A Very Lucky Girl

If I found out that there was a video camera in the Literacy room of the public library during my tutoring session today I would die. Today was my first official volunteering session with my student. She is a middle-aged woman from Mexico with very little knowledge of the English language. Which is where I come in. She wants to learn conversational English and I am doing my best to aid her learning process. I met her for the first time a week ago and it quickly became apparent that we would have trouble communicating. We sat and smiled at each other and laughed nervously. My Spanish vocabulary is extremely limited, I was proud of myself for saying good morning and her name correctly this morning. All week I stressed about being able to communicate a new language to someone when I couldn't even communicate with in their native language. I hated professors who taught me French when they knew little English.  I had a TEACHER book to page through and the whole time I looked th...

I danced around my home yesterday morning, torn between laughing hysterically and crying of pure joy.  Why? The direction of my life was so fantastically validated.  When I first started researching the Internet for information regarding teaching English as a second language, I signed up for emails from a job listings site. Just for kicks. I felt sure I would regret the enormous influx of spam, but instead I found something wonderful.  One morning, when I was taking that damn Ancient Art of War in June, I scrolled through the options of the day in my email and found a listing for online volunteers needed for a program in Rio de Janeiro.  Considering I have high hopes and crossed fingers to get into the Fulbright program, destination Brazil, I jumped at the chance to become more involved in this pursuit.  I sent the woman my resume and a short blurb about me and why I was interested.  She responded quickly and set up a Skype chat with me for Thursday,...

I know that it looks like I don't do any schoolwork at all. Even my friends here in the exchange program scoff at the four hours of class I attended each week. But today was the culmination of weeks of preparation for a Shakespeare performance. I chose a Shakespeare module in Dundee because I thought it would be really awesome to learn Shakespeare in depth near the country of his birth. One thing I've come away with is that I don't believe Shakespeare was written to be said in an American accent. I felt so inferior among the proper accents in my tutorial! A requirement of the course instructed each tutorial group (there were three) to choose a scene from any of the plays we read, perfect it over the course of the term, and perform it on March 26. My group was on the smaller side and had only eight people in it. We finally settled on an abridged version of the final scene in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The scene has loads of characters in it so we had to get c...

I am a total nerd. I love school supplies. I love organizing for a new year. I make color-coded file folders on my computer. I get excited when I enroll for the next semester. And this year is no exception. Fall 2013 is going to be legen...waitforit...DARY. I'm going to be in class 19 hours every week...but I think I'll love every second. Women&Film, Native American Literature, Sociology of Deviance, Religion&Society, my LAST semester of French, and teacher assisting for Gateway will rule my weeks. Reading and writing and thinking about people are some of my favorite activities. I wonder if I'll even feel like I'm in school.  But you know what I love even more than school? Getting mail. So, y'all get to writin' cuz I know A Very Lucky Girl is worth 46 cents for postage.  316 Cate Center Drive Box 5012 Norman, OK 73072

The infamous Miss Johnson I had quite a tumultuous education growing up. I started Kindergarden at New Hope Academy and completed third grade with the wonderful teaching of Mrs. Utley, Mrs. Fontenot, Miss Johnson, and Mrs. Peabody. I couldn't ask for a better beginning of school. From there I attended fourth grade through ninth grade at St. David's School. I learned Latin from the legendary Mr. Davis and labeled the African countries in Ms. Newsome's class. Mrs. Crutchley aided my seventh grade heart and placed me next to my crush in her assigned seating chart. Mrs. Purvis instilled basic grammar rules into my fifth grade brain and Mrs. Durham endured my crying fits in math class. LETTERS DON'T BELONG IN MATH. It's a disgrace to the alphabet. Sophomore and junior year were spent at Legacy Christian Academy in the presence of educators like Mrs. Maxey and Mrs. Brunson. I learned extensive amounts of European history and American Government from Dr. Hamel and Dr. ...

Successfully completed the first week of the 2013 spring semester--HOLLA ATCHUR GURL. 15 weeks to go. It's like I'm counting down a pregnancy, except you know, not at all. 2013 is turning out to be a bit more challenging than I originally bargained for. My life seems to be spinning out of control; but I recently realized that I completely control my academic success. So, long story short, my classes aren't going to know what hit them when I'm done in May. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday I kick off the morning with a nice dose of Introduction to Logic at 9:30 AM. This is the class that I had to take the math placement exam in order to get permission to solve word problems at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Dan Cheon seems nice enough. He doesn't bother with an attendance policy and all of his quizzes are announced and clearly assigned on the syllabus. The downside is that logic is still in the math family, just heavier on the words side. I saw "proofs...

