Pursuing Calefaction

So, I passed the PRAXIS. With flying colors! As if I ought to have had any doubt at all. So that means I am on the path to becoming a bonified, full time teacher-man, with all the professional development that entails. I survived until the winter break, though my immune system just about gave up at that point, so the first few days after solstice (our last day in school) I lay in bed with a fever. Good times.

Weather and the bug prevented me from traveling north, but that won’t stop me from enjoying a well-earned vacation. I have work to do before school starts again on the 2nd, but these last few days have been pretty nice. Lots of beer, very little of anything I don’t feel like.

I am trying to write more, to flesh out the universe in which my fictive thoughts dwell so often. So here’s a card to help push me over the boundary from dilettante to workman. (Shamelessly stolen from this site.)

First goal: One row by the end of January. 500 word minimum for each fill.

Yesterday I took the most difficult multiple choice test of my life. Even when the answer is guaranteed to be sitting in front of you, a well-constructed multiple choice test will provide other extremely plausible-seeming answers for the individual who does not know the answer, or is unsure. Suffice it to say, the writers of the Latin PRAXIS have a very good handle on multiple choice question construction. And, while I knew a good number of the answers without needing to sort through the chaff, the answers were often somewhat of a distraction, leading to a minor fit of second-guessing.

This test will determine a great many things about my future–and I am not at all sure how well I did on it. I am confident, at least, that I got enough questions correct that if I have failed, I have done so right at the edge of success. But my weakness in Latin is poetry, and of the five passage-based sections, three were, well, guess what? Poetry. The Vergil passage I think I comprehended better than the other two, and the bit with Helen and Paris I understood better than the one with the Giants raging against Jupiter. But I did a fair amount of educated guessing, especially in the questions that required strong sight vocabulary in addition to knowledge of grammar. And in a couple questions, I flat-out guessed.

On the other hand, I was also able to use the test against itself. The passages provided clues to understanding words I didn’t understand in the straight answer section. One example: a straight-answer question asked for the meaning of the ensiform. I had no clue when I first ran into it, but the Helen/Paris passage had “ensis something something oculos” when talking about Paris’s duel with Menelaus, so I figured (correctly) that it was about stabbing eyes. So, sword-shaped.  I also felt very strong about the two prose passages. One was from Cicero’s In Catilinam, which I have read and still remember much of, and the other was from a speech about public speaking by Gaius Gracchus. Again, sight vocabulary was tough, but with less intricate structure, the meanings of words become more apparent. This is the essence of language–using words to shape the meaning of other words–so I must remain positive about my performance.

But with the test over, I can now put it out of my mind and teach with abandon. No need to split my time between studying for the test, planning for my students, and completing my grad school tasks. Now it’s just planning and grad school. I am not foolish enough to think that I have more free time now, but I have a little more time to spend actually doing the worthy things. I am learning to become a more efficient human. Having 90 students depending on my ability to gaze into a crystal ball will do that, I am learning. My dear friend Fox has shown me how effective someone can truly be when necessity forces her into it, raising two children with a loving spouse, full-time work, and continuing her writing. So, I have no excuses, and, frankly, all the time in the world, provided I don’t squander it.

So, it turns out that lightning struck while I was busy feeling great about my progress in the MAT program. I applied for a Latin teaching position at a local high school, thinking it would turn out to be great interview practice, but I impressed the assistant principal well enough that he moved heaven and earth to get me into the position. I’ve been teaching now for two weeks, but it feels like an eternity. I’ve got more than a handful of work, but this is the dream. Absolutely, without condition. I must become the person who can plan, for my students are depending on me to be able to. But first things first: I must pass the Latin PRAXIS, scheduled for 3 Nov. If I don’t, none of this matters. If I do, I open the door to (potentially) a lifetime of perpetuating the glory of lingua Latina!

The greatest challenge is figuring out how to get the attention of the Latin I kids in 4th block, the last period before school ends. They’ve had lunch and the day is nearly over, so they’ve lots of energy. I need to find a way to channel it judo-style to trick them into learning despite their best efforts. It’s not helped that this week they’ve missed two full days of instruction due to the PSAT and then the pep rally before homecoming. My 1st block Latin Is are doing a little better, both because they’re not as rambunctious and because they’ve not been missing as much instruction, so I must take care not to let them slip too far ahead.

My Latin III students are another facet entirely in this gem of joy. Though their retention of the forms is not solid, they are adjusting to my increased expectations, and I think we will do some profound things before the semester is over. I have adjusted their curriculum; we’re now reading actual Latin instead of the constructs in Fabulae Romanae, and I think they’re catching on quickly. Eutropius, as late as he is, is a very regular writer, so they aren’t flipping out at the difficulty. I have them on a regimen of noun declensions at night and verb synopses in the morning, so that soon they will begin to differentiate between the two as we read.

And, in all of this, I am rekindling my own love of Latin. I thought I had set it aside, allowed it to become the faintest hope of achievement. Now I am faced with the fact that I must actually teach it after dreaming for so long. And I catch myself returning to it in odd moments, doing it because it is simply fun.

I can be only thankful for this opportunity I have prepared for and finally received. Now to make the most of it!

