BevillBlog

Naming your days… a UWP Journal.

We’ve all heard it… bad hair days, klutz days, etc… Our journal this morning is about how an event can define a day for you…good or bad. For Kris, she just names her days. The gum-on-the-shoe day. The breakfast-on-my-shirt-day. Actually, that last one is more of something like I would do…and do constantly. My wife often wonders how I was able to keep any clean clothes as a child. Because if I’m this messy now, how did I survive as a pre-schooler? While I resent the remarks, I can’t deny them…so let me wipe off this chocolate ice cream on my shirt and move on.

Back to the days thing. For me, there are few events that will really define a day. Obviously, there are the big ones… wedding day, birthday, anniversary (October 18, I remember), wife’s birthday (I remember that too…although we switched birthdays this year, hah!), sister’s wedding day, PAY-DAY, and of course vacation day. But those are special events, and while they do affect my outlook on the day, they aren’t really minor incidents. And this journal prompts title is Minor Mishaps. So, when it comes to me and my personality, only 1 type of minor mishap, or incident can really change my outlook on a day (or a whole weekend)… and that is Tigers-Lose day.

I had a Tigers-Lose day last night, actually. Our first trip back to the College World Series since I was in college, and we have to lose to freakin’ North Carolina. Now that just sets the entire week off on the wrong foot. I’m thinking that this Tigers-Lose day may last at least until Tuesday, when we play again. But just to give you an idea of how this day affects everything, let me explain a little.

I’m doing the Upstate Writing Project; and today was my day to bring breakfast. I watched that awful baseball game last night thinking that I would go by the grocery store on the way home and pick up my breakfast foods (croissants, donuts, and fruit, if you were wondering). But our 24 hour Ingles was closed for floor waxing.

When I got home, the Internet was down…and I had to fiddle around with my Vonage, wireless router, and cable modem to reset everything.

Also, the dog drooled a puddle onto the futon.

This morning, the cat didn’t come home.

And I read a news article about the stupid game from yesterday…resetting the entire cycle. So I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the Tigers-Lose-Day attitude. At least it is just baseball season. An important season, without doubt, but not football.

When Tigers-Lose-Day unavoidably happens in the fall, I will be inconsolable for at least three or four days, for a couple reasons. I will generally scream so loud at the game on Saturday that I won’t have a voice until Wednesday… a fact which my students are more than happy to exploit. Meaning, everytime that my voice croaks because of stretched and strained vocal chords, I’ll remember the inevitable bad calls by the refs and cheating by the other team that led to our loss. And if this loss happens to come to Wake Forest… or Duke, of all people… don’t expect me to be social for at least a week.

Ah, it is nice to vent about this. What are your eventful days like?

June 19th, 2006 Posted by Scott | UWP | no comments

Blogging the Upstate Writing Project

We’re coming to the end of the first week, and I’m honestly exhausted. I’ve done a lot of writing, a lot of reading, and a whole lot of learning these past few days, and I’m feeling a little stretched. Sometimes, I think, its really good for a teacher to take a few days and become a student again…to remember what it felt like back in college with deadlines and presentations and papers due. It is definitely stressful, but also exciting to look at things from that other perspective again. I’ve only been out of college a little over 2 years and I’ve already forgotten so many things about studying and writing…its astounding.

At UWP, we’re basically taking two graduate courses combined into one summer session. The first course is based on being a teacher of writing. In this portion of the class, we are required to give a demonstration of a valuable writing strategy that we have used in the classroom. We’re to prepare this demo as if we were going to present it to a much wider audience at a national or regional conference. My demo is based on Web 2.0 applications in the classroom. I’ll be demonstrating the uses of Wikis in any classroom. It should be really interesting, and I present this on Tuesday. I’ve found a very solid research base for my demo, thanks to a lot of the people listed in my links.

The second portion of the class is based on being a writer. We’re required to put together an online e-portfolio of writing that we’ve done for this project. I’ll be putting together a professional article, a short story (maybe a chapter for a novel I’m working on), and something else…either a poem or a non-fiction piece. Now, I’m not a great poemer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been scrawling down a few lines here and there. I also may have some interesting non-fiction ideas to add to this portfolio, but we’ll see how that goes.

Now, my wife, Eve is also in the class, and she has done a wonderful job. She gave her demo on Inquiry yesterday, and is working on a few stories of her own. Of course, her story idea is better than mine, which is so not fair.

Apologies for the delay in posting since my reading list. I finished The Italian Secretary and had a lot of fun with it. Right now, I’m reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and it is really good. Pretty angsty, but good.

Until next time…

June 15th, 2006 Posted by Scott | UWP | no comments