Science!!

This week I tried to catch up on all my projects but there’s just not enough hours in the day to have a social life, work, work, and get homework finished. Usually grading or social life gets tucked away but this week grading and homework were set aside. Thursday after my practicum I met my roommate, Megan, at the education production lab to help me with a project for the block. We made a me!

Almost finished at the lab

I needed somewhere to store it so I hung 

it on the wall in our livingroom

I put a name tag on it that a friend at the resort made

the name tag says Professor B on it

 I had so much fun Friday. At work we had science day, the girls learned about states of change. I was in charge of the group that talked about fire. We had a lot of fun. We also had a group where the girls learned about dry ice, and they also played with oobleck. After dinner we made ice cream with dry ice, it tastes carbonated and if you poured it in fast your ice cream turned into like dip-n-dots but if you poured it in slowly you got like a soft serve ice cream that tasted very carbonated.  After the Friday experiential we still had like 20 pounds of dry ice left so we of course had a dry ice party, we made ice cream, played with dry ice bubles, and made root beer. 

dry ice with water and dish soap

We made one big bubble, it was really fun to pop

Root Beer!

Life is sometimes fun

Every Monday and Wednesday I go to a math study group but I leave it at 10 to go to institute. I always invite my friend who fell away from the church when she was younger and she always gives me the same look and says no I’m going to finish my math and turn it in on time. I also get my math in on time, I stay up until midnight but I get it in on time. So last Saturday we met for our study group and I get there sit down take out stuff and she goes “Is your church at 9?” me “yes……” her “can I go with you?” me trying to contain my ecstaticness “yeah, I’ll come get you at 8:50”. Then we started to do math. A little while later she goes “did you send the missionaries to my house?” I did but was a little afraid that the study group might end right then so I said “the missionaries came to your house?” she was like “yeah they asked me to come to church with them, but I don’t want to go to church with two random dudes.” She came to church with me but we haven’t mentioned it since, she still says no to institute.

My birthday was way fun! I woke up to a wall of balloons, only had one easy class to go to, studied for an abstract test, went to work and came home to a surprise party! The next day I got to play at the park with Mason and Keaton while Myia was taking a tour of SUU. We had a lot of fun.

I went home on Saturday for fall break and helped my dad build stairs at grandmas and build the wall for the bathroom.  I also ate a ton of cherry tomatoes.  I went shopping with my mom and got an awesome new coat and a pair of cute new pants, and another pair of slacks, it seems like I never have enough work clothes. I got to play with Mason, Keaton and Myia at the park. We had a lot of fun and saw a cool duck with weird hair stuff on its head.

It is really fun to walk through a ton 

of balloons at 7 am!

Michelle put these in the balloons. 

It made it really fun to pop them.

Sometimes we do crazy things in college.

Mason told Keaton he was the bad guy and that he 

needed to be in the back cause that's were bad guys sit

Welcome to fall break at the Lee house,

where we do construction in whatever you happen 

to have on when you stumble upon it

Panorama of the house during fall break 

The stairs that mostly dad made,

but I helped make them sturdier

You know how most kids spoil their dinner with junk food,

well I spoil my dinner with cherry tomatoes.

Love Sunday walks in Mapleton.

Where else can you get treats on a walk?

Birthday presents from Jordan.

The duck on the right next to the two green 

headed ones that has really funny hair

The week before Halloween at work was fun. The girls got to either carve or paint a pumpkin, and then we watched Nightmare Before Christmas. On Halloween the girls read scary stories they wrote and after dinner they watched Something Wicked this Way Comes. The institute didn’t have a Halloween party this year because the university asked the institute to stop competing with them on activities. The school puts on this dance/party thing but it has a pretty bad rep. People come from all over southern Utah to party at this party. But this year the school worked with the institute to help make the scream better, I still didn’t go because it’s $10 and the institute one was free and that is not an environment I like being in. We had steak conference the Sunday after the dance and our steak president, pres. Krankshaw, said that that was not an environment we should be in. He said he was very disappointed with what he saw at the dance. I don’t think that the institute will be participating in this event again. Since we didn’t want to go to the scream we just came back to our apartment and watched movies and played games and did our grading.

