So, tonight I had a minor personal crisis. And then I talked myself through it and came to a minor personal revelation. Sort of; it built on some thoughts about myself that have been developing. Anyways, then I felt like sharing, but it felt somewhat awkward to call someone and say, hey I talked myself through a minor personal crisis and now I want to share. Feel free to try and participate in a conversation or to pretend to listen while you read good meta on the internet.

And then I realized: hey, that's what LJ is for.

(Feel to read, ignore, comment with something relevant or with your own rambling story that no one else cares about.

So my personal crisis started when my professor handed back my paper. My second paper in my first graduate class outside of the teacher education department (although still strongly associated with it). My second paper with 100% in my graduate-level linguistics class (oriented towards teacher education). It made me deeply uncomfortable. I came up with a lot of thoughts about my fellow students, classes oriented towards teacher-candidates...etc. This paper was a typical last-minute offering.

And I had to stop and think; I am a good writer. Many people have told me that I am good at analysis. And even if it was a last minute production, I did get into and thought I made some good points. So, why do I feel uncomfortable when I do very well (pretty well I'm OK with. I am unhappy getting less than an A. But I'm uncomfortable getting more than, say a 95).

Here's the thing though, when I did my undergrad in anthropology, I liked it. I mean, really, really liked it. And even if I was extremely tired of school by senior year, I still loved some of my classes. I didn't continue in anthropology. I don't really plan to. And anytime someone asks why, I tell them that while I love the subject and learning about it, I like actually doing it less. And that's true. But part of the truth is also that, doing my thesis and seeing the people around me, I kind of decided that I wasn't that good at it and that maybe I could be better at doing something else. (Something less ivory tower too).

But, if I can handle grad school,if I can do well in it, does that mean that I basically quit something I enjoyed because I was lazy? Could I have done better if I worked harder (the answer is yes, of course). Because, that's not really ok. It also bodes ill for any thing I do, ever.

As I thought it through, I decided I was right both times. Because I was (am) lazy. And I could have done better, maybe a lot better, in anthropology. But I am also missing something that makes great anthropologists. I am a good writer. I am good at research and at analysis and at observations. All key points to anthropology. But I really really suck at asking questions. And that's where it starts falling apart. See, the responses to my papers are often, good analysis, you really make the reader thinks, this part invokes some really interesting questions. But I never get to that next step. I have a lot of trouble coming up with those questions and its not fun. What I needed from anthropology was someone to tell me, hey find out this about these people. And I can do the research and do observations (and I could get better at interviews, really). I can even say, hey, I want to go observe this and then analyze it. But that's not really how a lot of academia works. My comment from my thesis advisor was, your topic is kindof boring. You come up with all the interesting questions at the end and now its too late to answer them. I can't up with the questions (or hypotheses really) to get people interested in funding grants, etc until after I've done the year or two or three of research.

So I think there are probably some jobs where someone wants someone with an anthropology perspective and they'll say hey, go find out all about this or about these people. And that would be cool, would be perfect, except that a lot of the ones I can come up with pull at some ethical issues for me. Maybe I didn't look hard enough because I was feeling a little discouraged, but I'm ok with that (mostly). I think that's part of the reason why, soon after deciding not to pursue anthropology for a while, I got really interested in medical anthropology, particularly within ethnology of beliefs and practices surrounding medicine in different cultures. Because pretty much the most perfect job in anthropology for me would be working with hospitals serving large immigrant (or other forms of cultural diversity) populations. Someone could tell me, hey, go figure out what this new refugee group thinks about disease and doctors. And I could go do it! And I would be serving an awesome cause, making medicine more culturally competant!

But I'm not sure how much work there really is in that. Typically, it seems like a lot of people doing that start from academia, asking interesting questions, coming up with interesting results, and then going to the doctors and saying hey, guess what I found?

Anyway, the point is that I kindof miss anthropology. And I'm a little afraid that leaving it behind makes me less like the kind of person I want to be. But mostly I think that I'm not actually best suited for it. And I really hope that I'll make a way better teacher than I would an anthropologist (and not just because I like talking to kids and adults intimidate me a bit).

My mom's writing has been plagiarized!


...by a romance novelist.

Further details to be found at http://wombat1138.livejournal.com/100474.html#cutid2

I have said the Pledge of Allegiance twice today. Once in Mimbres at the Evergreen Garden Society Meeting and once in Cliff at the school board meeting. It's a little bit of overkill.

There was a high school freshman there reciting poetry he's written and oh my god--he hit every stereotype of Cliff school I could think of. I mean, he got there up in his jeans and his denim shirt, and (I didn't actually see them but I imagine boots) he stuck his thumbs in his belt, cupping the belt buckle, and he spoke with a cowboy sort of drawl as he recite a poem about his brother at the rodeo. He started writing 'cause his dad listened to country all the time and he just wanted to see if he couldn't write down his own stories. It was adorable. And good--very good poetry and his mom was there advocating for the school to bring drama back to the high school and he was there partly because he'd there started a writing club. It was awesome.

