It's a shame when I work at a movie theater where there is copious amounts of oil, butter, and colored syrups along with careless teenagers working very closely around me...yet I'm more likely to ruin my professional clothes because I keep slipping on the damn ice in the parking lot of the school.
OH IRONY.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Highs and Lows
That feeling you get when you see FOUR NEW JOB POSTINGS in the World Language category of IDOE
And when you find out that none of them are for French or ENL
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Nickname turned Alias?
When I was in 7th grade, I was inducted into National Junior Honor Society. Before the induction, we were asked if there was something wrong with the way our name was printed on the program. I raised my hand and asked if mine could be changed from Ellen to Emma. The advisor then asked what name was on my birth certificate, and I regrettably said Ellen, to which she replied "Well then that's what is going to be announced".
When I was in high school, I was known for my last name before I was known for myself. It was "Oh you're Tony's sister" this, and "Oh you're Chris's daughter" that. I had teachers that knew me as Emma personally and when I was in their class and they saw Ellen they had no idea it was me. However, in high school, I realized that it was necessary to use Ellen more often for the more official things in my life: driver's license, induction into national honor society, standardized tests, graduation, and college applications.
The funny thing about college applications though is that I'd have colleges sending mail to both Ellen and Emma trying to get me to apply. For a time I wanted to apply under both Ellen and Emma to see if one would get in over the other, but then I realized that only Ellen had taken the SAT/ACT and only Ellen had a high school transcript.
When I first got to Ball State I seriously contemplated dropping Emma altogether, and just go by Ellen to make introductions easier. The school only knew me as Ellen, and I had no relatives or previous relationships with anyone to instigate Emma to come out. However it only took 48 hours for me to grow tired of people trying to get my attention by calling me Ellen and failing miserably because I wasn't used to peers calling me that name. Yes by day 2 freshman year I reverted back to Emma and spent the effort each year going up to professors each first day and introducing myself and saying I prefer to be called Emma when in class.
Once in college Ellen was never very far from me. Every job I applied for, every recognition I received, every organization I joined and every conference I attended started out with me being Ellen. Some transitioned over to Emma like my professors, but some always remained Ellen.
When I began teaching in college I had to get more background checks than I can remember. Every single one asked if I was known by any other name. I knew this was looking more for last name changes, but I always wondered if I should have put Emma as another name just because it is another name I go by. Granted, I have a clean record so it didn't matter. We were also educated on internet safety, making sure that 1) we don't post something we wouldn't want a school to see and 2) we make ourselves unfindable to our students. For most people, this meant just taking off their last name off of social media in order to be unsearchable by students. I wondered if just changing my first name to whichever one I don't use in the school would be enough.
Now I'm in adult world. I have my own apartment, loans and bills in my own name, and my own adult teaching job. It's been exactly a month and I've already run into problems with the whole Emma/Ellen thing. My apartment questioned some mail I got because it was addressed to Emma rather than Ellen (which is funny because when my roommate and I started looking for apartments and I referred to myself as Ellen and she's known me since first grade as Emma so it threw her through a loop). My school e-mail is under Ellen but I introduce myself as Emma, and typically don't give my last name in such an informal setting. But when I'm expecting e-mails from people, I wonder if they are searching the system for Emma instead of Ellen and not finding anyone, and then proceed to become entirely too confused for just a name.
It makes me wonder if it is worth it to try and go back to Ellen again. Obviously I wouldn't get my long time friends, coworkers, family, or boyfriend to switch over, but maybe professionally introducing myself as Ellen would solve a lot of issues.
...or it would just put me through an identity crisis. Who knows?
When I was in high school, I was known for my last name before I was known for myself. It was "Oh you're Tony's sister" this, and "Oh you're Chris's daughter" that. I had teachers that knew me as Emma personally and when I was in their class and they saw Ellen they had no idea it was me. However, in high school, I realized that it was necessary to use Ellen more often for the more official things in my life: driver's license, induction into national honor society, standardized tests, graduation, and college applications.
The funny thing about college applications though is that I'd have colleges sending mail to both Ellen and Emma trying to get me to apply. For a time I wanted to apply under both Ellen and Emma to see if one would get in over the other, but then I realized that only Ellen had taken the SAT/ACT and only Ellen had a high school transcript.
