this is why i could never keep a penpal, growing up. you start with the best of intentions, write all the time, make it really interesting...and then life intervenes and by the time you go back, you're wondering what in god's name you're supposed to say to someone you haven't spoken to in months.
that said, i've been writing here too long to stop now. that also said, not much has really been going on this summer. more mostly isolated weekends. some seriously nasty bouts of various illnesses, work headaches, not the least of which is the fact that NOT ONE PERSON has contacted me through monster.com. do people really get jobs through the internet, or is it just a big pyramid scheme?
but i have made some executive decisions in the past few weeks. one, i've decided that i'm really not looking for a career in childcare, and there's always going to be one or two families that i really don't want to leave. and i can always continue to see those kids if i want to. and i've decided that i'm going back to school. hopefully the spring semester of this academic year. i've also decided that i can wait around for enough money to fall into my lap for me to be able to move back to maryland to finish, or i can take the same amount of time, bite the bullet, and be a transfer student.
this actually poses several advantages. one, i can qualify for in-state tuition. two, for a while at least i can commute, thus saving housing costs. and three, i won't have to go back to my professors (especially the ones whose classes i failed), and explain that i'm coming back for another try. because at this point i'm feeling like, how pathetic is that? i can go someplace where no one knows me, and try again with a clean slate. and really, maybe that's the best way.
the current contenders are rutgers and montclair state. rutgers is closer, but montclair is cheaper and has a creative writing concentration. i'm working on the applications now... at least this time around, i really know what i'm doing.
what's strange to me is that i honestly feel as though i don't need a formal education. i really believe that i've taught myself most of the things i've learned. god knows that the K-12 years didn't teach me much, with the exception of geometry, and i've already forgotten that. most of what the classes taught, i had already learned from reading, and i pretty quickly figured out that what they didn't teach was the interesting part. if i hadn't been so focused on being the good girl, if school hadn't beaten me into submission by tenth grade, i think i would've been better off with a GED and early admission to college.
it isn't that i don't like being a student, because for a while i couldn't imagine the day when i would have to stop going to classes. the problem is with the educational system at large. standardized schooling, curricula without flexibility, are the antithesis of real education. education is a complicated thing, and school makes it a chore, rather than a joy, to learn. the other problem is that schools who take a nontraditional approach to teaching often have a nontraditional view of what it's important to learn as well. this is also a problem, because i believe that we should be teaching shakespeare and geometry and STANDARD ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND COMPOSITION (for god's sake, why is it so hard for people whose native language is english to string together a paragraph without making at least three typos and one syntactical error?!). i think we also should be teaching practical automobile maintenence and having a school garden and requiring community service.
above all, i think we should be making it interesting to kids. people are born with innate curiosity. and it takes a lot to destroy that. they manage it, somehow, but it does take a lot. you generally see it around fourth grade; kids have started looking at the classroom, and the teacher, as the enemy. something that interrupts their fun time.
ok, piece said. i think i'll go get some sleep. tomorrow i begin writing admissions essays. think they'd like this one?
beatpoetgrrl
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