Saturday, August 27, 2011

Blog Assignment 1

Hi Friends.
            My name is Kathleen Wilhelm and I am currently a student at the University of South Alabama where I am majoring in Secondary Education and Language Arts. I have lived in Mobile, Alabama since birth and so I chose to attend a college close to home.
            It was only natural when I chose to major in education because both of my older sisters have also majored in the same. My sister Stephanie taught history at Andalusia Middle School; she is now back at South for her nursing degree. My other sister, Sarah, graduated not too long ago in Elementary Education. My dad is a manager and my mom is a nurse.
            I love reading literature and could be considered a “book nerd.” I am one of those people that used to dress up for the all the Harry Potter book premieres and movie midnight showings. I am a fan of a bunch of modern fiction series (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments), but I am also a fan of the “older” classics (Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and The Odyssey). I enjoy reading pretty much anything and become super hyper when I am able to talk about these works of literature. I suppose that is one of the main reasons I want to teach English. I want children to open up their minds and have an imagination while reading; I want my students to become “excited” when reading and want to have conversations about the characters in the books. 
           Although I enjoy reading, I am not so great with modern day things such as technology. I am currently taking EDM 310 where I am required to have a blog so I may learn more about technology and how the world works. I am excited about this class, but terrified at the same time. I hope to learn a lot so that I can be the best teacher for my future students.

Randy Pausch's Time Management
            In Randy Pausch’s YouTube video on Time Management, he discussed how to set goals and how to plan. I thought it was interesting in the beginning on how he mentioned Americans care about money, but don’t hesitate to waste time when the two seem to go hand in hand.
            I also enjoyed when he talked about questioning while setting goals. You should always ask, “Why is this important? Why am I doing this? What will happen if I don’t do it?” These things will help set appropriate goals. Don’t focus on doing things right, do right things. I enjoyed the planning part of the video. “Failing to plan is planning to fail,” according to Pausch. When I make a to-do list I usually try to do the easiest things first. Pausch believes that you should do that worst things first. I enjoyed his frog reference. “If you have to eat a frog, don’t spend time looking at it. If you have to eat three, don’t eat the smallest one first.” Although actually thinking about this made me sick, I did enjoy what the message meant. Although Pausch did not say where the quote came from, I remember hearing a similar quote from Mark Twain. I do not know anything about Pausch, but it seems like the audience was around college age students. I will try to take his advice while trying to accomplish this semester.

4 comments:

  1. Two opportunities to find out: Twain quote? Who is Randy Pausch.

    Well written. Welcome to EDM310.

    Since the motto is Let's find out here is half:
    "Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
    — Mark Twain

    and


    Eating your ugliest frog each and every morning is discussed in several works by Brian Tracy, most notably in his book “Eat that frog!” (aff).
    The phrase itself is borrowed from two quotes from Mark Twain:
    - “If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be wonderful.”
    - “If you have to eat a frog, don’t look at it for too long.”

    Looks like there is a bit of disagreement about Twain's exact words!

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  2. Thanks for your comment Dr. Strange.
    I did some research on Randy Pausch and found out that I actually knew a little about him without realizing it. He has been on Oprah and was featured on Diane Sawyer because he was the co-author of the book, The Last Lecture. Sadly, Pausch passed away in 2008. My grandmother owns this book and has read this many times. I have heard great things about it and hopefully I can make some time in the near future to read it.
    Thank you for the information about Mark Twain. That man must have liked frogs a lot, or at least eating them. It is interesting that there are different quotes from him about this.

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  3. Kathleen, I am glad you are going to be visiting my blog. When I read your introductory post, it made me want to extend an invitation to you to be a guest blogger on another blog I have on Children's Literature. I love to hear about what people think and are learning about children's literature. Your third paragraph would be a great start. Check out the blog and let me know what you think. We'd love to have you participate.

    Thanks,
    Denise Krebs

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  4. Denise,
    Thank you so much for taking the time to comment me back. I also appreciate the invitation to the Children's Literature blog. That looks so interesting for teachers and for parents. I cannot wait to read more posts from both blogs.

    ReplyDelete