The fall semester has begun, and so I have leapt back into the frying pan once more. I netted two more As from my Summer II courses, though it has earned me little more than the satisfaction of kicking ass–I only had a week and a half of the summer to do anything. I used that time to visit my family, all spread out across Maryland and Virginia. It felt more like work than vacation, but I remain energized from the love that I gave and received. Read more…

Summer II is winding down (already!), and I shall have a couple weeks’ rest before the new semester begins. I should say a couple weeks’ rest from school–I have some travelin’ to do! My plan is to head up to MD to visit my sister’s house, where her boyfriend is keeping things tidy for her. I’ll spread the good word about beer while I’m there and teach Jim how to brew. That house, which is the original icehouse for Ellicott City, has a stone foundation that is perfect for fermenting. It keeps cool like a champ. After that I was hoping to see my cousin Kathy at her beach house in VA Beach. And then I want to go CAMPING! I haven’t been camping in…over a year. This must be fixed. Mount Mitchell is all booked up, but there are many excellent places nevertheless!

But first, I have a week of hell. All my other hot-potato loose ends are tied up–the peach pale ale I brewed up a couple weeks ago is bottled and carbonating, we just brewed 10 gallons of hefeweizen on the big rig, and the big hurdles of getting square with my duties as the treasurer of HCoop are behind me (or weeks in the future). Oh, and: INBOX ZERO!!!!!1!!!one!!

So now I have 6 days to write two papers and study for & nail an exam.

Chop chop!

The summer sessions have been jam-packed with work. I managed to go most of Summer I without writing a damned thing here. Well, it was intense, and I got an A, but I have no real idea how I pulled that off. I’ll take it, though. Summer II feels less stressful even though I’m in two courses, because of the fact that I’m not writing papers. Writing without meds, despite the glory of it, is an exercise in out-waiting my own distractibility. And with 14 weeks of instruction packed into 5, I can ill afford that kind of stress to get things written on deadline. But here we are. I’m doing it.

As a way of keeping the stress down, I have also been a brewing machine. I now have three stovetop all-grain batches under my belt: a deconstructed saison, an attempt at making hard root beer, and I just bottled a Russian Imperial Stout that I have dubbed Persephone. This last, made with pomegranate molasses and a complex variety of rich and tasty malts, is the one I’m taking to the NC state fair this year. It sat for 5 weeks in the fermenter just aging out to a delicious smoothness. I am entering it as a Foreign Extra Stout (tropical style) only because it lacks some of the bitterness described in the BJCP style guide for an RIS. Persephone compares favorably to one of the more intense commercial beers I have ever had: New Holland Dragon’s Milk. I bottled relatively little beer, though–two 22oz bombers, two swingtop pint jugs, and nine 12oz bottles–because I racked a full gallon of it onto a quarter ounce of bourbon-soaked oak cubes, where it will sit until at least October. I shall bottle that perhaps the first of November so that it will be ready to drink on the winter solstice. A more fitting tribute to the popularly-imagined end of days, I cannot say.

I hope to make some relaxing use of my summer, though. The Sidhe is traveling to gay Paris in a few days, and I’m wrapping up my summer courses, but after that we’ll have time before the fall semester to take a trip downyoshun, as they say in my former home of Baltimore. I have yet to visit the Carolina shore–high time, I think, we fixed that.

This is where I come back when I need to remotivate. This blog is an outlet to the world, and even though it’s full of whining, it’s still my outlet.

I am feeling rather defeated these last few months. From society gutting the rights of my fellow North Carolinians to marry in the eyes of the law for the sake of some bullshit religious tenet, to the simple fact that I can’t do all the things I have set out to do, I am bent. The maelstrom in my head eats it all. I am waking up these days at 8am, only to curl up until 11 or so because I am sick with stupid, pointless worry over all the ways I need to try to fix my life. So many projects in my head that I must do in order to live the life I want to live, and everything crumbles the moment I reach for them. This is not an unfamiliar place. I have been here before. My answer used to be to just give up on most of it, and let it fester in my brain as another failure of will, while shamefacedly finishing what little remained. Not anymore.

Responsibility is not something to be shirked. I must carry through, finish the job. Ray Bradbury died today. If I owe him anything at all (and I owe him a great deal, indeed), it is to get back to work.

And into another one! I kicked the spring semester’s ass (an A and an A-), but then I got elected treasurer of the HCoop. And since our last treasurer actually went AWOL last year some time, I must basically learn this stuff from notes left online. I have had a week’s break from schoolwork, but summer session I is coming up hard and fast, and it looks to be intense. I must drill down and focus so I can repeat my good performance this past semester.

I’m tempted to declare Wordpress bankruptcy. I have 5 drafts sitting in my queue, one of which has been there since December of 2010. Pro: I can move on, and actually maybe be productive. Con: I actually have things to say in those drafts, and deleting them will destroy any memory of the words already accumulated. So they sit and stink up the queue another week.

This won’t be an omnibus post, only because it’s going to be short. In fact, it’s over now.

Yep, screaming. I’m out of meds, and coffee is only marginally effective. I got my last project in on time for one class, but I am afraid I’m going to need to turn in the rest of my stuff for the other class as late. My task is to create several plans (behavioral, lesson, you name it) from whole cloth. Yippee!

Not giving up, though. I have several hours before class still.