lufy

I'm doing this at the behest of n8tvegrl. I've never really indulged in these things - I guess this is a moment of journalistic weakness for me. Tell me as many of these as you want (feel free to ignore #8):

1. Name:
2. Birthday:
3. Where you live:
4. What makes you happy:
5. Currently listening/the last thing you listened to:
6. An interesting fact about you:
7. Are you in love/do you have a crush at the moment?:
8. Is it with me ?:
9. Favorite place to spend time:
10. Favorite song:
11. Favorite lyric:
12. The best time of the year:

RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A band, a song, or album:

PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Look at my friends-list and tell what you like about one of our mutual friends:
4. Put this in your journal so that I can tell you what I like about you.
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The year is winding down - it's now finals week and the kids are humming with the intensity of a car that's at full throttle yet has gone too long without a tune-up. You can tell the limits are being pushed and a break-down is imminent, but you don't know exactly when or where it's going to happen. You just know you don't want to be there when it does happen as it will be loud and it will be ugly.

I, too, am feeling the pressure. Grades and final comments are due soon, so this means long hours of late-night, last-minute grading and report card writing. I find it cruelly ironic that as a youth I spent my entire life avoiding schoolwork and homework only to choose a profession that GARUANTEES me nothing but schoolwork and homework. Karma can be a real bitch, sometimes.

Plus I'm planning for my crazy cross-country trip. I've only got about half of my camping gear together - I don't know where I'm getting the rest. I finally got all my photo gear together, and it's turned out to be a rather schizophrenic bunch of equipment: a Nikon FG (+ 3 lenses), an Olympus AE-1 Program (+ 3 lenses), a Holga medium-format, and my trusty Bogen tripod. I'm minus my entire Hasselblad system, my Nikon SB16B Speedlight, a Nikon 100-300mm telephoto, all my color filters, and two camera bags because they died in a recent flood. I must say, what I was able to salvage is a rather motley assemblage of equipment.

In a way....it's making this whole thing rather fun. I feel like I'm getting back to my roots. Nothing slick or modern, just lo-fi camera gear and my photojournalistic wits and intuition. I can't help but smile when I think about how slap-dash the whole thing is. I feel like I'm 16 and just starting out on my first photojournalistic trip.

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Since this is finals week, this is going to be the final installment of "Favorite Student Anecdotes of the Week" until September. Hope these get you through the summer.
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It was a busy week for the lower school:

One of the 6th grade male students stood up in class and said:
"Ms. W____. I'm not wearing any underwear."

A 7th grader mentioned in class:
"I have a giant wiener."
(he was referring to his wiener DOG.....he just forgot to mention the "dog" part.)

In the Upper School:

Students figured out how to turn "Casserole" into "ass roll" on the lunch board.

In one of my afternoon classes:
Me: In order to join a guild you had to apprentice with a master in that guild. And every guild had its own group of masters.
Student 1: So in the baking guild were there "master bakers"?
Student 2: Was there a "debating" guild? Were there "master debaters"?
(we all laughed and then one of our foreign students, the cutest, sweetest, most innocent Korean you've ever seen, raised her hand and said - )
Student 3: "I don't get it. What's a "master baker"?
We all cracked up after that.

Lastly, while I don't condone this sort of thing, you've got to admire the sheer temerity of this student:
During a test-day, a student in a Biology class taped a cheat-sheet to the font of the teacher's desk. But since it was in the front, the teacher (who was behind the desk) never saw it. So the whole class was staring at answers to a test that was being given to them and the teacher never knew it.