Grad School and I: A Love Story

Once upon a time there was a blonde girl from South Jersey whose favorite childhood activity was teaching her American Girl Dolls the elementary school curriculum whilst wearing a tutu and matching tiara.  Longing for her students to actually answer her and DO their homework, she decided to turn her childhood passion into a career.  She decided to be a special education teacher.  Special Education was always a passion of the little blonde girl and since her mother was in the special education field, she decided to adopt this as her raison d'etre.  At 18, the little blonde girl gleefully accepted a spot in TCNJ's 5 year master's SPED (SPecial EDucation...aren't we creative at TCNJ where the "T" stands for The) program. Well, undergrad work was challenging but fun because I was enamored with all of my classes and professors.  This little blonde girl had found her niche!  She found the friends she was always meant to have (Type A compulsive planners!  Is there any other kind of friend?!), learned the things she was meant to learn, and laughed a LOT along the way.  All in all things were looking rosy for the little blonde girl.  Then, the evil cackling of Maleficent came thundering down...okay no wait, that's a different little blonde girl's fairytale.  In reality what happened is this little blonde girl and her cohort have to go to summer class.  Wahhhh!

Summer class is no fun.  Summer class is not for me.  Summer class is a boring research session.

Summer is supposed to be a compilation of bikinis, books (that are NOT for school), pools, sunscreen, and country music playing 24/7.  Summer is NOT supposed to be full of school, research, and notebooks.  No.  Just Stop.  This is a research class where we learn to use, read, and create qualitative and quantitative research.  Are you sleeping yet?  I am!  There are only 6 weeks of classes so it shouldn't be that bad, right?  WRONGO!  This is NOT the class to compress into a summer session.  This class needed 14 weeks because the workload is intense. On top of the increased workload, the class is group work heavy.  Being a social lady myself I enjoy group work.  I like everyone in my cohort so this shouldn't be a problem, right?  FALSE!  This would not be a problem if we were all still living at TCNJ.  Most SPEDs are moving home for their fifth year because we wanted student teaching placements that were closer to our respective houses i.e. future job market/prospects.  None of us live near each other making group work very difficult.  We all work/live/play about an hour away from here in different directions so meeting up will prove to be very challenging.  Oh well. 

The only bonus of this class is that I get to see my bestest friends twice a week for the next six weeks!  

Will the little blonde girl make it through the world's most boring class?  Will the prospect of reading readings about research methodology make her go crazy?  We soon shall see, we soon shall see.  

Here's to living happily (research free) ever after,

Erin