Have you finished your Christmas Shopping yet?

You all know I have very few things that bother me...(right).  I can't stand when people ask me this.  I always answer yes.  The real answer is that I have 2 people to shop for, my mom and my dad.  I don't have any need to shop for other people.  My friends and I don't exchange gifts because we are pretty much just exchanging money.  It's pointless.  I can't be bothered to tell people that.  Also, they don't care.  That is just their way of starting a conversation.  I don't ask people that because frankly...I couldn't care less if they have done any shopping yet.  They aren't buying me presents, so it doesn't affect me at all.  This is yet another reason why I can't wait for the holidays to be over.

200th Blog Post!

I can't believe I have written so many entries in this blog.  I have done an excellent job of sticking to my goal of writing in it each day.  The only days I have missed were days that I was in a hotel room or on a boat.  I started writing everyday on May 24 of this year.  I had a few very short and pathetic posts before that as I started this blog.  So far, this blog has over 2,600 views!  That's well over 10 views a day!  Awesome!  I wonder how many views I can get as I continue writing.  I hope with my 3-day free book promotion the next 3 days, more people will start viewing this blog.  Tomorrow is a big day for me.  I'm going to a technology conference.  I am presenting with 5 of my students from newspaper club.  Together, we will show people how we create the school newspaper.  I will also show people a few other things my school does with Google Documents in the classroom.  I have to admit, I'm pretty nervous.  I hope the kids show more interest in presenting tomorrow than they did during a practice run today!  As I already said, both of my books will be free tomorrow through Sunday.  I'll be busy tweeting and promoting that tomorrow in addition to my all day conference.  I then have 2 different holiday parties to go to.  I'll be one thoroughly exhausted dude tomorrow night.  I have no idea how many books will sell tomorrow.  I think it will be a lot more than my first two days of free promotion because I have sent the link to several dozen different websites.  I just hope they list it on their websites!  We will see what happens this weekend!  I hope to hit the top 100 list in my genre again and maybe even sneak into the overall top 100!  That's a huge goal though because my peak last time it was free was about 2,200 in overall free kindle sales.  You never know, though!

SUNY Potsdam and St. Rose

I went to SUNY Potsdam for my undergraduate degree.  I majored in Childhood Education and my specialization was English.  That means I am certified to teach grades 1-6.  I believe as I entered SUNY Potsdam my freshman year, I planned to stay there an extra two years to finish my master's degree.  Potsdam was the only school I applied to for my undergrad because I knew I wanted to go there.  I applied in October so that if I didn't get in, I had an opportunity to apply somewhere else.  I got in pretty quickly.  My senior year of college, I applied to Potsdam for graduate school.  I didn't think of going anywhere else.  I was accepted and even registered for classes for the start of the fall semester.  When you go to graduate school for something education related, you have four choices as your major.  Naturally within each major, you have more specific choices you can major in.  The four I could choose from were literacy, special education, curriculum studies, and technology.  I chose educational technology because it was something different and I figured I would stick out in a crowd on my resume.  It turns out most schools are looking for people with a literacy background, oh well.  Anyway, I applied to be a graduate RD at Potsdam for the following year.  An RD is a resident director.  They are in charge of the resident assistants and an entire dorm building.  It would mean I would have free tuition.  One Monday in April, one of my freshman residents said something to me that drastically changed my life forever.  I don't remember his exact words.  He said something like, "You know, you don't have to go to Potsdam for graduate school if you don't want to."  At that point, I had gone to Potsdam for four years.  I was mentally drained.  There was a lot of emotional stuff that happened my junior and senior years that left me exhausted.  I knew I needed and desperately wanted a drastic change, but didn't know what the change was.  The moment that resident said that, I knew what I needed to do.  I started looking at what St. Rose offered since it was a college close to my home town.  I knew the school was known for education.  Luckily, the application deadline did not pass.  I did research the following day, figured out that I was going to major as an Educational Technology Specialist.  I only needed a year and a half of graduate school instead of two because I already student taught and didn't have to do it again.  I called my mom that day and she was not happy that I was making such a drastic change so late in the year.  She wanted to know what event happened that made me want to leave Potsdam so badly.  The truth is, there is no specific event that made me want to leave.  I just knew I needed a change and this was the change.  The application was sent out the next day.  I withdrew my application to be a graduate RD.  I didn't get my official letter of acceptance from St. Rose until early July.  I had to find classes that were not full.  I was lucky because I only had to take 10 classes my entire graduate career.  I took 3 classes each semester and one over the summer.  Each semester, I took 2 online classes and one in person.  My summer class was also online.  Online classes are awesome, but require a lot of busy work so that the teacher knows you know the information.  I graduated in December 2010 with my masters and walked the stage in May 2011.  I was able to substitute teach both years that I was in graduate school.  It was very tough at times because I sometimes subbed 5 days a week.  Then I had to go home and do my graduate work.  However, switching colleges was the best decision I ever made in life.  Sometimes you need to take that risk.  The moral of this lengthy post is that you need to do what you feel is best for you.  Your parents might not approve of your choices.  If it's something that will make you happy in the long run, do it.  Don't let anyone or anything hold you back in life.  Take risks and learn from your mistakes.  Don't regret any decisions in life and don't look back and say, "I wonder what would have happened if I had done it this way."  You will never know until you try it!