We needed to get pumpkins for the girls and 

my car was nominated to do the pickup

All the pumpkins in front of our school house

A student carved this pumpkin

It's a fairy and a werewolf 

One of the girls just poured a ton of paint all over her pumpkin, 

it kind of turned out cool

And it snowed today! I was so excited

I couldn't contain my excitement

I've bitten off more than I can chew

Life has been crazy this month!

The month started with my roommate, Michelle’s, birthday party. We had a ton of fun that day! I brought doughnuts to institute, and we had a surprise party for her when we got home from work. That’s a funny story, we unexpectedly were finished with work an hour earlier than planned and we had to stall Michelle at work for an hour so that everyone could get to our apartment before we got home. It almost worked. It was way fun though. We got her some of those blow up boxing glove things and we had wars with them, and we got some fun decorations from the dollar store and played put the face on the monster. We had a really good night. You can have hours of fun with one dollar and a scarf.

This month I realized that the amount of stuff I think I can do and the amount of stuff I really can do are very different. For instance if I am (finally) caught up it will only last 24 hours, if I’m lucky. I have pretty much been playing if I only sleep for­­ 4 hours every night this week, can I still function enough to get all of my work and social life in? So far it doesn’t seem to be working out so well. Today I am about 2 days behind and the near future doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.

I am currently trying to study for five tests. This year we were told that we now have to pass the math exit exam, and that it’s also going to be held on the same day as the praxis, which I also have to pass to graduate. I think that they should tell you that your last semester at college is not at all like your last semester of high school. This week I also found out that the passing score for the praxis last year was 150 and this year it is 160 and that the people who decided that was the passing score never even saw the test. This is our education system at its finest.

I have now taken and failed the Praxis II twice. I’m feeling pretty defeated and like my college classes haven’t prepared me at all for what I need to be teaching. How come I can do advanced calculus but I can’t pass a test meant to see if you are fit to teach high school? I’m very good at teaching the high school stuff at the ranch but I can’t seem to pass the test.

Monday and Tuesday is fall break for us, I was so looking forward to going home Friday and having a fun long weekend but that is looking less and less likely as the week goes on.

I’m told it will be worth it in the end, but I’m not sure a job that requires so much work with so little pay is going to be worth all the trouble. 

Michelle's birthday party. Pin the face on the monster

We were kinda mean to this guy,

we moved the couch and pushed him over

Not sure when this happened, sometime at the beginning of the year

when I wasn't so busy. Football 

This was homecoming Asian Dave, Michelle, Steve, and me

of course the math club had blue shirts this year for the homecoming parade

and the other team was blue. It was bad.

Conference weekend.

Kudos to the photobomber 

Conference with Michelle

I went up the canyon Saturday morning

Zander during conference

He sure is cute!

Crazy!!

So the first three weeks of school have been crazy! I have a math class that requires you to type up all of your homework. This is my answer to one part of one of my questions:

 \item Show that $\mathbb{Z}_{10}$ is generated by $2$ and $5$.\\

$\langle 2 \rangle$ $={0,2,4,6,8}$\\

$\langle 5 \rangle ={0,5}$\\

$\langle 2,5 \rangle ={0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}$\

It’s as if math wasn’t already a foreign language now we are adding LaTeX on top of new crazy concepts. I almost always have to stay up until midnight the night it is due trying to get it all typed up. I have no clue what goes on in advanced calculus most of the time, but neither does anyone else so I guess it’s ok.

Today I was trying to budget my time better so I was trying to figure out how much time I spend on each class and at work and everything. After doing some math I figured that I should somehow have 20 hours a week of free time. Where is this free time going?!! I do not have 20 hours a week of free time, I am constantly scrambling to finish everything and have a social life.

