May 29, 2014

This morning I got up early for a summer day and headed to court. Normally we meet in a back office in the courthouse but today we actually met in a courtroom. One minus a judge. I think maybe an office just wasn't available. The meeting only took thirty minutes and the only real point was to set the next hearing, which will be in December, right before the new volunteer kid's eighteenth birthday and before he graduates from high school. During the meeting I also learned that the kid's sister is also no longer living with their dad. She is in a foster placement in another town but they are currently working on getting her moved to the same town the new volunteer kid is and having her live with the grandparents. As I said, this was all news to me. A funny thing during the hearing was listening to one of the attorneys talking about the sister. She has apparently gotten into a little trouble in her placement and I guess her foster mother explained that the sister and the other foster girl in the house are both followers and they tend to follow each other into trouble. That is pretty good.

After court I went to Hobby Lobby to get more string for cross stitching and to look at yarn for my blanket. I took a sample of the yellow I'm using and the skeins they have are still too pale. They had a couple different greens that I liked, so that might be an option. I need to pull the blanket out and see which color I would be ending on and make my decision based on that. When I was checking out I ran into one of the second grade teacher's and her almost toddler. She was holding him and asked him to say hello and wave. He raised his hand as if to wave and then kept going to rub his forehead instead. Close enough.

From there I went to Hastings. The plan was to rent the first season of Supernatural. Instead, a rented a bunch of other stuff. That is the problem with browsing the new releases and slightly older new releases first. Maybe next time.

When I got home I eventually finished the second draft of my statement of objectives, then sent it off to the librarian and had my mom read over it. I also asked and then sent a link to the librarian and the principal for the reference form to fill out. I got a call this morning from the college and the lady asked if I had any questions, among them was if there was preference between the online reference form and an actual reference letter. She said their wasn't, both were perfectly fine, but anything emailed would obviously be received faster than something sent through the mail. I also got confirmation today from the program director (and the lady who called me) that the transcript I had emailed to them would count as an official one. And, I received an school email address and login information for something else. I haven't logged into either yet but it is cool that I got them.

Now I just need to finish the statement of objectives and email it along with my resume. Tonight I had my sister read my statement of objectives and I also sent it to my dad and friend to read and critique. I also read over it again a couple times myself and found a few words and sentences that I want to change but I need to think about them for awhile. I still have a month to figure it out, which is crazy because I am never early for anything. It is also weird putting so much effort into the editing and revision process of the statement of objectives because I put very little effort into doing that sort of thing in high school and college. I tended to read over a paragraph once after writing it and then moved onto the next one, without looking back again. I'm scrutinizing this thing with a fine-toothed comb. As I should, because it is very important and will be my first impression for whoever reads it.

The final step in the process will be an interview. Which I'm nervous about. I think I'm better in writing. I also don't quite have a clear vision of my future yet. Like a concrete goal that require a degree in Library Science. I think it would be a lot of fun to be a librarian in a college library. After working at the school I also think it would be kind of cool to work with kids because they keep things interesting. But it would also be cool to work in a museum or in the private library of an interesting company or wherever else information needs to be collected and organized. There are just so many choices. And I feel like I should have a clearer idea of what I want to do. I don't want to come across in an interview like someone that just wants the degree because it's there. I underline some broader points in my statement of objectives but I also need a more focused view of my future with a Masters degree.

Moving on. Tonight was Chipotle night and I showed some YouTube videos, and then went for a visit with the new volunteer kid. We managed an hour-long visit. I learned that his sister has been in foster care for at least a few months, I confirmed that they have been having visits with each other every other week since she has been in foster care, and I learned that his mother was only sixteen or seventeen when she had him. He also said that he is only eight months older than his sister. I believe the derogatory term for that is Irish twins, but I'm not sure how the math works but I'm sure it's possible. We also talked briefly about college. He still wants to do the welding thing but is attorney is pushing for college because he's really smart and I think his social worker is working on getting him to the next ACT testing session. He said tonight that he still needs to upload a picture of himself but he hasn't figured out how to do that yet. I looked up some stuff on it tonight and it looks like there's an app for it (because there's an app for everything) and all he needs to do is download the up, sign in, and upload his picture. I'm going to send him the information tomorrow. If nothing else, I think the deadline to upload it is next Friday, so if we have a visit next Thursday we can get it done.

Tonight I continued looking over my statement of objectives and watched one of my rented movies, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief. I really enjoyed that book series and it has been long enough since I read it so I couldn't remember all of the stuff that they cherry-picked from later books in the series and put in the first book movie, but it still wasn't a great movie. To be fair, the books were really good, so the bar was high right from the start. But even if it wasn't, I think the movie would have still fallen short. The writing was disappointing and a lot of the movie felt unintentionally cheesy. Sometimes that is a good thing but not this time. I also rented the second movie, so my fingers are crossed they did a better job. I'll find out tomorrow. Or eventually.