LUNCH BOX MISSING!

I had a major crisis at work today (major in my mind).  I am 100% positive that I brought my lunch to work and put it in the refrigerator as soon as I got there.  When I went to get my lunch at 11:30, the lunch box was not there.  I checked both refrigerators, moved lunch boxes, and checked the faculty room.  I did not panic too much though because there was left over stale pizza that I ate.  After eating that, I checked the refrigerator one more time and did not see it.  Another staff member looked in the fridge too, and didn't see it.  I then sent an email to the staff saying that it was missing.  About five minutes later, I got a call from the secretary saying that my lunch was in the fridge.  I go back and checked the fridge, and there it is!  I am 100% sure that it was not there when I first looked at 11:30.  It had to have been hiding.  It must have been stuck behind someone else's lunch box.  It's actually pretty funny when you think about it.  At least I had some food to hold over my always hungry self.  Maybe I'll be more diligent when looking for something that I think is lost!  On the bright side, I don't have to make lunch tomorrow since I purposely left my lunch in the fridge!

Independent vs. Dependent

We all strive to be independent.  The only people they don't want to be independent these days are kids.  They are so used to being coddled that they want to live their lives that way.  They want the teachers to do everything for them, including their school work.  It's tough for very old people to lose their independence.  My grandpa is going to get a limited license soon because he has poor eye sight.  That means he can only drive during the day and not on night.  That means my mom and I will have to drive him and my grandma around more often.  They are lucky we live so close.  My grandpa is not happy about this.  It makes sense.  People don't like to ask for help.  We are so used to being independent that it's hard for us to ask for help when we need it.  We need to learn that at times, we are going to need all of the help we can get.  You should never tell someone, "Let me know what I can do to help." or "Call me if you need anything."  You will be waiting by the phone for a long time.  It's in our nature not to call for help.  You should just say, "I'm going to help you by doing..."  I'm not really sure what gave me the idea to write about being independent.  I thought of it last night and decided to go with it.

Blog Statistics

I had planned on writing about something else tonight.  However, every night before I write my entry, I check the blog stats.  I normally just see how many page views I have total, how many views today, and yesterday.  When I just checked, it gave me something completely different.  According to the screen shots below, apparently I'm quite a hit in Russia.  I know no one in Russia!  People have viewed my blog from Germany, UK, Israel, Sweden, France, Lithuania, Australia, and Canada!  That's crazy!  Because I was dying to know, it also gave me the statistics as to what web browser people viewed my blog on and what operating system.  It's crazy the breakdown that they are able to do.  I guess a lot of people that have Windows computers view my blog.  Although many people that have iPads view my blog too.  It's quite interesting to see these nitpicky details.  I want to say thank you to everyone that has viewed my blog from literally all over the world!  Don't forget to get your free copy of The Teacher That Didn't Teach and The Teacher That Taught Too Much on your kindle any time this Friday-Sunday! 

Reading

When I was younger, I could not stand reading.  My mom was in charge of a program called parents as reading partners.  Kids that participated in the program had to read 15 minutes a day I think 4 or 5 days a week.  Obviously since my mom started the program, I had to do it.  Every night, it was a struggle to get me to read.  My mom would set the timer for 15 minutes and it would be the longest 15 minutes of my life.  I would always pretend to read.  I'm not really sure why I hated reading so much.  I know part of it was because I struggled with it.  I was a remedial reading, which is a program that takes kids out of the classroom and gets them extra help with reading.  In seventh grade, my mom bought me the first three Harry Potter books.  I started reading them and could not put them down.  From then on, I started to love reading.  I finally found genres that I enjoyed reading.  Now, I read a lot of sports books, mysteries, and John Grisham lawyer books.  The only problem is I never seem to have time to read as much as I'd like to.  I checked two books out of the library on kindle.  I only have three weeks to read them.  I'm forcing myself to take time out of the day to read and I love it.  The only bad thing is that now I'm not writing besides this blog.  I'm hoping that over winter break, I will be able to work on my next book and get a good chunk of that done.  Until then, I'll enjoy some reading!