Miss Rodeo Utah 2010

Marti won!

There are a lot of things I could say right now. I could give you a run down of the whole week. Or talk about how much work went into getting to this point. Or tell you about the emotional highs and lows along the way.

But.

All I really have to say is this very important lesson that I learned from my little sister (and best friend):

If you dream about something, and you put your heart into it and work at it as hard as you can, your dream will come true.

Picture from Captured Moment Photography

Re-Discovery

I have done two productive things today:

1. Went to the eye doctor.
2. Emailed some teaching stuff to my book club friend, Kat.

I have one more productive thing planned:
3. Drive to the high school. Hang up all my cool new posters. Try to be excited and not dismayed by the abundance of sinks in my classroom. I have two. I don't even need one. Meh.

Anyway, that's about as good as it gets for today. To find the documents for Kat, I had to dig through some old documents, and I found some interesting things I wrote forever ago. The following is an excerpt from a research paper I wrote in 11th grade. I'm posting it here because I was so incredibly passionate about this topic. I think that's amazing. We all need more passion in our lives.

Homelessness: America Keeps Dreaming

Millions of people across the nation are seeking after the elusive, yet
ever-present “American Dream.” While there are many ways to define the
American Dream, there is one prescribed way to achieve it: hard work. It
is also estimated that there are nearly three million homeless people in the
United States. Although they are often seen as indolent good for nothings,
the fact is that nearly 2.8 million of them have jobs. These people are
referred to as the “working poor.” Nearly one third of the homeless
population is families with children. The typical image of a lazy,
middle-aged man sitting on a street corner is simply not true. In fact,
homeless people are sometimes called the “invisible poor” because it’s often
hard to tell that someone is homeless. This is because they may lead
seemingly normal lives. Americans use the stereotypical images of the
homeless to shift the failure from society as a whole to individual
groups.

Many people complain of the homeless expecting handouts and getting aid that
they have not earned. Unfortunately, many homeless people who have at
least one job miss out on government programs that should benefit them. It
is not unusual for a person to make a fractional amount too much to receive
government aid. The question then arises, if today’s society is only
willing to help those who help themselves, why don’t they? This moralistic
stinginess will not help those who are doing all in their power to provide for
themselves.

Homelessness strikes without discrimination to race, age, sex, or of marital, or
familial status. So, it is completely incredulous to associate
homelessness with any particular group of people. Assumptions about who
the homeless build walls that keep people from understanding each
other. Many people insist that they see only alcoholics, drug users, and
mentally ill people at the root of homelessness. It is unfortunate that
they fail to see the children who sleep in corners of dark alleys, the mother
who works two or more full-time jobs, or the man who must go without so that his
family may eat. These are the
homeless.

The fact is most of society sees the homeless as the blotch on America’s nearly
perfect complexion. Isn’t homelessness, after all, the simple, yet
undeniable, proof that the American Dream has not been realized? Americans
do not want to believe that hard work cannot amount to success.
Homelessness goes against the grain of American morals and ideals. Cheryl
Gorder, author of Homeless!, said “A home means we accept the mainstream values
of American life. It says that we are acceptable. To be without a
home makes people question your very right to exist. To be without a home
is unacceptable.” Indeed, it seems that homelessness is downright
un-American.

Predator Day

Mike and I are always on the hunt for fun things to do. One day, he came across the Predator Breakfast at the Hogle Zoo.

The description:"From birds of prey to leopards, learn what some of the animals are having for breakfast at the Zoo while you enjoy your own breakfast. Meet some animal friends up close and make a treat for an animal friend."

Okay. How awesome does that sound? We get to see predators eat (close up!), and we get breakfast, and a treat for an animal friend! All for about twice the entrance fee, but we thought it sounded totally worth it. Unfortunately...

The reality: We arrived at the Edzoocation Center all ready for our day at the zoo, and for breakfast. There were mostly kids there, but we had expected that. Our zoo-ranger-tour guide introduced herself and invited us to get our breakfasts and get ready for the first presentation. Hooray!