This last week was homecoming and I decided that I could have a social life and get all my homework finished, and I almost accomplished that. Homecoming was so much fun though so it was worth it.

Friday night was the like pep-rally so I went with a group of friends and we had a blast. But I learned that even at 10:30 at night, at a college pep-rally, you will still see a student you teach, and it will be at the worst time it could be. I had filled my hoodie pocket with candy and my friend Dave wanted some of it but I wasn’t in the sharing mood so he decided he would force me to share, so of course two students from the middle school walk past while we were wrestling and were like” hey aren’t you our math teacher?” Of course you see your students while you are acting their age, not when I was like just standing around talking, no they had to see me when I was wrestling around on the ground with friends.  Saturday morning I walked in the parade with the math club then went and did some advanced calc homework, then our ward had a BBQ and we all went to the game together. I wanted some kettle corn so we went to see the prices and we decided that the $2 bag probably wouldn’t feed all of us so we got the $6 bag thinking it would be enough for everyone to have a little. This was the size of the bag:

Needless to say we had kettle corn for a few days, even five people can’t eat that much popcorn during one football game.  We left the game early because it was the 3^rd quarter and SUU still hadn’t managed to get a touchdown. Oh and by the way the math department was genius and made our shirts for homecoming the color of the other team.

 Turns out if you have this much fun in one weekend the next week is pretty horrible. At the beginning of the week I was on one of those blow-up rafts, you know the cheap ones from like the dollar store, but as the week progressed my raft got a hole and now I’m just trying to tread water and keep my head above water. 

Service, we're doing it wrong

So I’ve been noticing little things on Facebook and just in life about service, more importantly the lack thereof. Now I’m not saying I’m the best at this, I have room for improvement also, lots of room. What I want to talk about is not setting up big service projects that are at a convenient time and doing a relatively easy task but about the service that needs to happen when you happen to see a need for it. Now my parents are possibly the best examples of this I have seen. I can’t tell you how many times my mom has said well our plans changed now we’re helping this person do this, or how many times my dad has said lets go get some lunch after we’ve been working all morning but then sees someone else in need and we don’t end up eating lunch until 10 at night.

Recently when I was home I was weeding the ditches and the lawn and the window wells and the garden and someone that I know pretty well came over and was like hey Brittney is there anything we can make you guys for dinner? I replied no we don’t need any dinner and they continued on with chit-chat and I nicely told them that I needed to get back to weeding before it got too hot. That was their opportunity! Right there for service that someone NEEDED, the ditches needed to be clean for water and I was just one person trying to do it all.  

Recently we went on a hike and my friend was like' I feel like I should throw some extra water bottles in my pack' so he did and we went on our way. Well while we were on our hike we met some people from out of state who weren’t used to the dryness of Utah and they were completely out of water. Luckily we had a few extra water bottles and we discussed how far we were going and if we would be alright if we didn’t have that water and decided to give most of our water to these people, deciding that we would be fine for the duration of our trip without as much water. Yes it was hard to give water up in the middle of the desert, yes they should have been more prepared, and yes something could have happened and we could have needed that water but we gave it away anyway. Not because we wanted to, or because it was a convenient time for us but because we saw a need. Maybe that is what the extra water in our packs was for, but maybe it wasn’t. We did decide to turn back sooner than originally planed, maybe the water was for them, maybe it was for some unforeseen thing on the trail farther down. I don’t know, but I didn’t lose anything by turning around a little sooner than planned.

I’m guilty of not doing service because it wasn’t convenient for me, like the other week I saw someone walking that I’ve seen around my apartment complex but I didn’t want to take the time out of my day to ask if they needed a ride somewhere and chances are we were going to the same place! One day I was driving up the canyon and saw a family with a car that was overheating and I decided not to stop. I keep coolant in my car, and could have given them the rest of it, but I was being selfish, I wanted the coolant for me, I paid for it why should I give it away? They should have planned for their road trip right? Maybe so but it wouldn’t have hurt to stop and give them the coolant. I was almost home and I was going downhill, the chances that I was going to need it were slim, and I made it home without needing it!

