the King

those of you that know me know that i love sports. i write extensively on this topic, most notably my dreams of working as a sportscaster.

this dream might have been ruined last night.

not only has almost every sports journalist spent far, FAR too much time on the LeBron James free agent debacle, the 60 minute ego-fest last night was the final straw. it's as if there are no other games being played. remember the World Cup? Tennis? Baseball? (a sport i don't even particularly enjoy.) sports happen EVERY DAY. there are thousands of contests being played every day at every level, and yet the only news worthy of reporting on is where LeBron will try to win a championship for the next few years. i would've rather heard reporting on the Tri-Cities U-14 Rec League soccer game than this buffoonery. (always put your money on the Scorpions. always.)

this circus has forced me once again to turn my back on professional basketball. when there are exciting Finals (see: Lakers vs. Celtics, 2008 and 2010) my hopes rise after a three year hiatus from the game. but then, like a jilted lover who realized AGAIN that my significant other went back to their ex, i slink away -- downtrodden, ashamed that i could be so foolish.

the sensationalism is too much for me. LeBron is good, yes. we all know this. but surely there is something else.

looks like it's back to hating professional basketball. it was a good month, NBA.

*Editorial correction

* Upon a cool down and a digital tongue lashing, this blog rescinds its comments regarding 7th grade badminton partner that have been removed from the previous post. The writer was very much in rant-mode at the time, and her comments only further reflect her bitterness.
Best,
Sarah *

social media makes me...

feel bad about myself sometimes.

i'm assuming that back in the day (pre-2005) if you didn't deliberately keep in contact with someone they dropped from your mental radar. had a class together freshman year of college? cool - see ya around, maybe. high school crush? relegated to storytelling moments for social gatherings. that high school crush is getting married? i wouldn't know until they bring their wife to the reunion 20 years from now.

but now social media is making it worse, especially this "married/engaged" thing. i know, i know, i don't want to get married any time soon. in my rational head, i know that. but why must facebook continue to throw it in my face that i, in fact, am nowhere near that time? in this season of weddings, if i have to look at another slew of pictures of the bride held up by all five of the groomsman i'm going to start shoving pencils down my fingernails. that might be less painful.

can't we go back to only knowing about people's relationships when you are invited to the wedding or if you hear if second- or third-hand? and it's not like i have talked to these now married people any time within the last three years. nope. but i know they had a wedding. i also know that they recently acquired a Yorkshire terrier and went to Napa for their honeymoon.

it's masochism at this point -- i know that i don't want to look at their wedding album but i do. i can't tear myself away. so the cycle of self-deprecation continues as long as i cannot tear myself away from the wedding album of my 7th grade P.E. badminton partner to a girl he met rock-climbing.

i think it will continue to be love-hate. without social media, where will i be able to share my witty social commentary? (sarcastic)

damn you facebook! *shakes fist at heavens*

MLA, APA or creative?

the title of my mom's email to me today.

my mom is an adjunct professor at CBC for some early childhood courses, and sometimes she asks me questions about students' writing and such. mostly if she's being too much of a hard ass grader. (she used to be).

today she asked me to look over a works cited page (which these four students labeled 'Bibliography') and see if there is anything in the general realm of a citation style. there really wasn't, but this is what I had to write back to her. proof that one day i want to be a professor so i can give this kind of feedback to my students:

"Yikes.

It looks like each person did a different couple and then put them all together. The books are cited ok -- the first one is alright except the title of the book should be italicized. It looks like they attempted to use MLA format, but just started guessing when it came to the websites and articles on the websites.

The websites are painful to look at, and they should be marked down for copying and pasting a website logo in their Works Cited page. It's not that difficult to type out the website.

They probably used a MLA citation generator, but many times those can't do complicated stuff (e.g. shit from articles on a website). Hence, wrong.

if we're going on GENERALITIES, i guess give them points. but not full points. the whole thing is discombobulated.

also - it's called a WORKS CITED page, not a bibliography. you wrote bibliographies for your 4th grade report about sea turtles. (which i completely copied from national geographic, by the way).

ALSO - WIKIPEDIA?! you should outlaw that as a source. any joe blow can update that crap. it should never be quoted in a paper. you look at wikipedia when you want to figure out when the last czar of russia died, not when you're writing a college paper.