And then we got to the table. Good thing we don't have some diabetes or something, because all they had were (not at all good) sugary little pastries, apples, juice, and like 10 slices of cantaloupe. It was too early for that much sugar. "But, hey," we thought, "we're really here for the predator coolness."

I still think predators are probably pretty cool. But you know what's not the coolest way to learn about them? PowerPoints. Not that exciting.

Luckily, we got to make treats for an animal friend during PowerPoint time. But not zoo friends. At home animal friends. And we don't have any of those, so I made Mike a bracelet. "Still," we reassured each other, "there's still the animal feeding part. That will be worth it."

It was finally time to go see a real life predator eat it's real life breakfast. At exactly this point, the zoo ranger mentions that our tickets did not include entry to the zoo (which we had naturally assumed) except for the animal feeding. Nowhere had this been mentioned before. Not on the website, the tickets, the first part of the breakfast. And we paid a lot of money for that. We were grumpy, to say the least, as we trudged along to the wolf den.

While we were there we got to see two wolves eat some liver out of a box. It was pretty cool. Not voraciously awesome or anything. More like, a big dog happily eating a treat cool. But, hey, wolves eating raw liver was something.

When we got back to the edzoocation center, we were a little peeved that we had paid double and gotten just about none of the things we had expected. If we paid the admission fee on top of what we had already paid, we would be close to $50... and that seemed a bit absurd. We ended up talking to guest services, and that smooth talking (good looking!) Mike got us into the zoo after all (for no additional fee), and that was great because the rest of the zoo trip was super fun.

One of my favorite stops was to see the elephants. We caught the end of a little training show and then we got to see the baby elephant. It was adorable.

We thought it was pretty neat that the giraffes stood right next to the doorway so we could tell that they are exactly 14 feet tall.

I learned an important fact about penguins. They are only found in the southern hemisphere. Not in Alaska at all. So, they don't actually frolic about with polar bears drinking Coca Cola. In other bird news, we went to this amazing bird show. The trainer has the birds do tricks and swoop right over your heads. We were so enthralled we didn't even think of taking pictures.

These drinking fountains give me the biggest kick. Best idea ever.

Despite the initial setback of the Predator Breakfast being kind of lame and making us sad...
... it ended up being a really fun day!

Wow. That's Ridiculous.

Today was day one of my first professional conference. Overall, it's been amazing! Here's something though... this is a professional conference right? And BYU and the cooperating school districts have got to be paying at least $1,500 per person for us to attend.

Why, why, why would so many of the "professionals" attending this conference be messing around on Facebook, browsing all the different models of phones, and talking to each other about inane things during the presentation?

I hope that their students do that kind of stuff to them.

Oh, world... what will become of you?

I'm Trying Something New

So... this summer...

I've had a lot of conflicting feelings about what to do with myself. This hasn't been a problem for me for a long time. Here's what I've done the past few summers:

2006- School. I took all the pre-requisites for my major so I could apply the fall of my sophomore year. That would include: British Literary History (to 1500), American Literary History, Introduction to English Language (a linguistics class), and Fundamentals of Literary Interpretation. You know, the light stuff. I used to have this goal of graduating from college in 3 years. I can't remember why. I did it in 4, but it was a 5 year program, so I still feel good about that.

2007-A whole lot of working. After so much school the year before, I, for some reason, thought it would be very refreshing to work 10 hour days at the library and then get Friday off. Yay, three day weekends every week! Nope. 10 hours is a very, very long time at a library. (Luckily, I worked with awesome people- hey guys, thanks for reading!)

2008- Class/working. Over the summer I had my YA literature class and a film and literature class. They were so fun and awesome and great! The reading load was kind of heavy, and reading 40 books in 8 weeks was kind of time consuming. I'm also pretty sure that I had some sort of sleeping disorder, because I was tired all the time. So, I was either sleeping or reading basically all the time. Not so bad.

