A College Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a fairy named Cameron who was studying to become a godfather.  Fairy godfathers are a most prestigious profession, you know.  One of his classes had a rather expensive book, so he decided to try and buy it secondhand.  It was much cheaper this way.  Cameron skipped off with his book and the knowledge that he had saved a buttload of money.  Little did he know...
 A few weeks later he found out that the book he purchased did not come with a magical incantation that would allow him to access his assignments online.  (Why these assignments could not be posted on the normal fairy website was beyond him).  Cameron implored the magical incantation company to ask if he could purchase it separately, but, alas, it was to no avail.  He had to go to the expensive fairy bookstore and re-buy his textbook (that he already had a copy of) simply to get the magical incantation.



Siiiiiigh....



The morals of this story:

1.  Don't believe a used book salesman, verify your facts.
2.  When you call a book company and they tell you that you should be able to buy a code separately, make them do it right away!  And take all the names down.
3.  Just don't take any classes that require the special online code.  It's seriously not worth it!







Love,





Courtney

Cameron's Art Project

For his humanities class, Cameron had to take photos that showed different concepts and techniques in art.   He did such a great job that I wanted to show off his pictures.

This picture was supposed to show the concept of framing.

Leading lines.  The teacher showed this as one of her examples.

The rule of thirds.

This picture was painted by Cezanne.  This part of the assignment was to recreate the painting.

Here is Cameron's take on the still life.  I thought he was very creative.

Cameron loves this class!  He is experiencing all types of culture and art.  I can't wait to see what his next creative assignment is!

Love,

Courtney

Oh The Humanities!

Cameron and I both had to do the same project for our Humanities class, several years apart of course!  I did mine in 2010 and Cameron did his this year.  I just thought it would be fun to post the pictures.

This picture was actually painted by a relative of a friend.  Kind of interesting.

This picture is seriously so huge!

This picture is interesting.  Cameron has a cute look on his face.

Cameron was attempting to take a picture of himself.

This is such a cool...Sculpture?  

The person who did this sculpture has quite a few different one around the area, including in front of the IF library.

The point of this project is to find five different types of artwork and take pictures of them.  Then you have to write up a report about them.  It really gives you an appreciation of the different mediums of art.  

Other than that, nothing new really going on over here.  

I love reading all of your blogs and hope that you are having a great week.  

Courtney

The Results

Let me just say thank you so much to everyone who participated.  I really appreciated your help with this, it made my entire project possible.  It was a great experience and a learned a lot.

 Now, who wants to see the results?  Here is a link that will (hopefully) let you view my PowerPoint results.  Cameron is telling me that the link only works in Internet Explorer.  Please let me know if this works for you.  I would be happy to email it to you as well.

One of the biggest indicators in the survey was that people had a major stigma about nursing homes.  I chose to focus my conclusion section on each of the stigmas.  I am not trying to state my opinion, rather trying to help resolve one of the biggest worries that I got from the survey.  I wish I could do another follow-up survey on that alone. Here is a link that shares some interesting statistics.  I would also be happy to share any of the sources for my PowerPoint or my original research paper.

Some other majority answers on the survey were that psychological was the most important factor of aging, emotional was the most precious cost and that the quality of care was the most important attribute people would look for in an elderly care facility.

I am sorry that I haven't posted anything for a while, I promise I will post soon.  If I could I would mail all of you some type of yummy reward, but unfortunately the United Postal Service isn't to gentle with the baked goods.  However, I would be happy to reward you by posting about topic you suggest or answer a question that you may have.  Also, if you ever need some type of help with a project I would be glad to help.  Thanks for your help!  

If you have any feedback about the PowerPoint or the survey itself, I would love to hear it in the comments.

Thanks again!


Here are a few cute videos I found about the elderly.

This one is about a band of justice serving elders.
This is a hilarious commercial about respecting your elders.
This one is an adorable music video.  
This video is about an elderly gentlemen's quarrel.
This one as a Mormon Message (one of my favorites).

Please help me!

For my home and family management class I did a research paper about caring for the elderly.  The second half of this assignment is to put into practice what we have learned.  That's where I need your help!  I would be so (SO) grateful if you could fill out this survey.  It is only ten questions and will not take very long.  I feel horrible about asking for a favor when I haven't posted in very long, so I will get another post up soon!


Here is the survey link


Thank you so much!!


Love,

Courtney

Yay May!

