Scream Like a Girl

Lest I allow my blog to become a receptacle for the negativity I've felt at 10 pm on each of my most recent UoP Tuesday nights, I've not shared my school adventures lately.  Let's just say I'm having issues with this teacher and leave it at that.  The good news, though, is that I like my classmates a lot.   And although I get teased a lot (for talking too fast, too much, being bossy, and being an overachiever), the intent is never malicious, and I know how to interpret the teases as compliments.

I've fallen easily back into my old UoP routine with respect to the homework.  That is, I put in just enough effort to achieve the desired results of my own personal rubric.  In order to consider the assignment a success, I must:

- Get an A (a perfect score is even better)
- Learn something (if I don't feel I'm learning from the curriculum, I try to challenge myself by learning something new in PowerPoint or Photoshop when I design the presentations)
- Turn in work I can be proud to put my name on

I'm betting this is why they call me an overachiever, but each facet is equally important to me.  I got my bachelor's with a 4.0, and I'm really trying to match that achievement.  The $1000+ bucks per class really should give me the chance to actually learn something.  And it's important to me that people who meet Andrea Fife know she does quality work.

I wish I could add:

- Know I've done my personal best.

But my work would rarely meet that standard, and honestly, moderation in all things really does apply to my schoolwork.  I'm willing to put in the time to meet my own standards, but perfection would just be going too far.

Anyhow, this week, every person in the class gets to give a 10 minute presentation on Gender Roles.  We all have to answer the same 5 questions, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be in for a boring and repetitive 90 minutes of presentations on Tuesday.  So of course, I'm trying to be a bit different.

I've been mentally formatting my presentation all week, thinking of interesting personal tidbits to use to set mine apart.  Thankfully, I need look no further than Alex, who supplied me, unprompted, with the announcement that, "Mom, I was going to scream like a girl.  But then I didn't.  I screamed like a boy."

And then, of course, there are the pictures of him dressed up as blue-dress-wearing princesses at Kaitlyn's house.  (Apparently he and the other little boy there insist on wearing only the blue or red princess dresses, like Cinderella or Snow White.)

Picture to come.  I promise.

I wish that was the only homework I had this week.  Still to go is a 2450 to 3500 word paper on an observation I did today, requiring all sorts of crazy details regarding developmental theorists and details regarding physical, cognitive, language, moral, and social development.  Yeah.

Knowing my constant shortage of proverbial stones, I took careful aim and threw this particular one in the direction of a preschool I've wanted to observe anyway.  I scoped out the potential future educational environment for Mr. Expressive Language Delay (Dylan) and gathered the data to write the dumb paper.  Score.  An added plus?  I bought pizza and interviewed the preschool owner/teacher (also known as my friend Alicia) while our kids played.  Maybe that stone actually hit three birds!

Unfortunately the paper isn't going to write itself.  Fortunately (*rolls eyes to indicate a facetious tone of voice*) Kirk's mom invited him on a mother/son date tonight, and he's dealing at a casino party tomorrow night.  Alone on both Friday and Saturday night, I suppose I'll have nothing better to do than put in the minimally required amount of work to churn out a half-decent paper.

I'm hoping it goes well.  If not, I'll probably have to scream, and having been imprinted to do so through media and social conditioning, I'll probably scream like a girl.