2009- Be unemployed/date future husband. Which was actually a whole lot of work as I was applying for jobs left and right, dealing with constant rejection, and holding all these weird, random temporary jobs. Also, on a wonderfully bright side I spent my evenings with Mike doing fun things. That part was nice.

So, in conclusion, I am usually extra busy during the summer. I was planning on keeping very busy this year too. But, after having spent the last 9 months in high alert panic mode, I have been thinking about taking a break. It is new for me. It is a little strange and uncomfortable. But, I'm going to try it. I'm really not that good at it yet.

Before you judge, please know:
*I still get paid- yay!
*I have plenty of things to do. Like get ready for a big conference in Park City :) And help my sister get ready for MRU. And use the sewing machine my adorable husband bought me. And read books.

Okay. Now judge.

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Meta

Happy first day of summer! The year wouldn't feel complete without some end of year reflection. Wikipedia says that "some evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that metacognition is used as a survival tool," and I believe it because thinking back helps you figure out how to move forward. Here's what sticks out to me from this past year.

1. I am setting an example.
In the middle of a presentation on some literary period a student raises their hand.

Student (12th grade boy): Mrs. H., you make your own PowerPoints, huh?

Me: Yes...

Student: I can tell. You always cite everything.

Me: Yeah, I guess I do.

Student (thoughtfully): Mrs. H.

Me: Yes?

Student: You're setting a good example for us. Thank you.

Rest of Class: Yeah, thanks Mrs. H!

That was kind of an odd exchange. But, it made me feel good that they're getting something positive from me. Also, I feel like I should attribute the title of this post to Dr. K. Matthews- my rad American Modernism professor- I think it's funny.

2. Make friends. You need them.
You need to be able to rant, to get second opinions, to share ideas, to borrow Diet Coke money, to sit next to someone during pep assemblies... it's important.

3. Parents May Be Adults, But That Doesn't Mean They're Mature
At a point pretty square in the middle of the year, I got a pretty nasty email from a parent about the grade I had given her daughter on her essay. She went so far as to pass the essay along to a former English teacher and quote his response that strongly implied that I wasn't intelligent enough to recognize her daughter's genius. It hurt a whole lot.

I took it to my department head, showed her my rubric and the essay. And, she was outraged by the immature things the parent wrote. Turns out we all pretty solidly agree that even if your kid is a genius, her essay (about legalizing marijuana- a topic geniuses do tend to dwell on) still needs to meet the essay requirements. And, if you're mean to me, Mrs. R. might maim you. From this one I learned to stick to my guns and not take anything some coddling parent says too much to heart.

4. Reading Makes People Happy!
Hamlet rocked the 12th graders' world (The "Homelet" (Hamlet + omelet) Party didn't hurt either). And, 9th grade girls cried when Romeo and Juliet end their lives. A couple of 10th graders read books in their entirety for the first time in their lives... and they liked them. And, even the surly 11th graders felt good about The Princess Bride.

5. Your Attitude Will Make or Break You
I would be lying if I said I was a ray of sunshine every day... really, really lying. But, I saw very clearly that whatever my attitude was would be the attitude I got back from my classes. When I was excited and happy, my students were too. When I was exasperated and exhausted and overwhelmed they tended to become exasperating, exhausting, and overwhelming. Let's just say, there were good days and bad days, but I want to change the ratio. Because really, why do it if it doesn't make you happy?

Mood Reading

Today is a day for Catcher in the Rye because Holden Caulfield swears almost as much as I'd like to today.

I'd maybe even risk one good swear, but I'm going to be on my best behavior for awhile. I did a bunch of checking up on a research paper last night that was totally just the regurgitation of a conspiracy theory, and it might have gotten me put on a watch list.

Best behavior.

17 days. 2 hours. 18 minutes.