Adolescent Identity

With the rest of Washington Pullman was also blessed with another blanket of snow and slush. Unfortuantely, unlike the rest of the state, the university did not cancel classes. The only class which was cancelled today was because the professor was the keynote speaker at a conference out of state. His plane was cancelled and was not able to get back to Pullman by today (which is fine by all of us in his class). And unlike the rest of Washington the snow doesn't slow anybody down over here- things are up and running as usual...

Yesterday for four thrilling hours (four which I will never get back) I sat at Rico's Bar, and recieved alcohol training and I was lucky enough to pay for it at the end! It was so much fun it is hard to put into words. Needless to say, the entire time it was snowing, when I walked outside the slush surrounded the car, the car was covered and I stepped accidently into the slush with my sneakers. The unforunate part of the entire thing is that I had to go straight to the Writing Center to work with soaked sneakers and all.

Each week I have to work at the Writing Center on campus. This is where students can bring their papers they are working on for help. I picked Sunday because I normally don't have anything else to do so it is easier for me to do it that day. And if I go home for the weekend, I don't have to back in Pullman until 6 pm. The bad part about working on Sunday is that there are not very many students that come in for help, especially in the evening on a Sunday. There are OWL's which is an online writing learning center. This is where students from other universities can submit their writing, as tutors we read it and send back our comments in a letter form. Last night there was an OWL for two of us to read, it was from another university and it was about Russian Literature-- but about medicine and psychology. It was a little confusing and quite in-depth. It took a couple of us the entire hour to read the 15 page paper; it was extremely dense.

After that, I went swimming. I have been having trouble executing flip turns, last night I mastered them! Plus I can tell that my swimming endurance is increasing, very good sign. My friend who is helping me told me that I am dramatically improving quickly. On Wednesday we are going to start doing actual laps; unlike what we have been doing, which are laps- kinda.

This gets me to the title of my blog and the new survey. For one of my teaching classes we are writing a paper on how our identities were shaped through high school. There are many events in high school that did shape who I am today, but in a 5-8 page paper I am limited to what I can talk about. Plus, there are other elements which I need to include. There is one event and element in high school that I believe took a huge toll in shaping me which in effect shaped the rest of my high school experience. But I need some honest feedback from an outside perspective. If there is not an event in the poll which was significant please let me know. I want to make this as accurate as possible since we are addressing how to change our bias' for our classroom enviroment. Our bias' cannot be completely gone, however, we need to be aware of them so they can be addressed.