Hey
everyone! As you may have seen in my placeholder post, I haven't been
able to connect my laptop to the hotel Internet and I didn't want to
write
a whole post on my Android. It occurred to me earlier this evening that
my internal monologue becomes somewhat robotic when I'm typing out text
messages on my phone. By that, I mean my sentence flow disappears and
is replaced by very segmented, yet uniform
speaking. It's kind of like being in "Haiku mode" while counting every
syllable, but to a lesser intensity. You'll just have to trust me when I
say that I'm writing this on Friday.
It
was a decent drive to Columbia and while it was busy getting onto I-70
in Kansas City, I didn't have "stomp on the brakes" moments like I did
with
the Science Olympiad trip a couple of weeks ago. Before I left for the
trip, I was mostly taking care of last-minute items about this trip
(picking up the van, printing off study material for the students,
etc.), and after we got to Columbia, the team and
I went to TGI Friday's for dinner and then back to the hotel to relax.
What I'm trying to say is that it's a Math Team day even though the
state competition is tomorrow and there's not much else that happened
today.
Two
of today's holidays are Day of Silence and Hanging Out Day. For those
of you who are a member of or supporter of the GLBTQ community, you've
probably
heard of Day of Silence before. (Ironic pun?) In case some of you may
be unfamiliar, the Day of Silence is often a youth-driven holiday meant
to show support for the GLBTQ community by staying silent all day. I
looked at a Day of Silence website and the FAQ
was definitely targeted at high school students, including stating that
even if you are being silent, you should still respond to your teachers
if they ask you a question in class. They did add that most teachers
are understanding if you talk to them beforehand,
which I thought was a nice sentiment.
Hanging
Out Day seems to be just focused on relaxing and spending time with
friends. When I was looking at my schedule this morning, I knew that I
wouldn't be able to really celebrate either holiday. I definitely
support the GLBTQ community but since I knew I would have to talk to
students, co-workers, other University staff, and hotel staff, it didn't
seem like I would do Day of Silence justice. As
for Hanging Out Day… Well, after sitting in a van for 4 hours and
knowing that tomorrow will be a long day with many students, I'm okay
with having a night to myself.
In
a similar approach to last Saturday, however, I can still celebrate a
holiday - I'll just go bigger! By that, I'll go with a monthly holiday
and
the one I picked out for today is National Card and Letter Writing
Month! Tada! While I was packing my overnight bag, I made sure to grab
some envelopes and stamps. I was hoping that the hotel would have a
decent sized notepad, but the one here is pretty tiny.
I'm sure at least one of the students will have a sheet of scratch
paper I can have though. I probably won't mail it until when I get back
to campus, but at least I can write it out tonight. To the person or
people (oh, mystery!) who get a letter from me,
good luck reading my handwriting.
Since
I'm writing this entry in OneNote, I'm not sure how large of an entry
this will be on my blog, but I feel like this is a good point to wrap
up.
It's getting late and I want to follow through and write at least one
letter before I go to bed. I'm looking forward to tomorrow - I have 10
students here for tomorrow's competition and they are a bright bunch,
particularly when working together. I'll most
likely be a proctor with the coach from Rockhurst again (that's been
the trend for the past three years at least), which will give me some
time to see what questions my students are up against. (Don't worry, I
will be proctoring a lecture hall with two or
three random schools and my own students will be in another room, so
there's no possibility of cheating.) Here's hoping that they do well!
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