Julie's Blog

A Trip Down Memory Lane

May 11, 2010

It is officially only five more days until I graduate! But I am not going to lie, I'm so not looking forward to the actual ceremony. Hot weather plus a big black tent thrown over me for hours doesn't sound so appealing to me, but I am so incredibly excited to see my family! My mom, dad, brother, aunt, cousin and Chad's parents are all coming down from Maryland. Chad and Ariel are also both coming to graduation, and I can't wait to have so many people I love all in one place. Speaking of a bunch of amazing people all being in one place, I also cannot wait for Ariel's wedding. First of all, I love love love weddings, anyone's wedding (I am such a girl). So, needless to say, I'm ridiculously excited to be the maid of honor in my best friend's wedding. Aside from the wedding, I'm mostly looking forward a college BFF reunion! Ariel and I also have two other best friends from Liberty, Jenna and Christina, so we are so excited to get reunited. My best friends from home are also coming to visit me in Lynchburg the week after graduation which is awesome because I love being able to have them here in Lynchburg and show them around my home away from home. Oh, and sometime in between there is my job interview! So here's a little recap for you in the correct order (unlike my little excited rant): graduation, job interview, Baltimore friends come to Lynchburg, then Ariel's wedding. In summary, I have a whole lot of super amazing exciting stuff to look forward to in the next three weeks!

Although I am obviously insanely happy and excited, I can't help being a little sad as well. I am convinced that Liberty is the most unique and amazing university in the world. Jerry Sr. had the most amazing dream of a school that could excel in ministry, academics and sports, and he made it happen. Liberty is so big but seems so small and close. For my first two years at Liberty, Jerry could be seen on campus joking with students and speaking in convocation every Wednesday. He was so busy, but he always took the time to be personal and to be seen by his student body. I wish that everyone who has seen the stern and serious Jerry on TV could have seen the funny lovable man I looked up to and miss so much. Liberty also has the most amazing professors who are so brilliant and loving. I always thought of college as a place where teachers were mean and didn't even know any of their students' names. This couldn't be further from the truth when it comes to Liberty professors. I have grown so much in my relationship with God in my years at Liberty, and so much of that is because of the amazing faculty and students here. I am certain that I could not have picked a more wonderful place to attend college. I am also sad to leave Brookneal. I have built such great relationships with all of my students, and it makes me upset that I will never get to see any of their smiling faces again. Well, never again after sometime in June because, knowing me, I will go back to visit before the school year is over. And lastly, I am sad that this is my last blog. I have loved sharing my life with you, and I hope you have enjoyed getting to know me. I thought it would be fun (for you and for me) to see a progression of my time at Liberty, so here are some pictures of great memories I made. 

Freshman year:

This is a picture of Winkin' Pinkin' Wednesday! In the words of the ladies from Mean Girls, "On Wednesdays, we wear pink." Notice our faces in the back- it's because Dave is falling on us!

My dorm had an awesome water gun fight against our brother dorm, and we totally won!

Ariel, Jenna and I got a little tired of studying for finals, so we played dress-up! Notice how awesome Ariel looks. 

Sophomore year:

The four best friends- Christina, Jenna, me and Ariel on the hill, our favorite hang out spot of the year. 

We took Christmas pictures in these ugly turtle necks and sent them in cards to our families. 

Christina, Ariel and I took Jenna's Dale Jr. cutout around Lynchburg to take pictures for her birthday present. We, of course, had to put him in a race car, well go kart. 

Junior year:

This is my favorite picture of the four of us. We missed each other over the summer!

We made shirts for the red tie football game honoring Jerry. Allen is also one of my favorite people I met at Liberty. He was like a big brother. (Lookin good Ariel) 

A new special person entered my life junior year- my boyfriend, Chad. We took about 500 pictures on my Mac this day. We are such a good looking bunch. 

Senior year:

Ariel left half way through junior year, but she came back to visit! 

Christina, Kira and I had a super fun scavenger hunt against chad and his friends. 

Senior year number 2 (yes, I am a super senior):

The return of Ariel to Liberty! She is a super senior too :) 

One of my favorite people in the world, Chad's brother Rob, was a freshman this year. 

The End. 

Goodbye blog readers! God bless. 

Love,

Julie :) 

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Nostalgia

May 5, 2010

I've been sitting in front of my computer for a while now trying to think of what to write. I came to the conclusion that I have no idea what I've done this past week. The whole week was just a blur as it zoomed right by me. You know how everything seems to go by faster when you're in a routine; well, I'm definitely in a routine. I suppose it was just your average week, nothing great but nothing bad. But hey, I'll take average and boring over some of the stressful weeks I've had. Today I had a bit of a struggle with one of my more challenging students, and I decided to go through with an idea I had been pondering. I decided that I would make a deal with him that if he improves his behavior for the rest of the school year that I will take him out somewhere really fun over the summer. Many of my students, this one in particular, don't get the opportunity to go on very many exciting outings, so I'm really hoping that he'll keep up his end of the deal because I'm really excited about it. I wish I had the time and money to take out all of my students who come from bad home lives because I know how happy they would be to get to go somewhere fun for a change. My teaching advice for the week is to come up with similar deals or contracts in appropriate situations. There will always be a select few students that need a special motivation to succeed in class, and it is up to the teacher to come up with creative ways to reach each student.