So there's the anime. It's called Desert Punk. It's kindof disgustingly rude and crude. It has a girl with breasts bigger than her head who gets called Boobie Lady a lot. It's amoral and pervy in that weird Japanese way--and I think I love it. It has a live action opening. And the best ending song ever. I...I'm a little ashamed.

PBS is showing a documentary right now on how poison used to make zombies may be useful for space travel.

I'm reading a year's worth of shonen jump and PBS is weirding me out.

Also I can't decide if Numbers doing a live action MMORG turned murderous is better or worse than House being recruited by the CIA.

In other news, I have just been recruited to make up a forestry presentation and then present it this Friday. To my brother's old 4th grade teacher. Who recognized me the moment I walked into her classroom in spite of the fact that I never went to Jose Barrios. I'm not sure I have the psychic powers necessary to become a teacher. Also Thursday I have to be in Mimbres at 1 and Cliff at 7 and there are at least three other things I need to do, all of which means I have to make up this forestry presentation tomorrow. Probably while I'm at the museum since we have a training on the Gila River Discovery trunks tomorrow morning (also, they've just realized their grant ends at the end of November, so they have to try and do all their presentations by then in spite of the fact that they haven't completely put together their presentations). And I am applying to NAU (which actually wants a 500 word essay titled "Why I Want to be a Teacher"--presumably to prepare you for reading essays on How I Spent Summer Vacation), Deming school systems (who want a hand-written essay on why I want to teach in Deming--because they are wily, crafty people), and UNM (who claim they only want a letter of intent to the department but actually mean they want an essay on: experiences that have served as a foundation for your work, how your interest in the field developed (avoiding personal, extracurricular or family background), how you planned academically for your goal, your undergraduate degree in general and your major in specific, any achievements and/or learning experiences that demonstrate motivation and inspiration (including but not limited to independent study courses, research conference presentations, internships, education abroad, closely related work experience, etc), and my qualifications in relation to my goal, "special" academic experiences, special projects that indicate ability to explore or master certain skills or knowledge, demonstrate the initiative and ability to develop ideas, the capacity to work through problems independently, and the determination to achieve goals, as wells as any special skills like computer or foreign languages, explain why I want to attend the program, how the department's curriculum matches my short and long term academic and career goals, show evidence I've investigated the program, the faculty and their research as well as resources and facilities, and how my interests match with the research interests of one or more faculty, THEN summarize why I believe I should be admitted to the program. Cutting out redundancy, of course.)

Seriously. UNM's prompt for a letter of intent is longer than the two other essays I have to write combined.

Also I'm going to Animas in December to teach middle and high schoolers about animal skulls. $150 a piece animal skulls.

Also I need new icons. Ideas?

Our website is fixed up and pretty now! gcecnm.org is incredibly much better than it was.

On the other hand, we have no volunteers. Even people who have worked with us before are suddenly refusing to answer back. It is getting very frustrating. I may have to resort to desperate measures. Next week.

Tomorrow I head to Roswell, for a fairly ceremonial event for AmeriCorps.

Home is awesome. Cold and prone to skunks, but still. Awesome.

I've never had a job with downtime before. It's really weird. I'm used to having a task at all times, and possibly one or two things waiting as well. Now, I keep hinting that I could use something else to do and my boss keeps taking that as "We should reorganize and prioritize what I've already given you to do!" I don't understand it at all. I yearn to be productive and people keep blocking me!

Possibly I could get more creative in finding things to do, but I find myself checking my friend's page daily for the first time in, umm, ever, and actually typing up some of the stuff that's been hanging around in crumbling notebooks. So I'm going with that for a while.

So I have a new job, at the Gila Conservation Education Center helping to run their "trunk education" program. It looks like it is going to be a lot of fun.

One tiny problem though. Their website is really bad. I mean, writing running into the dark green background and non-existent links. I, somewhat roundabout and quiet, brought up the question of if they were going to have someone fix it (I would. Seriously.). My supervisor said it's not a priority. They use the page editor the host provides them and last time the format got screwed up. It doesn't matter really. As long as the information is there, that's all he cares about. I wanted to cry. I mean I sort of respect his point. Except that presentation is important. It totally does represent you to the rest of the world. And maybe the people they're trying to reach most don't use internet, but I have formed opinions about institutions related to the user-friendlyness and design of their web pages. I have. I know people that do. It's not totally a non-issue.

I don't like to think of myself as elitist. But maybe I am. Just a bit.

I'm always kind of mildly terrified when people start overestimating my experience.