When I first got to Ball State I seriously contemplated dropping Emma altogether, and just go by Ellen to make introductions easier. The school only knew me as Ellen, and I had no relatives or previous relationships with anyone to instigate Emma to come out. However it only took 48 hours for me to grow tired of people trying to get my attention by calling me Ellen and failing miserably because I wasn't used to peers calling me that name. Yes by day 2 freshman year I reverted back to Emma and spent the effort each year going up to professors each first day and introducing myself and saying I prefer to be called Emma when in class.
Once in college Ellen was never very far from me. Every job I applied for, every recognition I received, every organization I joined and every conference I attended started out with me being Ellen. Some transitioned over to Emma like my professors, but some always remained Ellen.
When I began teaching in college I had to get more background checks than I can remember. Every single one asked if I was known by any other name. I knew this was looking more for last name changes, but I always wondered if I should have put Emma as another name just because it is another name I go by. Granted, I have a clean record so it didn't matter. We were also educated on internet safety, making sure that 1) we don't post something we wouldn't want a school to see and 2) we make ourselves unfindable to our students. For most people, this meant just taking off their last name off of social media in order to be unsearchable by students. I wondered if just changing my first name to whichever one I don't use in the school would be enough.
Now I'm in adult world. I have my own apartment, loans and bills in my own name, and my own adult teaching job. It's been exactly a month and I've already run into problems with the whole Emma/Ellen thing. My apartment questioned some mail I got because it was addressed to Emma rather than Ellen (which is funny because when my roommate and I started looking for apartments and I referred to myself as Ellen and she's known me since first grade as Emma so it threw her through a loop). My school e-mail is under Ellen but I introduce myself as Emma, and typically don't give my last name in such an informal setting. But when I'm expecting e-mails from people, I wonder if they are searching the system for Emma instead of Ellen and not finding anyone, and then proceed to become entirely too confused for just a name.
It makes me wonder if it is worth it to try and go back to Ellen again. Obviously I wouldn't get my long time friends, coworkers, family, or boyfriend to switch over, but maybe professionally introducing myself as Ellen would solve a lot of issues.
...or it would just put me through an identity crisis. Who knows?
Monday, February 3, 2014
Is Ex-Patriotism Still a Thing?
Because we all know that I want to kick righteousness in the face. Remember?
If any of you saw the Super Bowl last night, it's possible you saw this commercial:
When I saw this commercial I fell in love. I loved how Coca Cola went about showing that "America is Beautiful". I love all the cultures represented and the message that Coke is giving by showing those representations. We have all different kinds of cultures here in America and the sheer coexistence itself is beautiful. America IS beautiful!
Well...until ignorance bleeds through, that is.
I was listening to the radio this morning when I was driving to work. You know, that school where I work and teach non-native English speakers the correct mechanics and conventions to the English Language? The school where a fifth of their enrollment is English language learners? On the radio they were talking about how controversial this commercial was because it had different languages and "non-white" Americans portrayed.
Before I start ranting (because we all know I will), let's talk about my credentials:
I am a licensed English as a New Language teacher. I studied English linguistics for four years. I studied language analysis specifically for three years, but I have been doing so informally for several more. I am fluent in two languages. I have studied the interrelationships between language and culture for several years.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to approach my disgust for the ignorance of some people in this country. I've seen a lot of people rip on the grammar people have in their posts, the fact that some people thought that America the Beautiful was our national anthem, etc and so forth. While that all disgusts me, I finally realized why I was so enraged at the reaction to this commercial.
"Nothing is forever except the certainty of change." If life and culture didn't ever change, then the vast majority of us would be living in Europe because that is where our ancestors are from. We would not have technology advance, or at least not successfully. Several things might have been invented but they would never stick because people would be afraid of the change it would create.
Think about when Facebook made all these changes and there would be groups formed saying "change Facebook back we liked it the old way" or "I'm going to [insert other social media here] because Facebook changed and I don't like it". But then within a week you're used to it and things are back to normal. Change is an everyday part of life and you can either run from it...or learn from it...