- sarah"

ducks

in a row.

when i was growing up, my mom used to say this most always prefaced with, "she/he never has her..." it was annoying, yes. but now that the time for change has come upon me, i've found myself saying this both out loud and to myself a lot lately.

briefly:

- my organization is growing and needs to get their fiscal year closed out. strategic planning meeting for development and programs in a week. i am still slightly surprised that i even use the term fiscal year regularly. slowly i'm moving towards someone that likes dealing with money that isn't mine. my personal finances? they're filed in a victoria's secret shopping bag.

- i have a place to live next year that isn't in my terrible studio apartment. put down the money and we'll move in late july, early august. it's a house. with a microwave and washer and dryer. it might just be heaven. i still have to fully plan getting my crap from south carolina, but i can't wait to sleep on a real mattress. unfortunately, that punch line won't get used anymore. a small price to pay.

- school starts in a couple of months. still working on the gross money-stuff associated with it. i should prepare now to not see my friends for the next two years. but i'll be smart when i get out of there, dammit. i will.

- i'm pondering tutoring Adult Basic Ed again. i won't have a lot of time with the commuting time and school, but i think i might. i miss teaching.

but as i think about putting all these life ducks in a row, i'm reminded that so much of life is continually out of order. people are sick. friends fall away. you are misunderstood. shit gets lost. afternoons have no agenda. stuff breaks. but i have no answers, and i'm not ever going to. there's solace in that, i suppose.

9 days

is it luck, or was it really time for me to leave my old job? i think a little bit of both.
nevertheless, 9 days after i got "let go" from ASTT, i got a new job. i'm now the operations manager of One World Education, an education/literacy organization working in both public and charter schools in D.C. if you haven't completely tuned out to my many "dream" musings, one of them was to work with a literacy organization in some fashion. and here we go -- it took a kind of roundabout way, but here i am.
check out their website at www.oneworldeducation.org. but if you don't have time the reader's digest version is this:
Students in both middle school and high school write reflections about any social issue they want and submit it to the volunteer corps of teachers and content specialists at One World Education. the issues range from globalization through a student's trip to Bhutan to AIDS in D.C. to bullying to growing up in Ghana to....
one student's reflection is chosen a month by the program team and the former teachers/PhDs/curriculum creators create a unit plan and curriculum about this issue for use in a classroom, with all the standards and such included too -- with the "ambassadors" reflection as the primary source text. really freakin cool, right?
right.
right now One World Education is working in 25 schools and has been going for 2 years. now they're building up the administration and infrastructure to get bigger and to reach more students. i'm so jazzed to be a part of this organization -- the idea is really cool and i think there's a lot of potential for growth. and the little writer inside of me smiles.
i'll be officially starting June 7.
i'm still not sure how this happens. but i'm always happy when it does.

p.s. - coming to visit the PNW in a few days -- ready for a weakley family wedding, catching up with old friends (anyone remember mike hinman, anyone?...yeah...), and heading up to camp to hopefully reassure the new camp counselors they, in fact, won't kill their campers. in the words of my mom, "i get tired just thinking about it."

see...

...what's great about getting fired is, nothing.
nope, nothing really.

-- you walk into the room and immediately know. it's like something has died. (oh wait, it's your financial stability). and then, the person who's firing you just says blahblahblahRESIGNATIONblahblahblahJUSTKEEPITFORYOURRECORDSblahblahblahQUALITYOFPERFORMANCEblahblahblahEFFECTIVEIMMEDIATELY.

-- and then this chill comes over you. it's as if someone has decided to shake your hand with an electric fence. and leave you there like the fish out of water flopping around in that mid-90s alt-rock video (the artist escapes me).
and then, all i wanted to do was throw my chair through the window. unfortunately, it was wicker so it probably would've just bounced off the window. unfortunate.

i didn't cry, i just looked down and said, "ok then." then i bolted. then i called mom and cried.

mistakes were made on my part (we'll call them 'personality clashes') and i wish them the best. (that's the politically correct thing to say, right?)

at least they waited until two days AFTER my birthday to fire me. so that's something.

p.s. no need for a pity party. just another job.