I was looking for an empty space the other day where I could make a quick phone call.  I ducked my head into this unknown classroom and look what I found! A sea of colorful pods.  It was one of those disruptive moments when I am divinely pulled out of my rush to be reminded that there is color and beauty in the world.  Sometimes I stop and smell and roses, and sometimes I stop and say "ah" at a splash of color. 

  Just took an online, timed test on the movie Europa Europa. Wow, powerful and disturbing. Not for the squeamish. It's a true story I shall never forget it. Here's what I wrote in 60 minutes.    Jews lived throughout Europe surrounded by different ethnic groups, and those with various political and religious beliefs and agendas.  The movie Europa Europa shows a microcosm of this in the story of Solomon Perel, a young German Jew during the Second World War.  The filmmaker, Agnieska Holland, seems to show the Jews being buffeted from one place to another by all these various "outside" forces, most of which having nothing to do with the Jews daily practice of belief and existence.  The movie begins with a sweet scene of Solomon's mother and sister preparing for his bar mitzvah that was to take place later that night.  They are preparing the house while laughing and enjoying a carefree, innocent moment.  Unknown to them, that nig...

Part of my online class discussion thread about education.    I have been thinking about my own experiences in education while reading Whitehead. I read a particular paragraph, but I just about dismissed it as being non applicable.  Then I read it several more times and decided that it was perfect for me.  He said, “The essence of education is that it be religious”.  Now bear with me, because that’s where I got turned off.  I’m a big proponent of separation of church and state, so I immediately thought, “that’s not me”.  But now, I take it to mean something different.  I believe he isn’t saying to study religion, but rather to instill a religious type of “duty and reverence” into education.  OK, now he has my attention.  I’ve waited so many years to be back here in college, that I do feel a reverence about it.  The Holy Grail if you will, and hard won!  Whitehead states, “Where attainable knowledge could h...

     Good day in UF 100.  That's the general education class that everyone has to take.  But you get to pick from a variety of topics.  I chose, "The History and Future of Education".  Partly because it fit my schedule, but also because I'm interested in the subject.  I have been out of the education loop for so long that I have no idea what's going on, and to be honest I'm pretty sure I never did.  I'm also interested in where this is all going.  Like I said before, we didn't even have computers when I was in college.  How does this all work?  Already I've had my mind blown by team projects that are done almost completely on line.  We all work off the same Google Doc adding our own part, commenting on other's contribution, and we can even get in and edit their part if we want.  And all from the comfort of our own homes.  No face to face interaction needed.        In this class ...

     I've really grown to love and appreciate this place.  Magic happens here.  It's the Boise State Writing Lab.  They have steered me straight on several occasions during my writing assignments so far.  I'm really loving the writing.  Last time I was in there I told the guy who was helping me that I was ready to ditch the whole nursing thing and become a writer.  He got very excited.  I'm thinking writers are a lonely bunch.

     By Jove!  I think shes got it.  I think I have finally refined a system of marking my text books that works for me.  All the different colors mean different things to me.  It's a bit time consuming, but by the time I'm done I know the material and can easily find the information later if needed.  One draw back - forget resale.

     I was sick last semester.  Very sick.  Like the kind of sick I hadn't been in five years, sick.  Turns out I had bronchitis exacerbated by asthma.  In the darkest days I finally went to the campus clinic.  While on death's door (OK, that's what it felt like at the time...), I'm in a room waiting for the doctor and I look up and see - our Broncos mascot standing there with his hands on his hips and wearing a stethoscope around his neck.  I thought I was hallucinating.  Hmmmm, was that supposed to make me feel better?  Was it to help me feel more assured that the medical help that was on it's way, was on my side?  I couldn't quite wrap my mind around it.  I chalked it up to delirium.

I rounded the corned in the library one day and look what I found.  I instantly felt like I was back in grade school in the 60s.  

     Apparently, if you want someone on campus to know something - anything, use colored chalk.  I'm not kidding.  It's the "In" way to get your message in the public eye.  For example, I walked across a message the other day that said, "LGBT for Christ".  I meant no disrespect to LGBT or Christ, I just didn't know it was there in time to go around.  I'm often walking at such a clip that I miss the message altogether because I'm past it before I realize there was something there to read.   Here are some examples:  Advertisements - i.e Moxie Java School Fairs etc. And random words of wisdom like this one on the steps of the library, "If the world was a book, to not travel is like reading just a page!".

The New Imperialism.        I can barely study this.  It turns my stomach.   It's not anything I haven't heard per say but to have it laid out in all it's glory with it's Darwinian entitlement and White Man's Burden to civilize the unfit.  Emesis basin please.  Quick!

Here's my research paper from last semester's English Research Writing class.   Susan Fullmer Professor Dan Wilber Eng 102 7 May 2015 Missing Options for the Healthcare Consumer: Are Allopathic Health Care Providers and Complementary Alternative Medicine Providers Part of the Same Discourse Community? Introduction According to Bruce Herzberg, an English professor at Bentley College, “Discourse operates within conventions defined by communities. . .  academic English now uses the notion of ‘discourse communities’ to signify a cluster of ideas:  that language use in a group is a form of social behavior, that discourse is a means of maintaining and extending the group’s knowledge and of initiating new members into the group, and that discourse is epistemic or constitutive of the group’s knowledge.” (Herzberg 1).  A linguistics professor at The University of Michigan, John Swales, uses Herzberg’s definition to produce several intriguing ques...