Hallelujah!!!

After 2 weeks of the flu that KICKED my butt... I’m feeling so much better. I’m now back to my rigorous schedule... which involves classes, research, group presentations, term papers, and homework!

Wanna hear about my upcoming school projects.... Well, if not... stop reading :-)

Let’s got by class:

Spanish: I still suck... but I’m learning to suck “between the lines”. Last week we did people and physical descriptions... and now we’re doing classroom items and quantities. Wahhoo. All I can say is THANK GOODNESS she gives out extra credit like it’s going out of style.

Family Studies: By far, this is my favorite class. So far we’ve studied how the family is portrayed in movies, print media, and television (we’re watching “Pleasantville” to study the contrast between reality and fantasy... we’ve already watched clips of “Truman Show”). I’m also working on a paper and presentation along with a group of classmates. Our topic is “Families and Disabilities: How the family is affected when a member has a disability.” This topic is split into several elements: Disabilities people are born with (cerebral palsy, downs), disabilities that occur during lifetime (accidents, cancer, etc), Parents with disabilities, and resources that are available to families who deal with these disabilities. I chose to focus on mental disabilities among parents (and how it affects the children/spouse) and among the children (and how it affects the parents/siblings).

American Family History: We’re learning about a lot of different types of people in America, and about the dynamics of the family units (ie. native americans, slaves, migrant workers, early Colonial settlers, etc). The paper I’m getting ready to write a 10 page paper on some element of families over time (1500 to 1980). I’m thinking about writing about southern farming families who were sharecroppers, and how this lifestyle/occupation affected the families, and how the entire families were involved. I’m not really sure yet... but that’s what I’m thinking... Any ideas... let me know.

Psychology of Women: This teacher has a very good philosophy for this course. She’s not trying to convert our thinking, or make us change our values... but to make us “notice”. She wants to help us to make the “invisible visible”. One of the ways she has done this for me is when we watched a video called “Killing us Softly 3” (see www.jeankilbourne.com). The speaker has studied how women are portrayed in the media. I was very surprised at what I learned. In this class, my group is doing a presentation on “Women and Friendships”. We narrowed it down to same-sex, non romantic friendships. We split it up and came up with these elements: Conflicts in relationships, how friendships are sustained over time (or how they withstand time), Things that women can get away with their female friends that male-male, or female-male friends could not (ie hand holding, hugging, saying “love ya”, etc). The element that I took is the role that current life stages play into friendships over time (or whether they are even an issue).

Alright... that’s about where I’m at so far in classes. In addition to all this, I’m also an advisor in the LDSSA. I’ve designed the website, and am maintaining the email contacts. I’m also heading up the publicity element.

Love ya’ll... Drop me a line when you get a chance!!!