I've started volunteering for the Silver City museum--although they keep calling me an intern. I'm wondering if I can get like a job description or something from them. Anyways, I got into the museum mostly based on the fact that the woman who runs the museum has worked with both my parents and loves them dearly. Seriously, I didn't even give them a resume. They are giving me projects based on experience they've heard about from my parents.

Anyways, I did say that I was interested in maybe going into museum education after I get a teaching degree. The Silver museum does not have anyone doing education. Projects discussed before I started including digitizing collections and sorting through newspaper clippings. But they're really nice and because I have a background in education, the project I currently have is going through their education outreach trunks. The kits they send out to teachers, mostly just stuff along a theme but with the goal of having some sort of curriculum. Inventory is fine. I can do that. I don't always know what everything is (I had to look up the weird metal object to learn it was called a trivet for example) but I can handle it. Being told to make them better--ideas on what to add to the trunks, fixing up more of a curriculum, etc--that's a little more intimidating. Offhandedly being told that they want another trunk on mining and maybe I can put that together later reaches into the mildly terrifying. I know nothing about mining! Very little about curriculum and lesson plans! Eep!

Still, this is pretty much exactly the field I'm considering so its probably one of the most awesome projects I could get at the museum. I just wish I could have held it off until I'd started work with the Gila conservation education center and actually had a chance to look at their trunks.

I felt really homesick today for one of the first times in a while.

The area I'm in now is one of those just on the edge of a growing Hispanic population. As in, there's not many people (of any ethnicity) moving into our failing logging town, but 15 minutes down the road the agricultural-based tiny town has a fairly large Spanish-speaking population.

Today, one of the girls I've worked with, a sweet girl, always listening and helping and being nice, turned around to one of her co-actors and asked "So why are there so many Mexicans in Mossy Rock anyways?" And then it went into a conversation on how ridiculous it was that the teachers were trying to make them say "Hispanic" (complete with rolled eyes) instead of Mexican. This was from one of the high school girls who was helping to lead the group.

And in some ways this incident has helped me clarify something that's been bugging me all year. So I know racism is everywhere, and New Mexico isn't paradise. Therefore I've been working hard to understand why every small comment whether it was about "those Mexicans" or a joke about low-rider vans because that's the kind of car "they" all drive, or the big things like when a 14 year old boy called one of his girl friends a "N---"; why all of these things made me want to run back to New Mexico. I mean, part of it was just going home, because I grew up around very well-educated liberals, but there was something more too.

I think the something more is the history and the connection. The idea that kids who make comments about Mexicans are actually going to have to face somebody who is personally offended and not just deal with some interfering busybody. The idea that Chicano Lit is important to study and the Latino vote is important in the country. And even if New Mexico fails so badly at bilingual education, at least it's up there in people's minds.


Anyways that's where I am. Also, I'm kind of ridiculously excited because a girl in my theater group who refuses to speak at all was actually giving me nods and head shakes to questions today. Yay! A response!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mharussell/

New pics start on page 4; canoing trip, walk with Amanda and Andrew Rome and Sakuracon!

Embed media? Does that mean I can make my posts play music? We live in a wacky new world. Someone was telling me the other day that some cars have breathalyzers attached to them so that you can't start the car if you're drunk or something. Next up will be flying cars. Or at least it should be. Flying cars that don't require gas. Seriously, its up to about 3.50 here. It makes me feel sad and grown-up.

Kim got a new bird, a little cockatiel called Chico. I don't really like pet birds because I always feel so sorry for them. Same reason it would be hard for me to have a fully indoors cat, I guess. Plus, this little guy seems so unhappy with being in a new surrounding with new people. I guess the woman Kim got him from had him for 6 months (possibly it was actually weeks) and her son had him for like 8 months before that. Poor little boy, getting passed around like that all the time.

So I'm at the SERVES conference in Wenatchee (I do not in any way guarantee that spelling.) I took a seminar in ethics and decision-making, and I really loved it. In fact, I've loved every class and seminar I've had to do with ethics. It is possible that people interested in teaching about ethics are uniformly fascinating people. It is also possible that I just find ethics fascinating. The presenter was really good though. He kept people involved and going without any props or anything. Lori, who took the same seminar at a different time, agreed that he was really engaging and everyone would have been willing to stay late if he had wanted to run over time.

I'm also doing a talent show at the Conference, which strikes me as a mistake now that I realize I'm surrounded by people with actual, you know, talents. But anyways, I'm doing a story-telling thing about what AmeriCorps means to me.

If you hear of something really cool, I would be happy to go to Central America or Europe next year. It just seems like it would be really nice to go to a completely new continent and I just don't find Africa quite as interesting as Asia for whatever reason.

