Well, I've been home from Italy for about 5 days now. First, let me say that it was one of the most incredible experiences ever. Having the opportunity to teach English in Italy was well worth the expense of having to *get* to Italy. I will definitely be doing it again, maybe even next year.
Meanwhile, it's back to normal life here, or as normal as it gets. I got back last Sunday and started my second summer class on Monday. I've been going, non-stop, all week and I'm exhausted. Along with class, I've been having to deal with family and friend drama, so of course, what happens now? Oh that's right, I don't sleep. I mean, why else would I be blogging at 5am? Hello, insomnia old friend, long time no see!
I know I suck, but that's all for now.
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insomnia. Show all posts
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
I'm tired.
Earlier, I had a migraine. It's gone down to a (still painful) throbbing, after painkillers and a "omg I think I'm dying" 3 hour nap. I want to say everything is overwhelming, but really it isn't. I'm just bad about getting my act together. I've decided that part of my problem is waiting on other people to do things for me: well, no more. I'm taking my life into my own hands. As my good friend Cara once wrote (as her Facebook status) "[I am not] waiting for change... [I'm] making change happen!"
As my dedicated reader(s) know(s), I've finally decided to get my shit together and clean my room. I haven't moved forward on that since my last post, but it's a thought forever present and always at the front of my mind. My room WILL be clean before I leave for the summer. My soft deadline is May 13th, the hard deadline is June 4th. Why those dates? Well, they correspond to the day before two trips I'm taking this summer. More on that later, though.
I've made an appointment with Mental Health, at McGill, to see if this lack of sleep thing has anything to do with anxiety. The insomnia is getting pretty bad. I'm not sleeping through a full night at all anymore, unless I take some sort of sleep aide, which I don't want to take too often in order to not become addicted. I bought a journal in which to write my thoughts when I'm up, which seems to be helping. I think some pretty fucked up things when I don't sleep! So yeah, I made an appointment to talk to someone, maybe find the underlying problems causing my insomnia.
I've also made an appointment with H&R Block to get my taxes done. I'm tired of waiting after my dad to do them, I want my refund now, not in 8 months! I'm a little nervous, as it's the first time I do it by myself. I just feel as if I don't have enough papers? I don't know. What I do know is that this will cost me about $30, which isn't too bad.
The last thing I want to write about today is vegan brownies. I'm craving chocolate and I'm tired of my parents not buying cocoa so I'm going out and buying it myself. Then, tonight, I am going to make these vegan brownies, not only for me but also for my friend's boyfriend who is ill and I kinda promised I'd make goodies this week for both of them so I might as well do it. Why vegan, you ask? Well, you shouldn't ask. You should know: I'm lactose intolerant. I'm not a tofu fan, so I'm glad I found a tofu-free recipe. I wanted to make brownies from the dairy/egg free dessert book I bought a few months ago, but it seems to have disappeared... Seriously, I have no clue where it is. It was in the living room. Now, it isn't.
I really just wish this headache would go away... and that I slept for more than 3 hours at a time.
As my dedicated reader(s) know(s), I've finally decided to get my shit together and clean my room. I haven't moved forward on that since my last post, but it's a thought forever present and always at the front of my mind. My room WILL be clean before I leave for the summer. My soft deadline is May 13th, the hard deadline is June 4th. Why those dates? Well, they correspond to the day before two trips I'm taking this summer. More on that later, though.
I've made an appointment with Mental Health, at McGill, to see if this lack of sleep thing has anything to do with anxiety. The insomnia is getting pretty bad. I'm not sleeping through a full night at all anymore, unless I take some sort of sleep aide, which I don't want to take too often in order to not become addicted. I bought a journal in which to write my thoughts when I'm up, which seems to be helping. I think some pretty fucked up things when I don't sleep! So yeah, I made an appointment to talk to someone, maybe find the underlying problems causing my insomnia.
I've also made an appointment with H&R Block to get my taxes done. I'm tired of waiting after my dad to do them, I want my refund now, not in 8 months! I'm a little nervous, as it's the first time I do it by myself. I just feel as if I don't have enough papers? I don't know. What I do know is that this will cost me about $30, which isn't too bad.
The last thing I want to write about today is vegan brownies. I'm craving chocolate and I'm tired of my parents not buying cocoa so I'm going out and buying it myself. Then, tonight, I am going to make these vegan brownies, not only for me but also for my friend's boyfriend who is ill and I kinda promised I'd make goodies this week for both of them so I might as well do it. Why vegan, you ask? Well, you shouldn't ask. You should know: I'm lactose intolerant. I'm not a tofu fan, so I'm glad I found a tofu-free recipe. I wanted to make brownies from the dairy/egg free dessert book I bought a few months ago, but it seems to have disappeared... Seriously, I have no clue where it is. It was in the living room. Now, it isn't.
I really just wish this headache would go away... and that I slept for more than 3 hours at a time.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Need... sleep...
1. Happy St-Patrick's day. I had this beautiful green shirt, but a couple months ago I got an oil stain on it. I gave it to my mom because she said she'd fix it. I asked her about it last weekend: she managed to lose it in her room, which is spotless and not cluttered and I have no idea how that happened.