I can't believe we are a month into the semester!  It is so crazy!!  Some of my classes this track are really frustrating.  One of my teachers is VERY passive aggressive.  He made us re-sing the opening song because he thought we weren't all singing.  He always does things like that. Oh well.
So, guess what?  I'm 22!  For some reason a certain Taylor Swift song is suddenly stuck in my head...  I don't really feel any older, but I do feel very lucky to have had such an awesome year.
I'm very excited to see my Dad, Mama Lisa, Jonathan and Jeremy tomorrow.  I also get to see everyone over Memorial Day weekend!  YAY!!
I hope that you have a great weekend,

Courtney

Yay School...

I remember when I decided to go back to school.  I was so excited!  I should have remembered the number one rule of college:  Make sure to spread out the fun classes throughout your school career.  Since I carelessly ignored this fundamental law, I am now stuck taking all of the boring required classes.  Oh well, I'm sure it won't be as boring as it seems.  Every cloud has a silver lining right?  Also, since when are reviews on rate my professor so terrifying??  Phrases such as:  Class requires 12 hours of work a night and readings as long as the last Harry Potter novel  are assigned every week.  Or the worst of all, if you take this class, your social life is over and YOU WILL DIE!  Such ratings are being spread liberally all over that website.  They terrify me!  But, the good news is I got into a cooking class!  YAY!  Hopefully it will be as much fun as the last one.  Boring classes aside, I am still happy to be going back to school!


PS.  Why am I so scared of online classes??

PPS.  Here is an article that is very pertinent to current events that I absolutely love!  http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-mormon-responds-to-human-rights-campaign-petition-same-sex-attraction

Sewing Projects

Here are some of the sewing projects I mentioned in my last post.  Enjoy! 

This is the first project, a table runner.

This is Wendy helping me to figure out how to pin the two fabrics together evenly.

This is me sewing the two pieces together.  

This is the finished product with the rickrack sewn on.

 The biggest challenge with this project was trying to make everything evenly lined up.  I learned that being a perfectionist about your sewing will just make your life more stressful.

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This is the second project, a  sort of flange pillow with a velcro closure (which I had to unpick a few times, FYI velcro is NOT fun to pull stitches out of).  I also learned my lesson about putting the presser foot down BEFORE you start to sew.  

Thanks to Wendy for her help on these projects.  I know I couldn't have done it without her help and guidance. She has taught me so much about sewing!  

First Impressions

I'm sorry for the almost month long break from any posts, but I do have a good reason.  I have been visiting with family for the last few weeks and it has been too hectic to post.  I will do a post about those visits later, but right now I want to talk about my first impressions of the classes I am taking.

Child Development
This class is taught by Sister Olivier*.  She is a very fun lady and very approachable.  The only thing I am worried about is the huge group project we have to do.  I absolutely LOATHE group work and this particular presentation has to be 25 minutes long.  YIKES!

Money Management
This class is taught by Sister Blank.  She is a little older so she has difficulty using technology.  However, she is still a great teacher and gives practical advice for managing money.  Some of the project require a lot of work, but they will be very beneficial in the end.

Old Testament
I am taking this religion class from Brother White again.  (Same teacher, different class).  He is an amazing teacher, as always.

Women's Health
Sister Rickman teaches this class.  She is such a sweet lady, very open and approachable.  I am very excited about this class.  There are a LOT of different project including training for an athletic event and writing a report about four or five different women.  I think that this class will be amazing.

Introduction to Foods
Sister Float teaches this class.  I don't have such a good impression of her.  She doesn't like to answer questions that she might have very briefly mentioned in class.  If a student comes for a clarification she will tell them to look it up or to ask a peer.  However, besides this she seems very knowledgeable and ready to teach.  The work for this class seems very daunting, but split up into chunks it doesn't look so hard.

Home Decor
This class is taught by Sister Pimpernel.  She is the sweetest lady, very willing to answer every question.  She accepts all skill levels into her classroom.  This class honestly terrifies me because I don't know how to sew very well at all.  My first instinct was to drop the class and get the heck out of there, but I am going to finish it no matter what.  There are four or five major project, but class time is set aside to work on them.

If I Only Had A Car...

No significant updates for now, our car is still in the shop.  The mechanics have been waiting for it to break so they can fix it.  That sounds like crazy talk to me, but what do I know.  I can't tell a radiator from a Disney character.  But I can tell you this, if I don't get the car back soon I'm going to go crazy!
Actually, I just remembered an important update!  I got my grades back a few days ago, and I did pretty well.  These grades will allow me to get off of academic probation and not have any credit restrictions.  (YES!)  I feel very proud of myself because I know that I did my best, which is more important than any grade.   It has been such a struggle to get back into school and return to my education.  Now that I am finally "a normal student" I can start to reap the benefits.  I know that this will help me to be a better wife and mother.