Speaking of which, a high-school student came up to our apartment the other day because she's writing a report on FGM as a rite of passage, and I was really kindof upset that I couldn't think of any resources for her to look for. I mean, I have info, I've studied this stuff. But I still just can't think of anything to direct her to. It's really annoying.

By the way, I brought my cell but forgot my charger so I have no battery and thus no working phone til Friday.

I think I want to find a job or program for a couple of months in the spring in southeast Asia. Laos sounds interesting.

So twice a week I take 5-6 5th graders into the Learning Center to have them do a typing program. This is rather boring, so I've started going through the program myself. This is the first post I've ever typed without looking at the keyboard once, and while I'm still making a number of mistakes, I'm not really that much slower than I was when I had to watch my hands. So Yay for finally figuring out/fully memorizing the keyboard. Wouldn't my middle school typing teacher be so proud? (Seriously, I barely remember that class and I can't even remember if the teacher was male or female.)

( Cut for whining. )

I got new tires! A pain and a half, but they're there. Also a PS3 which is infinitely more exciting.

So I wrote my first lesson plan this weekend. I mean I used someone else's idea for a lesson, but I wrote out the official plan to be filed and all. I swear, it didn't take long, but working out the differences between "overview", "purpose,' and "objectives" was just annoying. And the thought of having to go through and figure out which ELARs it fits (Sharlotte's doing that now) just about gives me fits. The thought of having to do this for everything I do everyday is almost enough to make me swear of teaching. But then I remind myself that paperwork is a universal evil.

I was abruptly reminded today just how far north I am. It reached 65 or 70 this afternoon. And one of my third graders was saying at recess that he didn't want to race because it was too hot! It was so weird.

In some bad news, two of my coworkers were at the bar and they were invited to an after party. They went there, thought some of the boys looked a little young, but they weren't entirely sober at that point... it ended up that it was a highschool party some kid threw without his parents permission. Their jobs are in danger, and the girl who works at the highschool has been suspended. Really, even if she's not fired, I can't imagine she'll have an easy time working at that high school again.

So that's my life right now. I hope everything is going well for you.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mharussell/page5/

Finally updated my pictures, from November to now. Page 1 is the newest, 12 the oldest. Because I'm sure that's impossible to figure out on your own. Also, why do I have to come up with sarcastic on my own? It's totally a common mood!

Just saw terabithia & decided to try mobile posting. The preview was definitely bad. The movie was better. It had the kind of magic realism that calvin and hobbes had. Mostly it was true to the book, although something about the feel was off. It felt too abrupt or something. Still, i liked it. Also maybe cried a little.

So today the 4th grade teacher I work with told me how she had had a 'talk' with one of her students at last night's elementary school basketball game. Our school's team was playing against the closest school and one of the kids on that team used to go to our school but transfered mid-year. So this kid was cheering on his former class-mate and saying Way to go, etc. And the teacher got mad. She talked to him partly because when she told him to stop he stuck his tongue out at her, but also because "You do not root against your home team! I know its hard, I go to my nieces and nephews games and you want them to do well, but you don't root against your team. That's just not OK."

And then some of my 3rd graders found a porn magazine on the playground.

So this movie my teacher recommended to me--The Last of the Dogmen--it broke me. My suspension of disbelief may never recover.

At first, well, it was just a little fun to mock. Chessy story, bad dialogue, cute dog, horribly horribly wrong narration. (A hint to aspiring screen writers--as a general rule you should not insert random narration about characters until after you introduce them.) You know, hidden tribe of Cheyenne living in the Rockies only to be found by an alcoholic bounty hunter and a desperate (to be laid) archaeologist, it has some possibilities.

And then there was the chase scene wherein police cars completely failed to blockade the horse's route (ohmigod, no one told us those things could jump!)which was fun.

But then the sheriff got up his posse to chase into the mountains after the rogue bounty hunter who just held up the pharmacy for some penicillin for the dying son of the war cheif. And what does the narrator say? The sheriff (who was the bounty hunter's father-in-law) was chasing him because he hated him for the death of his daughter. Not because he committed a crime or anything. No, it was because "he just couldn't stand for Lewis to have some peace." Because nothing says "I've found peace and wholeness of spirit" like armed robbery.

So that left me with some issues. I would like some to confirm this theory for me--holding the ancient dynamite the Cheyenne took of some poor lost white guy, "Dynamite. It's like wine--it only gets better with age." I would also like someone to explain to me how shooting an arrow into a pile of dynamite sets off a massive explosion. I obviously do not know as much about explosives as I should.

On the other hand, I also went to the theter and saw Deju Vu with Denzel Washington. I really liked that, even if they did cop out on the ending a bit.

Also, does anyone want a story for Christmas? Any particular fairy tales they'd like retold or short plot bunnies they want taken care of?

The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Wisdom and Wit in the Wild West is possibly the most awesome thing ever.

Just saying.