So, I guess we survived the last week of school and finals week. It was pretty intense at the time, but it all seems like a dream now. I got all my classes finished last week. Even though I didn’t have any classes after Mon., I spent many, many hours every day trying to finish a research paper on Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) which is a framework for technology integration into teaching. I have read and studied and coded and analyzed and discussed TPACK for enough hours that I don’t really care to learn anymore about it ever again! But perhaps that will change in a few weeks after I’ve given myself a break. I was working a few research hours with a professor and another grad student on all of the TPACK information, but the grad student moved away and is getting married and I’m going to start working on my master’s project, so I don’t know if I’ll do any more research for that professor anymore. It was a really good experience though.
I was also able to finish my statistics final and finish the final loose ends of the Church Museum Department project. One of the people in the department that we presented to sent us a really nice email about the project. In part she said, “I had high expectations when I recommended to Marie that she contact you…and I want you to know that you far exceeded anything I had hoped or dreamed that you would create for us. . . . What you have created is a masterpiece…and I was so amazed by how perfectly it was aligned with every ideal that our department is striving for (and everything I hope to someday be able to accomplish). . . Thank you for being willing to put so much into supporting us and striving to create the very best that the Church History department can offer the world.” It felt good to receive such high compliments after so many long hours of work!
This week I spent many hours grading, grading, and more grading, but I am now done and ready to enter all my grades into the system tomorrow. Yippee! Fortunately, I was able to do a few fun things in the midst of all my grading.
Monday night Jason and I went to a dinner celebration at Susan and Gerrit Gong’s home. We had a little over half of our design team there from the Church History project and we had a delicious dinner. Dr. Gibbons even came, which was fun. After dinner, Susan got out a set of hand chimes and we played “Come, Come Ye Saints.” I thought it was really fun and I got really excited about it.
Tuesday I went to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point with Jason, Sara Moulton, and her roommate Kristen. It was beautiful, but I must admit that I was a little disappointed because almost half of the tulips had not bloomed and in some areas I just had to imagine how pretty it would be in a couple more weeks. The weather was perfect though and I managed to get my first sunburn of the season. Fortunately it wasn’t really that bad.
We went to the Tulip Festival on Tuesday because Sara had major hip surgery on Thursday. Wednesday I went over to help her do her cleaning checks (in return for her expert editing on my TPACK paper). I cleaned out their apartment fridge and freezer and both of them were disgusting! I think it’s been a year or two . . . or four of five since that thing has been cleaned and it was pretty satisfying to leave it behind spotless.
Thursday Jason and I played some racquetball and then Kristilyn, James, and Grant came to visit us in Provo. We played a little in our apartment, played some more at a nearby park, and then topped it off with some Arby’s sandwiches, fries, and milkshakes. It was fun to talk with Kristilyn and see her adorable boys.
Jason’s brother Steve graduated in Accounting from BYU so we went to the convocations on Friday…well at least half of it. It was really long, and after an hour of talks and everything they finally started reading the long list of graduates. Fortunately I married into a family at the beginning of the alphabet, and since he was getting his masters, he was about the 18th in line. After he walked across the stage at the Marriott center, Jason and I left to go visit Sara at the hospital. Apparently they were still reading names an hour and a half later!!! I can’t say that I’m sad that we missed it. ☺ We went over to Steve and Kirsten’s that night for pizza and cake to celebrate.
So, if you’re wondering about Jason’s finals, he finished as well. He’s such a good studier that he likes to save his finals until the end, so out of the four finals he needed to take, he took three of them on the last day of finals, and two of them after 8:00pm that night—He really didn’t mean to wait THAT long on the last two but it somehow ended up working out that way. In any case, he is done, done, done, and enjoying the lightened load of stress. He will just continue working at the coding lab this summer and can work up to 40 hours a week if he can handle working there that many hours a day. ☺ I, on the other hand, just found out the class that I was planning on taking Spring was canceled, so I guess I won’t have anymore school either until Summer term at the end of June. I’m still planning on working for Dr. Rich 20 hours a week, but I may see if I can pick up some other work hours for the next couple of months.
One last thing, I finally got my hair cut again on Friday. I lost both people I knew cut hair to having a baby and the other to getting married, so I got desperate enough and called a hair school. I usually have pretty good luck with hair cuts (I can’t say the same for hair coloring!!!) but I guess my luck ran out. Two hours later I walked out with much shorter hair—some of it much, much shorter than I would have liked! Oh well, it will grow back right? Some of you may even say that you like my hair, but you don’t know what I’m hiding. ☺
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
April 12
Happy Easter!!! It has been a really good Easter, and one that I’ve focused a lot more on the atonement and the resurrection than I have in some years past. Part of that probably has to do with the Passover dinner that Jason and I went to last night at BYU. It was hosted by Dr. Victor Ludlow. We were there for 5 hours, but we sure came away knowing a lot more about Jewish traditions and culture. I think we both wished we could have come away with that knowledge in only 3 hours.
I got a call asking me to play the piano in sacrament meeting today about 10 minutes before we left for church. I was a little nervous about playing Easter hymns without any practice but it turned out okay. . .except for the introduction of the first song. It’s the worst when you make your big mistakes when no one is singing!
