole time, even when asking questions. I seem to be the only one in the class not even slightly attempting this, so I guess I better start. My teacher is pretty cool. I am having trouble with reflexive verbs. I like my lab class this semester too. Last semester it was so pointless to go. Well, not that it really has a point this semester, but at least we do something in the class. I have a few friends in the class already. Two are from my last Spanish class. I almost didn't have class with them, but thanks to a tm (tender mercy- See Elder Bednar's talk) I got into the right class. There were two 12:30 sessions and I accidentally picked the wrong one, even though my friend told me to double check. But I was able to take the last seat in the other 12:30 session so all is well. I made friends with a girl named MaryBeth. She's awesome. She's kind, funny, positive, and you just smile when you're around her. (I realize that sounded like dating advertisement but it's not I promise). I spent a few hours on Saturday studying so we'll see how things go for my first test this Thursday.

I'm back: I had to go get ready for church the other day. Sundays is the one day a week I actually try. 

History writing intensive class: Subject is Vietnam. Which is pretty cool because I haven't really studied Vietnam in detail before. Bummer is the fact I'm even taking this class. Temple said my CSUF credit would transfer so I wouldn't have to take this class and then they changed their mind. Oh well. The teacher is pretty cool. He's a PhD student. (Is that how you write it?). He's got a pony tail and tattoos all over. We have to do a lot of writing in this class. We have to write a paper, give it to a writing partner, comment on theirs (they are commenting on ours), give our paper to our teacher and he comments, then write another draft of the paper. Then give it to our writing partner and we have to comment in on it again and so does the teacher. Confusing? Ya it is. So I just print out three copies of my paper each class that way I am not short a copy. We have to e-mail it with a specific title as well Willis_Title of Assingment_Draft/Revision/Comments. I am kind of scared because he's going to start docking for grammar mistakes and I've gotten out of the habit of proofreading before I turn papers in (Sorry Judy!). So this will be good for me. I am really learning a lot. For example, many people have said that the amount African Americans who served and died in Vietnam was overwhelmingly disproportionate to the number of men who served in Vietnam. Not true. Black causalities were only slightly disproportionate to their total in U.S. population (12.5% died from a civilian population of 11%). Yes, slightly does matter because I am tired of hearing how terrible our government is (more specifically to African Americans). And, furthermore, many Africans enlisted for more dangerous jobs and also re-enlisted! But I would never say this at Temple so guess it doesn't matter anyways. On our first day we had this weirdo teacher barge into our class room at 3:15 asking if our class was going to be out at 3:20 because he had to teach in our room at 3:20. It threw my professor off from his lecture and shocked the rest of us. I thought he was a lost student asking if he had the right class or something. Fact is, our class gets out at 3:20. No classes at Temple are ever scheduled at 3:20. They are scheduled at 3:30, so he must have gotten confused. Although, I still don't think he knows because he gives dirty looks at us while we're in the class after 3:15 (the class has clear windows so we can see). He has long hair, two loopy nose rings, wears two different shoes, and wears the TIGHTEST pants I've EVER seen on a man. Another kid commented, "He looks like he's wearing elastic". Yes, yes he does. This class should be cool, just a lot of work.

And finally, my crazy scary class. If I die this semester I am sure it will be from this class. But at least I will have died a college graduate (or almost). Where to begin? Well, this is my senior capstone class in American Studies so it was bound to be hard, I get it. But seriously? We have the class once a week on Wednesdays from 5:30-8:00. On our first day of class our teacher gave us a five page paper due by that Friday. That Friday! Granted, it was a pretty easy subject, but dang! Guess we really are in the big leagues now. She says our class will be a graduate level because that's what we'll be next. Nice in theory, crappy in real life. At least I've taken a American Studies theory class at Fullerton that I think has somewhat prepared me for this class. The whole semester is supposed to be spent researching a topic in order to write a research paper at the end. We do weekly readings as well. We have to answer some difficult questions on some already confusing and complex readings. My book for the class finally came from Amazon. It took so long I had to find the readings off of JSTOR. Lucky I did though. She called on one kid for the answer to a question and he said, "I couldn't do the reading because I ordered my book and it hasn't come in yet." She said, "Where'd you order the book from? China? The moon!?" She then gave him an assignment to do because he did could not "pull his weight in the class discussion". There are only 6 of us so it's pretty noticeable if you don't do your readings. Her theory is that because he "took" from our class discussion he had to give us something in return. She says it's just like real life. For example, a classmate was not able to turn in the five page paper (a hard copy) she assigned us the first day because he was leaving town after our class that night and would return the following Monday. He asked if he could e-mail it to her. She said, "Then what are you going to do for me in return?" He said, "What?" (as I would have). She said, "Ya, if I use my ink and my paper to print it out, what are you going to give me in return? In life if you want something you have to give something in return." Maybe I just have good people in my life, but not everyone expects something in return. She also says, "You don't know how high you can jump until someone raises the bar." I'm sorry, did I sign up for the Olympics or college? She also found a mistake in the Oxford dictionary!! (Jeff wasn't too impressed and said she's trying to show off). She was writing a paper on hippies and decided to look it up in the dictionary. It said the first time it was used was in the San Francisco Chronicle April 2, 1960 (I can’t remember the exact date so I made it up). For her, that just didn't sit right (who knows why). So she had a friend going to SF go in person to check out the archives. The friend could not find the article the dictionary referred to. The friend looked a few days before and a few days after but it was nowhere to be seen. She actually found the first time it was used in another paper, awhile before the SF Chronicle. I said, "When are we supposed to check our sources? What is the balance between trusting nothing and trusting everything?" She said there is not balance and to trust nothing. Then gave a method (that didn't make any sense) of how to weed out what to trust and what not.  Ya lady, because I have enough time to devote myself to the zillion footnotes on the bottom of our crazy hard to understand readings! I need help on my research paper but I am scared to go to her for help. She made an analogy to swimming. She said she would help us if we were flailing our arms in an attempt to swim, but if we weren't even trying she'd be like everyone else on the beach and watch us drown. Hmmm. Well, with all this being said I still like her. She's intense and the class will be, but oh well. It's either buckle down or don't graduate. I think there is extra pressure because I actually have a high cumulative GPA now.

