February 18, 2016

 Today did not feel like a very productive day at work. The morning was filled with testing. Depressing testing. The kids are given guiding questions to help in their note taking while they read the passages. The prompt that they are then required to answer is based directly on these guiding questions. It is really hard to watch kids take a bunch of notes based on those initial questions and then write a two-sentence response to the prompt. They have gone over practice questions in class and learned how to write in the different styles that may be required of them on the test. And then it all goes out the window when they sit down at the computer. Even if you ask a kid after the fact if they are happy with their response, they are, and if they think they fully answered the prompt, it isn't even a question in their mind that they didn't. I'm pretty sure I could bluntly state that they didn't and they wouldn't believe me. Yet another example of why I don't like tests. Most of these kids know how to do the things that they inevitably get wrong on a test, they just can't do it on the test for a multitude of reasons. It's really frustrating to watch, even more so for the teachers who have spent all year teaching them these things.

After lunch most of my time was spent with classes in the lab. In the little free time I had between classes I went around and updated Firefox and Java on all the computers in the lab. They both need to be updated for the voluntary ACT test in a few month and even though there will probably be maybe five kids taking the test I figured I might as well update all of the computers. I think these updates are supposed to happen automatically but you have to be logged in as an adult and be authenticated for that to happen, which is rarely the case so the updates never happen. It's a flawed system.

In the last little bit of the day I managed to finish editing another sixth grade baby picture. That's really the only bit of progress I felt at work today. Tomorrow will possibly be much of the same.

Tonight I wrote my scholarship essay. It is through the KLA so I needed to be a member and I'm pretty sure I am but I couldn't find any record of it. When I first joined the ALA I did the joint student membership with the KLA because it was the same price. I don't think I ever got a renewal notice for the ALA and I was afraid when I renewed manually that it would ignore my previous year of membership but it didn't, thankfully. I would have assumed that when I renewed for ALA it would have included KLA but again, no mention of it in any of my email inboxes. And there is no way to log into the KLA website so I couldn't check if I was a member or not. Eventually, after running around in circles, I decided to renew my KLA membership because I thought it would stop me if I was currently a member. I had to sign up to make a purchase and when I used my school email address it said that the email address was in their database but it wasn't listed as a primary address so it wouldn't let me log in with it. I tried three other email addresses and nothing worked. I also tried resetting my password with my school email but the reset link just sent me back to the login screen. Needless to say, super annoying. So I signed up again, using a different email address, and paid for another membership. So if I wasn't currently a member, I am now, and if I was, hopefully the overlap will be caught and I'll get a refund.

And all of that for the chance at a scholarship that I probably won't get, because I'm optimistic like that. I do like my essay, though. I'm a little annoyed that there was a 500 word limit because if it wasn't already obvious, I'm a tad verbose when it comes to my writing. I like to ramble. But I got it done and had five words to spare. Now I'm just waiting to hear back from one of my professors to see if I can use her as a reference. Tomorrow I'll ask the principal if I can use her, because I need two, and if I don't hear back from my professor I'll ask the school librarian. I should be good.

Not is is creeping up on midnight and I need to go to bed. I didn't sleep great last night but it was better than the night before. I'm looking forward to the weekend, not for all the schoolwork I need to do, but because I'll at least have time to sleep.