2. It's 5:21am. I've been up since about 3:15am. And that's just when I decided to check the time! I was up way before that. Let's see, I went to bed at 11pm and I think I must have gotten maybe... 2 hours sleep? Maybe less. Oh boy, will today be ever so much fun (heavy sarcasm). For further reference, I should turn off my laptop at least one hour before bed; not play on my nintendo DS for 20mins in bed and not eat pizza sans lactaid right before going to sleep. And I should just take a freaken sleeping pill. But I took one yesterday, and I don't want to become dependent. The last thing I need is to rely on drugs to sleep. I'm trying to avoid the whole "take a pill once a day for the rest of your life" route.
I thought I'd take this bout of insomnia as a chance to be productive. I went into the living room, got my laptop, brought it back to my room, went back in the living room, got my external hard drive, went back to my room, went back into the living room, got my bottle of water, filled it in the kitchen and then went back to my room again (all under the cover of darkness and trying not to make noise for fear of waking my parents, one who is not feeling well and the other who went to bed well past 1am). Right, so after all that going from my room to the living room and back, I figured I'd work on this ugly LES due tomorrow. For those not in the field of education, an LES is a "Learning and Evaluation Situation." Basically, it's a GIANT lesson where you map out all the steps you need to teach in order for your students to be able to successfully complete a final project. For example, in a math class, the final project is: build a pool. Students will need to know how to how big to dig the hole, how to calculate the cost from the price of materials and labour, how to calculate volume, etc.
It's pretty simple for subjects in the faculty of science (at least I think so, since there are so many more clear steps in any given project). I'm teaching ESL, so it's like I have to build all these hypothetical lesson plans assuming either my students will be incredibly dumb or the school will have the most incredible funding. My group and I chose to go with the latter. Our LES is completely unrealistic and we will never be able to use it in public schools in Quebec, but whatever, it's easier this way. In our hypothetical high school, not only will students be already fluent in English (which is SO not the case, even for advanced high school students, who I taught in September during my field experience) but the school will also have a state of the art computer room that is accessible whenever we need it. It will also have at least 15 camcorders to lend out (oh man, I wish this place was real).
It's not that I think what i'm learning in school is useless (although I kinda do), it's that I find we are given all these hypothetical situations and we have to know the perfect answer... but the perfect (in class) answer is hardly ever the one used in real life due to practicality or initial reactions or mostly the unpredictability of everything. When you learn to be an accountant, for example, you have your formulas to complete your calculations. Your number never bully each other, never join gangs at the age of 10, you never catch your number smoking pot on school grounds, you never get sexually harassed by them... You just deal with your numbers and your dumb clients.
Give me a teaching situation and I will give you the best possible solution. I know all the right things to say and the right ways to act. Do you think that makes me feel ready for real life? Hells no. And that terrifies me.
Well, let me at least pretend to be productive this morning...
2. It's 5:21am. I've been up since about 3:15am. And that's just when I decided to check the time! I was up way before that. Let's see, I went to bed at 11pm and I think I must have gotten maybe... 2 hours sleep? Maybe less. Oh boy, will today be ever so much fun (heavy sarcasm). For further reference, I should turn off my laptop at least one hour before bed; not play on my nintendo DS for 20mins in bed and not eat pizza sans lactaid right before going to sleep. And I should just take a freaken sleeping pill. But I took one yesterday, and I don't want to become dependent. The last thing I need is to rely on drugs to sleep. I'm trying to avoid the whole "take a pill once a day for the rest of your life" route.
I thought I'd take this bout of insomnia as a chance to be productive. I went into the living room, got my laptop, brought it back to my room, went back in the living room, got my external hard drive, went back to my room, went back into the living room, got my bottle of water, filled it in the kitchen and then went back to my room again (all under the cover of darkness and trying not to make noise for fear of waking my parents, one who is not feeling well and the other who went to bed well past 1am). Right, so after all that going from my room to the living room and back, I figured I'd work on this ugly LES due tomorrow. For those not in the field of education, an LES is a "Learning and Evaluation Situation." Basically, it's a GIANT lesson where you map out all the steps you need to teach in order for your students to be able to successfully complete a final project. For example, in a math class, the final project is: build a pool. Students will need to know how to how big to dig the hole, how to calculate the cost from the price of materials and labour, how to calculate volume, etc.
It's pretty simple for subjects in the faculty of science (at least I think so, since there are so many more clear steps in any given project). I'm teaching ESL, so it's like I have to build all these hypothetical lesson plans assuming either my students will be incredibly dumb or the school will have the most incredible funding. My group and I chose to go with the latter. Our LES is completely unrealistic and we will never be able to use it in public schools in Quebec, but whatever, it's easier this way. In our hypothetical high school, not only will students be already fluent in English (which is SO not the case, even for advanced high school students, who I taught in September during my field experience) but the school will also have a state of the art computer room that is accessible whenever we need it. It will also have at least 15 camcorders to lend out (oh man, I wish this place was real).
It's not that I think what i'm learning in school is useless (although I kinda do), it's that I find we are given all these hypothetical situations and we have to know the perfect answer... but the perfect (in class) answer is hardly ever the one used in real life due to practicality or initial reactions or mostly the unpredictability of everything. When you learn to be an accountant, for example, you have your formulas to complete your calculations. Your number never bully each other, never join gangs at the age of 10, you never catch your number smoking pot on school grounds, you never get sexually harassed by them... You just deal with your numbers and your dumb clients.
Give me a teaching situation and I will give you the best possible solution. I know all the right things to say and the right ways to act. Do you think that makes me feel ready for real life? Hells no. And that terrifies me.
Well, let me at least pretend to be productive this morning...
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