...No that wasn't a Rafiki quote from the Lion King what are you talking about..... :P
My point being, our culture has changed. Not all Americans are white. Not all Americans speak English as their first language. Not all Americans come from families with one mother and one father. Not all Americans want to grow up, get married, have 2.5 children, and live in a house with a white picket fence. And the beauty of America is that you don't have to be the same or want the same in order to be considered American.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you are showing hate towards those Americans in the Coca-Cola commercial--or to the Coca-Cola (American) company for making the commercial, it sounds to me that you are not embracing the reality of our American culture. So, would that not make you unpatriotic, instead of the commercial/company?
Just a thought.
Monday, January 27, 2014
I Don't Get It
A couple posts back I talked about how my body doesn't know the difference between two hours of sleep tired and six hours of sleep tired. It's still true, don't get me wrong (although with all these two hour delays I'm actually getting eight hours and it is glorious) but I noticed something else that my body does not differentiate and it makes me sad.
Cold.
My body does not tell the difference between "wow I went from chilled to cold" and "you can get frostbite in ten minutes and die" cold. True story. We have some god awful cold right now...wind chill warning on top of a wind chill advisory...schools are freaking cancelled because it is too cold for kids to be waiting for buses! I left work tonight absurdly dreading this supposed -23° cold...only to realize that it just felt cold. It didn't feel like dealth or some metaphor for the coldest thing ever; it felt just as cold as it would if it were thirty degrees warmer.
Now I can't tell if this is arbitrary or not. You know how like pain is arbitrary...current pain is the worst pain you've felt because your mind can't replicate the memory of pain...I wonder if this is like that. Because although all cold is cold, what was once cold is now tolerable. I mean, in November 20°-30° is god awful, but in January it's a freaking heat wave!
Realize that I said my body can't distinguish between degrees of COLD, as opposed to degrees of temperature measurement.
It's all just so...
*sigh* can't I just say I'm over winter and be done with it? Bring on the heat!
Dem Show Choir Feels
Ok so I was always sad that our show choir never did a full tap number the three years I was in the choir. In fact I loved the two tap numbers they did the next two years after I graduated!
I just saw this video and all I want to do is e-mail the choreographer for Plainfield and be like "you HAVE to do this! It's too awesome!"
Here's the video:
I just saw this video and all I want to do is e-mail the choreographer for Plainfield and be like "you HAVE to do this! It's too awesome!"
Here's the video:
Not to mention that there are some KILLER covers that have amazing vocal harmonies to the song.
It's just....AHHHH. Beautiful :)
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Going Down in History
Ok, so I've already ranted about the fact that Facebook stalking is a thing. Well, what happens when you take it to the next level? What happens when you're not ok with just Facebook stalking, you are now cross referencing two/three different social medias in order to find out as much as pertinently possible for your misguided desires?
Well ladies and gentlemen, I will tell you what happens. You win. You win at life for eternity, and all shall bow down to your epicness.
...or look at you like you're crazy because you just spent ten minutes doing all this for absolutely nothing gained.
So here's what happened: I came home from work and was having extremely engaging conversations with my lovely roommate. It was getting late, and there was one point where we started to get up and migrate towards our separate dwellings, only to continue talking, and sit back down because who really has energy to stand up and talk for as long as we were :P I was planning on watching The Help and contemplate throwing out my current reading list in order to reread the Harry Potter series just because it had been so long since I had read any of them. No. Instead, we got on the topic of middle school teachers, and that led to both of us getting out our yearbooks, and then we started wanting to know what people were doing with their lives that we graduated with, but did not interact with on a regular basis.
Thus...the Facebook stalking began.
Of course, that wasn't enough because sometimes you weren't friends with someone on Facebook so you could only see certain things, or nothing at all. We would use LinkedIn at times to see if we could find more information there (and most times we could) and it was all going fine and dandy (did I mention that there was absolutely no alcohol involved?) when we realized it was 2:00am (we started talking around 9:30pm and were once again trying to go to bed. Closing our year books, my roommate saw a note and signature from a girl she didn't remember and couldn't find. Once I saw the name, it took me a minute but I remembered who she was. And thus, the search began.