Why do we pass up easy service? Why didn’t I want to stop and help these people? Simply I was being selfish, I had a plan and I didn’t want it to be interrupted. Boy am I glad that God is nicer than me, He is always there to help. He will ALWAYS stop to see if you are okay, He doesn’t plan big service projects on a convenient day at a convenient time, He is always there to serve you.

So here is my goal, go ahead and join me in it, next time I see that simple act of service, even if I know I’ll  

get turned down, I’m going to take the time out of my busy day and help the person in need in the way they need to be helped. 

Iron county museum

Today I went to the Iron county museum with a co-worker to decide what the girls are going to do when they visit on Friday. It was a pretty cool museum as far as museums where you can’t touch anything go. (Oops I forgot there were a few things you could touch, like pan for gold, learn how to rope sheep, how they got minerals from stones, and a few other things you were allowed to touch, but for the most part no tochey)   (let’s be honest the children’s museum in Indiana is pretty much the coolest museum of all time!) The Iron count museum has QR codes throughout it where you can listen to a historian talk about the things you are looking at, and a few stories from people who lived it. It was really really fun to play the sound clips, although I think the group of old people thought we were being disrespectful and playing random things but really we were just learning about how they used to sheer sheep.  I learned a lot about Iron county today and came up with some awesome lesson ideas.  

Now for the pictures

This is a fire engine used in the late 1890's and early 1900's.

They had a 75 foot long hose and held 30-65 gallons of water.

They worked by a mechanism that held bi-carbonate soda and the firemen

would add sulphuric acid to the tank to make the water flow out.

It really only worked when the fire was small. 

This is the sawmill that built Branch Normal School, or SUU

as we now know it. 

This is a snow tank. I don't remember what it's purpose was

but it has a really cool name!

License plate to the above car

This carriage is huge! I tried to get me in it but it didn't turn out very good

I'm standing pretty far away to get the whole carriage in the picture

This was a replica so you could get inside it.

It was very wobbly, I am glad I live with cars.

This is an outside jail, there are 4 beds in this cell.

the top bed is folded out and the bottom one is hooked up right now

Deseret School with a really loud bell outside it. 

Like really loud, remember that group of old people? Well 

the liked me even less after I rang the bell super loud.

The chalkboard has the Deseret alphabet on it. Google it.

Also notice the paddle board next to the chalkboard. 

The dunce cap 

The stairs lead up to the teachers quarters. Man life was simpler

then, I think I would be o.k. with living above where I work.

A train caboose

This is a refrigerator type thing. There was also a bathroom but it

had a Plexiglas type thing but very flimsy covering it and it

didn't allow for very good pictures 

The sign says "Bureau of explosives binder located in desk drawer" 

This had something to do with mining iron

lets call it the 'scooper'

The inside of the scooper

more inside of the scooper

what you can see while operating the scooper

I don't know what cable they handle but they used tongs to do it

These next pictures have nothing to do with the post but those who don't follow me on facebook can now see them.

I spent a day at Brian Head jumping off of a man lift onto a 

giant air bag. It was awesome! 

The map in our geography classroom has the weirdest cities on it.

Like who needs to know where Monticello is? I guess they do have a temple

so they are better than Cedar in that. Wait, Cedar will have a temple! 

(Construction hasn't started, they haven't even said where it's going to be, but there will be a temple)

One of the students at work took my phone off my desk and discovered it was locked

but then she discovered that she could still take pictures, so I got this. 

I did tell her that she couldn't take pictures of people because my phone automatically backs up all pictures to my Google+ so they're easier to share on my blog with you!