Jamilyn and Such: January 2013

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Man Cold

I'm a guest blogger on my friend Melissa Condie's awesome blog this week! She has declared 2013 the year of stories, and has asked a bunch of friends to contribute stories to her blog.

If you want to read my story about Man Colds and Nathan and my first fight as a married couple, head over to http://tackygaloshes.blogspot.com. And if you want to stay a while, read Melissa's other posts. She's hilarious!!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Favorite Quotes from Music 1010-4 Week 1

I am a community college adjunct faculty member. It's about the lowest job on the totem pole of jobs that actually make use of a Doctorate of Musical Art degree. And I actually really like it.

I've been teaching cello lessons at SLCC for the past two years now, which has been all sorts of fun. And I feel like I have the hang of how to do it- what to include in my syllabus, how much practice time to require, how to grade practice time and recital performances, how to schedule a student recital, etc. I think I've got it down.

But this semester, after responding to the administration's desperate plea for adjunct professors to pick up additional classes, I started teaching a section of music 1010. Section 4. of introduction to music. A fine arts general credit course full of 35 hoodlum community college students. Most of whom are wonderful.

Just so that I don't forget how fun these guys are, I'm compiling a list of my favorite quotes, statements, questions, etc from this class. Whether they are storming my desk after class, flooding my inbox all day, or interrupting the lecture with a raised hand, these are some of my favorites from my first week of class.

"I'm going to be 10 minutes late for every class, because I'm kind of a slow walker. is it ok if you don't mark me late?"

"I need to leave class 10 minutes early every Wednesday so that I can change clothes and be on time to institute choir, is that ok?"

"I don't think I can really afford to go to any of the required concerts for this course"
ME: "There is a list of free concert options on the syllabus"
"Well, just so you know, I'm not going to go to any concerts."

"Tubas sound like farting."

(while listening to the guitar solo from Hotel California): "Is this Ricky Martin??"

"I'm having trouble accessing the online text for the class. Not that I'm ever going to read it, but I thought you should know."

"My financial aide hasn't come through yet, so I can't purchase the textbook yet."
(next day) My financial aide still hasn't come through yet..."
(next day) Still waiting on my financial aide to come through. I still haven't read the textbook."

"Can I write my concert report in Spanish? I don't know the words in English."

"I wanted to come up after class and let you know that I'm probably the only person in class who listens to One Republic. Isn't that funny? But it doesn't really make me weird, because they are actually my same age."

(male student) "I saw you in your concert on Sunday... wearing your cute little red sweater. Did you see me?"

"I'm going to miss class all next week. Can I still get attendance points?"

"... I think you mean Pachelbell Canon in D MINOR."

"The reason why the dry erase board looks so awful is because you used the cleaning spray. You should never use the cleaning spray."
(After the next class period, this student tried to show me the proper way to erase the board. It still looked awful.)

(while teaching them about tonality of music) "What did she just say, tonic??"
(other student) "Yeah, like gin and tonic."

"Can I use 'going to a rave' for a concert report?"
(other student) ".... um, raves are illegal"

Aren't these guys fun? I get 'em for another 15 weeks. :)

Monday, January 7, 2013

Things I Should Blog About:

Since my last post, we've been pretty busy! Since we were both in school and working hard this past semester, we sort of went into social hiding, and didn't do much with friends and family. So when we got a few weeks of freedom, we went a little bit crazy! Here's what we've been up to: (each of these deserves it's own story, but I'm feeling blog-lazy)

Snow shoeing two more times. Once at Alta with freezing cold snow and wind in our faces and once up by Laurie's cabin in Heber with a dead mouse on the floor at lunch time
Saw the lights at temple square
Once with Jeffery Hertig and his new lady-friend Heidi, whom we LOVE
and Once just by ourselves.
Both times we got hot drinks from Blue Lemon- mmm!
Visited the Zoo lights at Hogle Zoo which was also FREEZING cold, but a fun family tradition
Ashley and I ran a slow 5k for charity. We're blaming our lame time on the freezing temps and multiple never-ending hills in Sugarhouse Park.
We also went antique shopping with the Archulettas that day.
Christmas happened with multiple family parties:
Christmas Saturday with Nathan's Dad's family
Dinner, presents, catch-phrase
Christmas Sunday in Price with the Morris-Kirk family
Dinner, presents, cracky-looking nail polish while the boys shot each other with BB guns
Christmas Eve with the Morris-Beck family
Dinner, Yankee Swap, minute-to-win-it, customary nativity scene acting
Christmas Morning with Nathan and my Dad
Presents, stockings, Kneaders overnight French Toast Casserole
Christmas Day with the Beckstroms
Dinner, Secret Sibs, Righty-Lefty, Don't Eat Pete and a special DVD of Mom memories
We hosted a Texas Party, which was just an excuse for Nathan to smoke a 15 lb brisket for fellow meat-loving friends
Plus baked beans, steak fries, Texas Toast, Texas sheet cake, Bang! and an episode of Community

We also hosted a last-minute thrown together New Years Party
Fancy Cheese and other tasty appetizers, Risk, burning of regrets, watching the ball drop on TV, sparklers and crackers and noise-maker dancing in the street at midnight, and hot chocolate for defrosting afterwards
I read Uglies and started Pretties
We watched the entire first season and most of the second season of Once Upon a Time
We saw Les Miserables
We put our new "jar o' dates" to use and had a Black Out Night- including banana grams by candle light and home made maple sugar cookies
I bought new teacher clothes with Christmas/Birthday money while Nathan walked Samson around City Creek
And tomorrow we start school and work all over again!
Nathan starts semester three of nursing school and a new work schedule including on-call weekend grave shifts
And I start my LAST SEMESTER EVER of DMA school, plus a new job- teaching a section of music 1010 at SLCC! Woo hoo! (Plus my SLCC private students and UofU prep division kids and my own private students) I've officially been a SLCC adjunct faculty for two years now. I should probably feel like a grown up by now, right?