First off, she had a pretty generic name. Not to mention this was upwards of six years ago so she might not go by the same shortened form of her name, she might have gotten married (we also knew that she had gotten pregnant at least once)...the odds were stacked against us. Also, we knew that she had moved a time or two so we couldn't even use our hometown as a home base. Things were not looking good for the home team and my roommate was not yet invested enough to persist much longer.
I then remembered a critical detail: We were friends on Myspace back when that was a THING. And the thing about Myspace is most people simply outgrew their Myspace but rather than delete it they just kept it around and never used it, myself included. So I get on my Myspace, wipe off the dust, and behold, we're still friends! I click on her profile and find that the top person on her friends list had a profile pic of her and a kid! I also realized that her profile had a current city on it. Her name was still too generic to search on Facebook, so I then searched for him, found him based on the city that was in HER profile, and then searched his friends list for someone with her name. BINGO!
We had absolutely no mutual friends and most of her profile was blocked. But! I could see quite a few pictures and gather some inferred details of her life.
I'm not sure how I should go about talking about how satisfied I was for succeeding. I had the hugest grin on my face. It was such a convoluted process but I found what I was looking for and that made it worth my time! I'm not sure how I'm going to look at such an accomplishment in a few years, so I needed to document this as soon as possible.
Oh, and by the time we were done it was 2:40 am. We spent 40 minutes tracking down this girl. Insane? Probably.
It's absolutely amazing what the internet can you for you.
Well ladies and gentlemen, I will tell you what happens. You win. You win at life for eternity, and all shall bow down to your epicness.
...or look at you like you're crazy because you just spent ten minutes doing all this for absolutely nothing gained.
So here's what happened: I came home from work and was having extremely engaging conversations with my lovely roommate. It was getting late, and there was one point where we started to get up and migrate towards our separate dwellings, only to continue talking, and sit back down because who really has energy to stand up and talk for as long as we were :P I was planning on watching The Help and contemplate throwing out my current reading list in order to reread the Harry Potter series just because it had been so long since I had read any of them. No. Instead, we got on the topic of middle school teachers, and that led to both of us getting out our yearbooks, and then we started wanting to know what people were doing with their lives that we graduated with, but did not interact with on a regular basis.
Thus...the Facebook stalking began.
Of course, that wasn't enough because sometimes you weren't friends with someone on Facebook so you could only see certain things, or nothing at all. We would use LinkedIn at times to see if we could find more information there (and most times we could) and it was all going fine and dandy (did I mention that there was absolutely no alcohol involved?) when we realized it was 2:00am (we started talking around 9:30pm and were once again trying to go to bed. Closing our year books, my roommate saw a note and signature from a girl she didn't remember and couldn't find. Once I saw the name, it took me a minute but I remembered who she was. And thus, the search began.
First off, she had a pretty generic name. Not to mention this was upwards of six years ago so she might not go by the same shortened form of her name, she might have gotten married (we also knew that she had gotten pregnant at least once)...the odds were stacked against us. Also, we knew that she had moved a time or two so we couldn't even use our hometown as a home base. Things were not looking good for the home team and my roommate was not yet invested enough to persist much longer.
I then remembered a critical detail: We were friends on Myspace back when that was a THING. And the thing about Myspace is most people simply outgrew their Myspace but rather than delete it they just kept it around and never used it, myself included. So I get on my Myspace, wipe off the dust, and behold, we're still friends! I click on her profile and find that the top person on her friends list had a profile pic of her and a kid! I also realized that her profile had a current city on it. Her name was still too generic to search on Facebook, so I then searched for him, found him based on the city that was in HER profile, and then searched his friends list for someone with her name. BINGO!
We had absolutely no mutual friends and most of her profile was blocked. But! I could see quite a few pictures and gather some inferred details of her life.
I'm not sure how I should go about talking about how satisfied I was for succeeding. I had the hugest grin on my face. It was such a convoluted process but I found what I was looking for and that made it worth my time! I'm not sure how I'm going to look at such an accomplishment in a few years, so I needed to document this as soon as possible.
Oh, and by the time we were done it was 2:40 am. We spent 40 minutes tracking down this girl. Insane? Probably.
It's absolutely amazing what the internet can you for you.
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