The couple of weeks have been especially busy with the end of the semester so close. We’ve both been up a few nights or early mornings (in Jason’s case) to get are homework done. Of course it’s at busy times like this that unexpected things happen. The unexpected in this case happened at Jason’s basketball game. Usually I don’t go, but I decided I wanted to this time. I was asked to keep track of the points on the scoreboard for the game. Our team was ahead with a couple of minutes to go. Jason had the ball and the other team tried to foul him to stop the clock., and boy did they foul him. I guess it was determined later that someone’s teeth made contact with his head. Anyway, within seconds the blood was running down his head and he had to leave. He actually didn’t feel much pain or anything and wouldn’t have known he was bleeding without the ref telling him. I was going with him out of the gym, but the sight of the blood was getting to me and Jason could tell, so he just told me to stay there. He started jogging to the locker room, but didn’t make it because he started feeling lightheaded and didn’t want to faint. We ended up going to the urgent care that night and he got three staples in his head and a tetanus shot. Neither of us had been to a doctor in years, so it was an interesting learning experience. We definitely got an April Fool’s joke on us.
Last weekend we went to Jason’s mission reunion up in Salt Lake. Jason really enjoyed it and I met a lot of his companions and friends from the mission. Jason was excited to hear that his mission president was called into the 1st Quorem of the Seventy the next morning—Michael Ringwood. I would say one of the most interesting things of the night was talking to Elder Residori who was the financial secretary when Jason finished his mission. He remembered Jason but couldn’t remember how, then later that night he came up to him and said he remembered why he remembered him. Jason had a little extra money that he didn’t spend during his mission so he turned it back in to Elder Residori before he left. Elder Residori told me that the amount equaled about $1500 in US currency and they only received about $200 a month! Apparently the mission used that money to re-wallpaper some of the apartments in his mission that badly needed it. I hope that paints a little bit of a picture in your head about how frugal my husband is—and I thought I was frugal, but he has got me on that one.
General Conference was great! We watched the Sat. sessions here and Jason invited a non-member Korean friend over to watch the afternoon session with us. Unfortunately he couldn’t understand a whole, but we hope he understood enough to feel the spirit.
Sat. night we spent the night at the Burninghams in Alpine and ate doughnuts and played Ticket to Ride. We watched conference with them in the morning and ate a delicious lunch and then drove to Mom and Dad’s for the afternoon session and another delicious meal.
Well, not much to report other than that. We finished up the last full week of classes and I taught both of my classes for the last time this semester. I enjoyed teaching both of those classes and I really enjoyed my students. I gave my final presentation to the Church History Department on Friday as well and that went really well. I’ll have to show it to you sometime.
I got a call asking me to play the piano in sacrament meeting today about 10 minutes before we left for church. I was a little nervous about playing Easter hymns without any practice but it turned out okay. . .except for the introduction of the first song. It’s the worst when you make your big mistakes when no one is singing!
The couple of weeks have been especially busy with the end of the semester so close. We’ve both been up a few nights or early mornings (in Jason’s case) to get are homework done. Of course it’s at busy times like this that unexpected things happen. The unexpected in this case happened at Jason’s basketball game. Usually I don’t go, but I decided I wanted to this time. I was asked to keep track of the points on the scoreboard for the game. Our team was ahead with a couple of minutes to go. Jason had the ball and the other team tried to foul him to stop the clock., and boy did they foul him. I guess it was determined later that someone’s teeth made contact with his head. Anyway, within seconds the blood was running down his head and he had to leave. He actually didn’t feel much pain or anything and wouldn’t have known he was bleeding without the ref telling him. I was going with him out of the gym, but the sight of the blood was getting to me and Jason could tell, so he just told me to stay there. He started jogging to the locker room, but didn’t make it because he started feeling lightheaded and didn’t want to faint. We ended up going to the urgent care that night and he got three staples in his head and a tetanus shot. Neither of us had been to a doctor in years, so it was an interesting learning experience. We definitely got an April Fool’s joke on us.
Last weekend we went to Jason’s mission reunion up in Salt Lake. Jason really enjoyed it and I met a lot of his companions and friends from the mission. Jason was excited to hear that his mission president was called into the 1st Quorem of the Seventy the next morning—Michael Ringwood. I would say one of the most interesting things of the night was talking to Elder Residori who was the financial secretary when Jason finished his mission. He remembered Jason but couldn’t remember how, then later that night he came up to him and said he remembered why he remembered him. Jason had a little extra money that he didn’t spend during his mission so he turned it back in to Elder Residori before he left. Elder Residori told me that the amount equaled about $1500 in US currency and they only received about $200 a month! Apparently the mission used that money to re-wallpaper some of the apartments in his mission that badly needed it. I hope that paints a little bit of a picture in your head about how frugal my husband is—and I thought I was frugal, but he has got me on that one.
General Conference was great! We watched the Sat. sessions here and Jason invited a non-member Korean friend over to watch the afternoon session with us. Unfortunately he couldn’t understand a whole, but we hope he understood enough to feel the spirit.
Sat. night we spent the night at the Burninghams in Alpine and ate doughnuts and played Ticket to Ride. We watched conference with them in the morning and ate a delicious lunch and then drove to Mom and Dad’s for the afternoon session and another delicious meal.
Well, not much to report other than that. We finished up the last full week of classes and I taught both of my classes for the last time this semester. I enjoyed teaching both of those classes and I really enjoyed my students. I gave my final presentation to the Church History Department on Friday as well and that went really well. I’ll have to show it to you sometime.
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