yea for Fairbanks

So I got into Fairbanks yesterday and I am staying in the dorms on campus. I'm really excited to be here. I rented a car, so I've got transportation this time and I can go shopping and to the movies any time I want, Yea for me. My two cousins go to school here, so I am excited to see them and take them out. I lived with them when they were little for 5 years and then every summer, so they are like my little brother and sister. I went shopping today, a little retail therapy never hurt anybody. Except maybe the pocket book...

'nother week, 'nother dollar

Hey folks, I hope all is going well for you. Work was a little crazy this week and I'm stressing over school. Heather, I know what you mean about the ED 330 class, it's looming over my head and giving my nightmares. I was hoping to have it done by October, but thats not happening. And I am a little frustrated with one of my classes. It's a weird mix of on campus students and off campus distant ones and us distant kids always seem to be shortchanged. It's a huge class, and I don't know how the teacher is going to deal with all of us. There are more than 20 kids in the class and I just don't see how its going to work. And the reading load is huge. Argghh, I could go on forever, but I'm sure you have other things to do than read my complaining.

On another note, I found out what our district policy is on subsistence leave. A student is excused as long as a parent calls in or writes a note letting the school know they are hunting/fishing ect. However, a student cannot pass a class if they have more than 16 absences. I don't know if they discriminate between excused or unexcused. Staff can take personal leave to go hunting, but there is no leave specifically for subsistence activities.

another week, another assignment

Well, I think our beautiful fall has ended and we're headed towards winter. Fall is my favorite season, and I'm sorry to see it go. We had a big storm in the area. I'm sure you all heard about the evacuation of Kivalina ( Betty, I hope all is well with you, I looked for you in the cafeteria but didn't see ya, Maybe you got sent to Red Dog, or knowing you, you tough broad, you probably stayed...) The airlines were working like crazy to get all the people out and a pilot friend of mine said he flew like 100 times to the village. An exageration I know, but I'm sure it must have seemed that way. The only things that happened here were rain and wind, and the tide was pretty high. The lagoon that my apartment building is on rose pretty high, but the building is on stilts and it wasn't quite high enough to get under it. When I finish my Panraven story, you all can see my apartment building.

I got the class videos in the mail this week, and it was really fun to revisit them all. Thanks Skip, for putting that together.

I do a trip every summer with some friends, and then as Christmas presents, I usually try to put together a picture album from the trip. This year, I think that I'm going to use Panraven to make a book. I think that would be really fun. Hope fully it would work.

Oh my God, I'm gonna die

It's only the first week of school and I already know I'm gonna start pulling out my hair soon. Although I am interested in the classes I am taking, they all require so much work that I can already feel the stress and the pressure. So my goal this weekend was to get organized and plan out the semester to relieve some of the that pressure, and I think I was able to do that a little. At least I got some of my homework done.

I made my arrangements for the Math 205 intensive in October and I was able to get a room on campus for dirt cheap, and buy a airline tickets with my miles.(Thank you Teresa for being willing to house me, I sure appreciated the offer!!!) I would have loved to have used my stored up miles for a more glamorous trip like Hawaii or Mexico, but this works too.

I'm still working on my panraven story. It's just frustrating because of the speed and because I'm still learning about all the features. And of course I have Ed 330 hanging over my head. Argh... I really need to finish that before I really have huge assignments for my other classes due.

Weekly Blog

I almost forgot to write my blog this week. I had a good second week at school, things are running smoothly. I went to a school board meeting this week for Ed 330 and was pleaseantly surprised at how short it was. It was the first meeting of the year and the board members were joking and nice to one another. One issue that came up that I was surprised to hear about was the proposal to build a magnet high school. It would be a boarding school like Edgecumbe. I thought that was interesting. I have also been working on my panraven book. I'm a little frustrated with it because the website can be soooo slooooow...It's probably just because of the internet connection, but it still takes so much time. I helped at the cross country race today, making sure that the racers stayed on the course and didn't get lost. It was fun to cheer on the racers. Cross country is nice because you get to cheer on all the racers and not just the one's from your home town. So yeah, I had a pretty good week.