End Of The Semester

I just finished writing my last paper of the semester.  I am done with school...Until September that is.  I can't believe it is already over!  I had a great time and I will miss every one :(  I learned so much from all of my teachers and from the students as well.  Don't get me wrong, I am happy to have a break and be able to wake up at a decent hour, but I will miss my classes.  I just wanted to take a minute to thank my classmates and teachers for all that they do.  I also wanted to take a quick second and review all of my classes for posterity, it will probably be pretty boring, so feel free to scroll down to the end for more updates.

First up is HFED 100 otherwise known as the Essentials for Human Nutrition.  This class was taught by Sister Dollar* who did an excellent job.  Unfortunately, this was her last semester so none of you will be able to take her class.  I really enjoyed learning a general overview of the topic of nutrition.  This class is a good way to get a general feel for the clinical field of nutrition and a basic understanding of vitamins, minerals, eating disorders, nutrition during the life cycle (pregnancy, old age, young children etc.) and how to have a healthy body.  This class had a few projects that were tedious, but most of them were really helpful.  There is one group project that I really didn't like, but I don't like group projects in general.  I would recommend this class to anyone who wants to know a little bit more about how to eat healthy.

The next class is FDREL 122 aka Book of Mormon 2.  This class was taught by Brother White*.  He is an awesome teacher!  He is one of my favorite religion teachers on campus.  He is pretty strict about cellphones, but his expectations are very clear.  This class did not have any tests, the only thing I had to do was do the assigned reading and write in a journal about it.  That's it.  I loved this class a lot!  It is a required class on campus, so I would recommend this class to everyone!

The third class is HFED 112 or Nutrition and Young Children.  This class was taught by Sister Chef* who was a great teacher.  She sometimes would get distracted by random tangents but overall she was a pretty good teacher.  We had to do three or four discussion boards, which I hated, but they weren't too bad.  There were a few projects that were a little ridiculous.  For example, we had to write out a menu according to CACFP regulations which included writing down the price of EVERY food.  Yeah, ridiculous right?  But I learned a lot from her lectures, if not from the projects.  Sometimes she was a little disorganized when it came to certain things, which was confusing, but everything worked out.  I would recommend this class to future/current mothers, it teaches a lot about children and mealtime.  Overall, I liked this class a lot, but it was a little crazy sometimes.

The next class is FAML 300 or Marriage.  This class was taught by Brother Soupfreckle* who was an amazing teacher!  One of the best things about this class was that he allowed the class to do a lot of the teaching through comments.  He also had panels of people come in to discuss topics like being married with young children and marriage after ten plus years.  The assignments consisted of keeping a personal journal with the reading, three or four short papers, enrichment assignments and one big ten hour project with a presentation.  The enrichment assignments were sometimes hard, but totally worth it.  The focus of this class is to be able to use the assignments to improve your life in the future.  I would recommend this class to everyone, married or single.  I think the teacher made a big difference in the effectiveness of this class, and he did a really great job.

The last class (I heard you say hallelujah) is FDSCI or Science 101 taught by Brother Rooster* who did an excellent job of keeping the Spirit present during class.  This class was really difficult for me but that was because I'm not really that into science.  The students in my particular class would purposely drive the discussion away from the topic at hand and more towards random subjects.  This made it so that we did not always cover all of the material in class.  There was a class prep due every morning that usually required a bit of reading and sometimes very long videos.  It was a lot of work for a class preparation assignment. The tests were also pretty hard, but not so hard if you use the study guide he sometimes gave out (on the last day the test was up...)  If this class wasn't required for graduation, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  This teacher was pretty good, but sometimes disorganized. I think the students were really the ones who made this a bad experience.

All in all I had a great semester and I have really learned that you get out of a class what you chose to put into it.

Car Update:  This update is not really an update but an expression of frustration that a shop cannot even find out what is wrong with our car!  I am so grateful to all the people who have helped with our car, you have been awesome.  I just wish our car would get its rear in gear and start behaving.  That's all I have to say about THAT subject.  

I think this is all I will be able to write for today (because my brain is fried) but I wanted to give you a few posts to look forward to:
1.  Conversations posts, little funny snippets we hear around us in church, at school and anywhere else.
2.  More picture posts from the holidays that I need to catch up on.
3.  10 or more things I learned this semester
4.  Breakthrough/Epiphany Post

Thanks for reading my blog and congratulations for making it all the way to the bottom!

Love,

Courtney

*All names have been changed to protect the innocent, if you really want to know the name of the teacher you can email me.