Waaaaaa! Math!

I know I totally suck. I have updates galore since my last post, including that it turns out the GCU did give two diss awards this year -- one was in the sciences. So I stand corrected. I've thought about the difference between research and scholarship a zillion times since that post -- about how dissertation scholarship demonstrates mastery of a certain body of scholarship and then builds on that in a way that I don't think creative writing necessarily does and that GCU doesn't require in a scholarly intro or anything, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure I'm just getting in myself deeper with all of you who are offended by this discussion. (For the record, I do think of creative writing as research, just not the painful kind of demonstrating mastery and building on of scholarship that a traditional dissertation necessarily is.) But anyway, I don't care about any of that, because I have math homework! That's right! Math. I'm in this SAT prep training course so I can hopefully get a job -- and I totally have to study my geometry formulas and assorted crapola! Bah!

Did I have all week to do this math homework? Of course I did. Did I do it then? Why no, of course not. This week, I rested (totally necessary after 16 hours of training and 5 hours of taking the damned SAT over the course of three days), went to the store (something I hadn't felt up to for weeks), bought more Agatha Christie's since they are the only reading I can concentrate on, fulfilled my new fruit smoothie fixation (is it too early for cravings?), spent the day with my mom and grandmother (Grandma is doing great after her lumpectomy), obsessed over a totally unbloggable situation that has me reflecting on what friends are and should be, then yesterday I did some depressing internet research (did you know that even though there is a law that says that insurance companies can't consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition, there are so many loopholes that they undeniably do, especially for those who are trying to get individual rather than group insurance?) and just crashed completely, spending most of the day sleeping. So that leaves today for doing homework and reminding myself about stupid things I thought I'd never need again like square roots and factoring. And preparing for my teaching demo, which this time is on reading. Thank goodness.

In good news, I think the training course is good for my mental health. It reminds me that I'm a person with a brain, rather than a gestating lump with tummy upset. I'm a wee bit isolated here from academic intellectual discussions -- and found myself looking longingly at those with community college parking stickers. But now more than ever, I want this job. Cross your fingers.

***Update 1:35pm***

This is terrible. I may want this job, but my attitude toward homework -- especially geometry -- is please no. I have six different items (some of which are fifteen pages long) on my homework sheet in my SAT book. (I think there might be some reading comprehension stuff too on there -- and sentence completion stuff, but I'm afraid of the math only -- and there's a lot of it.) I have done a good chunk of one, yes one, of these six items/assignments. And then there's the teaching prep I need to do, though I don't feel as icky about that. I looked at it already, and I know what to do. All I really need to do is to practice a couple times. Absurdist Lover is gone -- working for his dad and generally running into town -- so I can practice without feeling stupid. (Though I did teach him last week's teaching demo, but I'd rather do it when no one is here.) I really want a fruit smoothie from Whole Foods in the worst way. But it's time (at least a half hour to get there and a half hour back), gas, money. I want to go. I probably shouldn't. And it hardly matters because instead of using my desire for a smoothie as motivation to get my work done, I'm browsing blogs, checking my email, seeing if anyone has commented on my blog, Maude's blog, other people's blogs. Catching up on my blogreading. Very bad. So I think we're back to accountablogging. Here are the things I want to get done today:

• Take shower and wash hair. (I realize that anyone else in the world up at 1:45pm has already done this, but my shower is tiny and I'm increasingly klutzy, so I don't generally do this until I'm awake. Plus it feels like a hassle, and today I may run out of propane/hot water even earlier than usual. So I have to be pretty energized to do this.)
• Do at least most of my six assignments.
• Practice teaching prep a couple times.
• Take a nap. I woke up really early and couldn't go back to sleep and have been up and dragging myself around ever since.
• Read.

Looking at all this, perhaps I'll try half-hour installments. Maybe I'll even just allow myself a half-hour for each assignment -- let's face it, I'm not likely to finish all of it. So I'll start with homework, then I get to do something else for a half-hour. If I had more energy right this second, I'd do the teaching prep first because it's the most important (it's these teaching moments that they base their decisions on who gets certified/hired or not). But I'm tired and think I need a slower transition in. I gotta stop blogging -- my back is killing me.