This might sound really lame, but one of the best things I did this week was go to the rot! What is the rot you ask? It's Liberty's student dining hall. Okay, it's not really called "the rot," but it used to be called "The Marriott," and the nickname has stuck ever since. So a heads up to all you future freshies, use the Liberty lingo, and don't get caught telling your friends that you're going to eat at Reber Thomas. Anyway, I used to go to the rot all the time, but I haven't been in over a year. I guess I was feeling nostalgic because I wanted to go back one more time before I graduated. Ariel and I reminisced over the fun rot experiences we had our first couple years at Liberty, like deciding to get a little bit of food from each line and totally underestimating just how many lines there are. It may seem silly to get all sappy over a cafeteria, but it just made me think how much I'm going to miss Liberty and all of the places around campus and Lynchburg where I made so many wonderful memories.

Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot the one really exciting thing that happened this week - I got called for a teaching interview! I'm so excited but really nervous also because I've never actually had a super important interview. Yikes!

Have a great week everyone!

~Julie

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Relief

May 3, 2010

I have been quite the busy bee this last week! The biggest thing on my plate was my portfolio, and praise the Lord that I had either a hard copy or email of everything I needed. I was really nervous I wouldn’t have everything because my computer crashed, but everything turned out just fine. I spent hours sitting by the scanners, writing lesson plans and getting my binder together for the final observation and notebook check I had today. I’m not going to lie, I was stressing! But, in my opinion, even though being stressed stinks, it’s usually worth it because of the outcome. I think one of the best feelings in the world is to finish everything you were stressing about, and you don’t have that feeling of such amazing relief without the agony that comes before it. As of today, I have entered the relief stage, and it is awesome! I have completed everything that I will be graded on, and there are only 19 more days until graduation, 16 more days until student teaching ends, and 10 more days of actual student teaching, but who’s counting? Sorry if it sounds like all I talk about is graduation, but it’s all I think about. Senioritis has finally caught up with me (luckily it took it's time because this is my second senior year). I am also really excited about going home tomorrow to go to a job fair. I really want a job with Baltimore County Public Schools, and I’m hoping I get to interview with some of the schools.

Now onto some encouraging teacher advice of the week: Don’t be worried if you are nervous when you first start teaching; the nerves will fade. I used to get so anxious about teaching lessons, especially knowing that someone was watching me and grading me. I had to think so hard about what I was supposed to do and how to manage my time. Now everything just comes so naturally. I am much more confident, and I don’t care who is in the room watching me. I don’t even realize that they are there half of the time. I think it’s a lot like driving a car. At first you think about your every move, focus on staying in the lines and hold the steering wheel with a death grip. But after you’ve been driving for a while, you end up somewhere and wonder how you got there because you didn’t even have to think about it. I’m so happy that I’ve reached this point. It makes teaching so much more relaxed and fun, and it reassures me that I am in the right profession!

Have a fabulous week guys :)

~Julie

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The Computer and the Coffee Cup

May 3, 2010

What a crazy busy week this has been already, and it’s only Monday! I can feel the pressure of graduation due to the huge pile of work on my plate. I have a million lessons to write, papers to grade, applications to send, and paperwork to fill out. I’m slightly overwhelmed, especially since my computer (which has a bunch of lessons I need on it) just crashed, and I didn’t have any of my files backed up. It just so happens that my portfolio (of all the lessons that died with my computer) is due in three days. Yikes! Luckily, I was in a great mood when my computer crashed, so I just thought, “Oh well. It’s not the end of the world.” But this morning was a different story. I totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed and almost cried when I broke my favorite cup. However, I quickly lightened my mood by laughing at the fact that I didn’t really care that my computer crashed, but I almost broke down in tears when I broke a cup. It’s funny how your mood completely determines your reactions to life. Therefore, my teaching advice/ life in general advice for the week is: always be able to laugh at yourself, choose to be in a good mood as much as possible, and back up all your work on an external hard drive! Ha. Although I can definitely feel the pressure of everything I have to do, nothing can burst my bubble of excitement. That’s because there are only 26 more days until I am a college graduate! I’m kind of looking forward to being done with school, but I am mostly just looking forward to summer. I am quite the summer lover which leads me to believe that I might have subconsciously become an education major just so I can have them off. Okay, not really, but it is definitely a bonus!

Have a fantastic week :)

~Julie

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Graduation, Here I Come!

April 14, 2010

Well, today was my first day back to reality (tear). I loved seeing my sweet little kiddies, but I really hated my alarm clock this morning. It's just always so hard to come back from break, especially since I forgot everything that I was in the middle of teaching. Therefore, my teaching advice of the week is: go easy on your students when you come back from a break, and always keep school in the back of your mind. I realized that if I, the teacher, could hardly remember what I was teaching before break, I should be understanding of students who also struggle to remember the material. Also, even though I had such a wonderful spring break, it might have been a good idea to have kept school on my mind a little. I blocked it from my mind so much (and it was so warm) that my brain got spring break confused with summer, which made going back a lot harder.

Even though I should have had a little less fun and done a little more school work, spring break was absolutely perfect. I got to spend a lot of time with my family and friends, and I got to go to the best vacation spot in the whole world- Ocean City! I got to stay on my favorite part of the boardwalk for wicked cheap, and, most importantly, I got to hang out with my bubby (a.k.a. my little brother). We also got to see beautiful wild horses on the beach.

The last exciting activity I got to do was go to an Orioles game. By the way, I was very impressed that I actually did most of the fun things I wanted to do because I usually sit around it sweatpants and watch TV all day. Anyway, the Orioles lost really badly, but I still had a great time taking part in one of my favorite pastimes with my dad and brother.

And I saved the most exciting news for last: my last day of school is one month from today! I bought my cap and gown today, and it was even more exciting than I thought it would be. Graduation, here I come! 

Have an awesome day!

~Julie

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