I finally made it to Alama. Better start reading fast in order to finish before the year ends. Running has been good. Did an 8 mile without having gone more than 3 miles before it. It went pretty well. This weekend is 11 and I have been sick or swamped with school so the most I've done in the past week some 3 milers. Waking up at 5:30 to run is hard for the first 2 minutes or so but once I start moving it's not so bad. We see deer on our run. I like that a lot. My Utah friends aren't as excited as I am... wonder why. Haha. We had fun long run one Friday night that turned into a mini girl's night, complete with ice cream and Gatorade from Target. I will have to stop running though as soon as the half is done so I can focus on school. We are looking into a rag relay? I don't know. Should be fun. Nannying has been hard lately. The kids have really had problems listening. At first I was like, "Maybe Heavenly Father wants me to learn something here." Ya, learn that I never want disobedient kids!! Jeff and I have already talked and obedience is number one in our book. I had a mini break down and called my mom one day. Which was hard because I don't usually go to her for my breakdown sessions. I don't want her to worry. But it was good. I got a stupid parking ticket. Ugh! I took a job down town. But before I did I asked about parking and was told it wasn't an issue. Ya, there is only 2 hour parking outside of the client's house. Well, unless I wanted to drive around a few blocks and search for a spot there. Getting off at 10 pm didn't really make me want to walk around some neighborhood I didn't know. So I chanced it and got a ticket. The other nanny said they probably wouldn't ticket since it was raining. Uh huh. I am excited to start Biggest Loser with Charise. I hope school allows me to do so.

Jeff is awesome. He has really studied hard this past weekend. This has motivated me to do so. If he does well on his two back to back tests this week he gets a game for the new X-Box 360 we got. (Off of Ebay for cheap… well cheaper).  We got it for netflix. I am shocked to say I have actually missed tv and being home this summer taught me that. I finally saw the Conspirator!! I’d have to disagree with Tk, I really liked it and so did Jeff. He pretty much only has one ym in his class. He's been doing some fantasy football with friends and loves it. I still can't believe he like the raiders. I do not know football, but the one thing I do know is I do not like the raiders. The fans are just, idk. And now I'm married to one. Such is life. We missed the temple ground breaking ceremony due to homework but heard it was great. The picture of it looks neat. Jeff is not looking forward to October because apparently it is extremely difficult. But, if he does what he has done for these two tests, he should be in great shape. I accidently made Jeff read the wrong scriptures in Sunday school. Whoops! I promise I was paying attention! I shoved my scriptures at him, well more like nudged him with them and told him to read. Only, I had it open to 1^st Corinthians instead of 2^nd. The teacher and class were like, “Huh? Where are you at?” I did admit it was my fault. I didn’t volunteer to read because I already messed up the Sunday before. So basically we’re both banned from reading now. Ok, well I must go do some homework. I just wanted to finish this entry. I still need to post summer pictures. Congrats if you made it to the end. 



An old, unfinished entry I found. Kinda emo so be aware...
I have been very happy with my recent purchases. We finally have a table cloth, a nice shower curtain, and a silverware separator (not sure that's the official name)for our draw. It's the small things that really matter. It's been rainy today. I can't believe around this time last year I was at our rehearsal dinner. It doesn't seem possible. I was so nervous. I felt like my stomach was going to fly out of me. It's crazy how life is. No one ever seems to mention the scary aspect of marriage. Like, "this is it". Maybe I was just the weirdo. But it wasn't easy to decide to get married (this has nothing to do with WHO I married, just deciding to do it in general). I guess I was clueless and thought things were a fairytale. Take the wedding plans for example. What a crazy stressful time. I had work full time, school, a new apartment, EFY, etc. I was so stressed out from planning and at times even hated it. Hated it? I thought being engaged is supposed to be the most wonderful time of your life? Or some crap like that. And for some people I guess it is. Not me. Not the 10 other Mormon wives I've talked to. It's stressful and scary. But thank goodness that's in the past. I better stop writing about it because I'm feeling stressed just thinking about it.
It was awesome to see Judy and Craig. I have been so blessed to have known them for, let's see, 7 years! Wow. That's crazy. I can't believe I've been out of high school for 4 years now. And married!

Another unfinished post I found:

Well, it's been a month since I've written. Let's see what's up. Hmm...
I have a newly found addiction. Harry Potter. Yes, I realize I'm a few years late, but I have never seen them before now. I was so anti for so long. I never really had a reason to be anti, I just was because everyone loved it. So I refused. Then my friend Holly planned a movie and night. I promised her I would go. Then I found out we were seeing Harry Potter 6. To be honest, I almost didn't go but because I said I was going to go I went. I didn't really understand the movie and actually fell asleep but it did spark my interest in them. So in December or January we started the first Harry Potter. We kept going until the Spring when we finished up to the first half of the 7th Harry Potter. Then Holly invited us to go see HP on the opening week. We went and it was definitely a different experience. People were all dressed up, crying, clapping, cheering when the bad guys get hurt or insulted, etc. But it made for a good memory.