Tyler took me to The Warren in Moore the other night to see a movie I've been dying to see ever since I viewed the trailer. "The Words" intrigued me for two reasons: as one who dabbles in writing, I couldn't shun a story of the trade, and Bradley Cooper fills the screen for an agreeable amount of time.  I was not disappointed. The basic premise is of a stereotypical starving writer trying to make something of his words while supporting himself and his newlywed wife. They go on a jaunt to Paris for their honeymoon (a bit pricey I'd think, but who am I to judge holes in the plot?), where Dora, the wife, buys him an antique briefcase. Happy wedding, honey! Here's a manky old murse for you to tote around town! However, the purchase inspires him (Rory Jansen, played by Bradley Cooper) in ways she couldn't imagine, for he discovers an ancient manuscript tucked inside. As his own stories continue to be rejected, he retypes the typewritten, yellowed pages th...

I complained and complained about reading Beowulf last the weekend. And complained. To anyone and everyone that would listen. Or maybe they didn't listen. I'm not a Beowulf kind of girl. It felt like reading the Lord of the Rings in poetry form. I barely made it through the Hobbit with the my love of reading intact. Conner teased me about the love lost between me and the story about dragons. (seriously, dragons? My favorite book is Little Women...)  Boys are stupid. Except for this next one. He knew how much I was HATING my sojourn through the thin pages of the Norton Anthology of English Literature and brought me sour patch kids and an ice cold water (these are a few of my favorite things...Sound of Music reference anyone?) on his way home from work on Sunday night. Life, in general, is better with an orange or green sour patch kid in your mouth. The reds are still in my room. Any takers? Even after discussing the text in class, Beowulf is still not a hero I will plast...

"Writers don't make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don't work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck's book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch face down and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man's stupid words. And for this, as I said before, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more."--Blue Like Jazz (Donald Miller) This is my life. What I love about writing is the freedom of expression. ...

I'm currently taking my first major class, Critical Reading and Writing, and we have written one paper so far. English professors are notorious for lag-time on returning graded assignments so I'm still biting my nails over here as I wait for the final verdict on my first piece of prose for Dr. Anderson.  On Tuesday our class had a very interesting and rousing discussion about the general education requirements at OU. So rousing, in fact, that we spent a solid 45 minutes expositing the pros and cons (of course, this was also a clever ruse to delay our inevitable discourse about Flannery O'Connor's tragic tales like Good Country People  and A Good Man is Hard to Find ).  Nevertheless, several of my classmates had good points. OU requires several hours of history and government, two sciences (natural and physical, one with a lab and one without), two semesters of English, and 3 hours of math, regardless of your declared major. Most of us in the CRW class agreed that as...

There are two kinds of people in this world: good writers and bad writers. And I'm not saying that I was the good writer in this scenario, but I was certainly the better one. My roommate asked me to edit her English paper this evening. I could not stop cringing at some of the major mistakes and I have a whole new found respect for English teachers.  I thought bad writing automatically ended with high school graduation...it doesn't. My hot pink pen seemed to have a mind of its own as I crossed out awkward phrasing and tried to ignore the fact that she had forgotten third person even existed (I thought it was common sense to avoid informality, but there was a generous sprinkling of "I"'s and "you"'s throughout the paper).  But I found the ultra mistake on page five. She actually used the words "freak out" in a formal paper. I'm certain that I actually paused my pink ink rampage in disbelief.  The entire experience left me with a reg...

"What a world we live in. I want to be incredibly close to the heart of it all. To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise. And right now, I couldn't possibly ask for anything more. I am a very lucky girl." Those are the words of Dianna Agron. I can't say that I am a huge fan of hers, but I think these words are very powerful. And I thought I should explain the title of my blog, before all else. Because I am , you know. A very lucky girl. I don't want to make this a place of complaining or ranting or pity. I want this to be a place of growth and this title will remind me everyday of how blessed I am.   Beyond that, I am such a lover of words. My Pinterest board of quotes is titled: "for the love of all words" because I do love them all (except of course for those disgusting words like moist, panties, and supple. seriously, those are gross. English would not suffer with their destruction). I finally FINALLY d...