Jan Term

My Jan Term class is over! We met for the last time last night. On Tuesday, our guest speaker was a Math professor from the college. He was born and grew up in South Korea so he talked about the culture and education system of South Korea. The education system in South Korea seems very stressful. He gave us the schedule of a student's average school day: School from 7:00am-4:30pm, Mandatory (at school) self-study from 6:00pm-9:00pm, and then most students go to a cram school from 10:00pm-1:00am. He stated that South Korea has about a 97% graduation rate from high school (which is insanly high!). However, they also have one of the world's highest suicide rates. I can't even imagine having school that much! He also mentioned that we could learn Korean if we studied for about 4 hours- I highly doubt that.... He also talked about how it is normal for everyone, including children, to stay up at night, around 11pm. So that might explain why students might come to school tired. Overall, it was a very interesting lecture.
So now that I'm done with that class, I'm going to finish preparing for my study! I have to go into an elementary school and implement literature circles in the classroom and measure their improvement. I'm getting really nervous about this! I'm starting my study on January 28th and I made a list yesterday of all the things I still need to do.... it was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be.... Plus I'm just nervous in general because if I do something wrong during the study it's really hard to fix it! Most of the data will be collected on a day to day basis so if I miss a day, that messes everything up... Plus I'm worried that I won't get as much student participation as I want/need. I'm ready for this study to be over with and it will be on January 12th- that's my last day in the classroom. After that, all I need to do is gather and examine all the data that I got during those 10 days (and put that in my thesis) and then discuss and conclude in my thesis as well. I can do that. Plus I have a class next semester every Wednesday night: Reading in the Content Areas. I technically have a second class next semester as well (it's my thesis class) but we're only meeting 4 times, twice in February and twice in April. So I don't think I'm really going to count that as a "class".
So yesterday there was the threat of snow and/or black ice overnight so there was the chance that the college would be closed today. No such luck. It's cold but there wasn't any snow or ice that I saw. Apparently yesterday the tempurature dropped a lot throughout the day. People kept mentioning how cold it was getting to me and it made me realize that I hadn't been outside at all that day. I went to work at 8am and since we had our monthly book club meeting in the library that day, I had my lunch in the library. Then directly after work was class in the library. I was in the library from 8am-7:30pm. Nearly 12 hours. Today I'm eating outside of the library and I get off work at 5 and then go to Mighty Joe's to work at 6 (at least I'm out of the library).
So something that me and Matt have started to do is swimming. In the morning. At 6:30am. Ew. We're going to start going every Tuesday and Thursday (the only days the pool is open that early) and swim for about 45 minutes before work. We did it this week and it wasn't too bad. The early part wasn't much fun but the swimming was good. The 45 minutes go by pretty fast. However, the pool's locker rooms are not so great. The shower has so much pressure that it feels like needles especially when it gets the backs of my hands. It hurts so much! Plus I'm always really hot after swimming and so when I blow dry my hair, I get all sweaty again... but I end up getting to work on time and looking pretty normal. I've started to bring a yogurt cup along with my usual breakfast (granola bar) on the swimming mornings. It's not enough. I'm absolutly starving after I eat both of those things. It feels like a weight on my whole body, I'm so hungry (and tired/grumpy). Apparently swimming burns more calories that I thought. So I'm going to start bringing more food... maybe oatmeal? Something that will fill me up! Because my whole morning is a waste when I feel like that. Even though it's not perfect, I think that the swimming will be a good thing for me and Matt. I've gotten so out of shape! I really need to start exercising again. I had been running daily over the summer but Matt rarely joined me and I stopped once school started back up. I'm really hoping we can keep this up!