School!

After a week of settling in, learning my way around, and already working fairly hard, it was time for Mom's first day of school. I was anxious, but looking forward to it. After all, how hard would they work us during the summer for seven weeks? As I told my kids, I don't think it's going to be that hard -- no papers to write, surely. Absolutely no test -- I was sure of it. ....Shows how wrong a person can be, as I started finding out on my very first day.

Work started with a bang the first morning of the first day and didn't let up until.... well, actually, it didn't let up. I was so busy that I didn't have time to dwell on how busy I was. ....Which was probably a good thing. The thought "I can't possibly do all this" would cross my mind, but it didn't have the leisure of remaining because it was pushed right out by all the other stuff that was constanly being put in my head. I read, I wrote, I listened, I made lesson plans, I taught, I read, I wrote, I listened, I made lesson plans, I taught, I read, I wrote.... Oh, yeah. I also took tests! Yes, ma'am. I took tests -- midterms and finals. At my age! I was so startled when I found out we would be tested, I called my daughter A. in a panic. She was supportive, but I could tell she was surprised and a little worried for me. In fact, I called A. and my sons several times -- learning how to do Word. Sheesh!

There was not one wasted moment in those seven weeks of learning, and everything was so interesting. It was just so m-u-c-h! And linguistics! Oy vey! Let me say one thing about linguistics -- when you transcribe words, your accent can indeed *sound* through. It helps having a professor who tells you as long as you're "accent consistent" there won't be a problem. To give you an idea of how good this guy was, listen to this -- he could (and did) talk for twenty minutes on the consonant 'r' and......it was interesting!

So went day after day after day after day after day after day (including workshops on three Saturdays -- 10-5), and observations during lunch. And, of course, I had to run back and forth to the computer lab at school in the mornings before class, at free lunch hours, and in the evenings to print out all those papers and lesson plans I wrote on my laptop at the apartment. Lord Gawd! Thinking back, how did we do it?