I could have sworn I left a post on this…but I guess here it goes again.  Well, I have no experience with bloggs or discussion forums and I think that the way we communicate in the present time keeps more and more people connected.  The only thing is we are all missing the face time and the face to face interaction between people.  If I had to choose between bloggs or forums…I would choose forums.  I have been told by friends that they talk more and find out more on forums than bloggs.  I still like to actually write out a letter or two to family.  Its a style that is going the way of the dodo.  Just curious…who here still writes letters with pen or pencil?

I just have to share this, hope you don’t mind, one of the least common perks I get from working at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Our goal is to keep them wild and get them back out to nature, so opportunities for bonding are few and far between. Only when an animal is deemed appropriate for education after it is decided it cannot be released, do you ever have a chance to get to know a wild animal on a different level.

Currently, we have a non-releasable raccoon that we are training to help place and a brown pelican that did not heal from a broken wing sufficiently enough to be released. This bird is my focus 🙂 He is a diva, would you believe it? He is not friendly where you can walk up and hug him, but he has started sitting on a high perch at one end of the flight and begs for food whenever you go inside. He is capable of getting down to eat on his own and certainly does so, but today I walked in and he looked down at me, stretched his head toward me and emitted a common vocalization for brown pelis – a kind of prehistoric hissing. What do you want, I asked him? He called out to me again. OK, fine, I answered back. I took a single fish from his bowl and held it high up to him between my fingers, and he stretched his neck a little further, then gently took it from me with the very tip of his massively hooked beak. Three more times we did this until I had to take care of another animal.

What amazes me the most is how dainty and gentle they can be. Believe me, this is not a typical behavior – they might beg for food (juveniles especially), but they have no interest in being nice to you when they are truly wilded up – and I have the scars to prove it! However, we have had this bird for quite some time and he came to us shortly after arriving from his travels away from the breeding grounds in the Channel Islands. It is amazing to see one of these birds dive, to sieve the water from their pouches and swallow their catch, to know how determined they are to survive (these birds are incredibly resilient), and then to have one ask you to so gently share with it a basic necessity – it’s a rarity that can really put things in perspective (and kinda makes your day). 🙂

Let us not speak of today’s math midterm. Shhh! Don’t speak. Instead, I hope that you and yours are able to have some special time in some special way, and may it be without having to succumb to the incredible price inflation on all things loving and romantic that miraculously settle back down tomorrow 🙂 I am not against romance, just being forced to pay for it! My youngest son so simply put a small heart sticker on my forehead after giving me a hug and telling me he loved me, and I wore it proudly until it fell off. How simple was that? Honestly, I hope everyone has had a great week and really do get to enjoy yourselves today!

(Also, I just published this and it says 2/15, but I swear it is still the 14th. I doubled checked!)

When thinking about this question, I initially was leaning toward the discussion board as the format I preferred more.  I was thinking that it was more organized in structure, but then I realized that the discussion board was actually sort of clunky in the way that you have to navigate up and down, back and forth, in order to  read the various threads and replies, while the format of the blog displays and lists all of the replies and the entirety of the thread on a single page in one chronological progression. I like this more. It’s easier for me to follow the discussion this way, where I don’t have to navigate back to some previous post, searching hither and yon for some statement of fact or opinion that I vaguely remember the point or basis of.  I would agree that the discussion board seems  more disciplined in terms of moderating or maintaining the topic of the discussion. But why can’t a blog be maintained with that same standard?

Blogs offer much more freedom, I think. You can submit your own topics, or spins on topics, and you don’t necessarily expect a response (even though it’s often nice to hear from people since you are posting something in the first place). You are just sharing your thoughts and feelings, even if there are some basic guidelines. Discussion boards are more about staying on a specific task, creating threads that purposefully facilitate discussion with others, and assuming response because of the hope of discussion. Depending on the subject matter, discussion boards can be more intimate because they are confined to specific people, while blogs are generally a public format. I feel I write differently in these blogs than I do in discussion threads, though my general voice is the same. I think blogs also might make one feel like they have to think of more to say to make it a meaningful post. It makes me think of my husband, who tends to be quite colorful and dramatic in his choice of words when writing – and he would be more so while blogging, while reigning that in a bit if he was on a discussion board (although it never really goes away – he can make a grocery list sound like a poem!).

I am considering blogging about being an online learner. I realized today why on the first day the instructor clearly goes over the syllabus. I went in to take my first proctored exam, and did not even think twice about using my notes. This is even after the proctor asked “are you sure you can use your notes?” Because we were given one hour and twenty minutes for 40 questions and 6 essays after our weekly quizzes were 30 mins for 10 questions and 2 essays and were open notes I thought absolutely open notes. I am actually thinking the proctor should have stopped me. She never made it clear I could not use them. This was so out of character for me, I was totally embarrassed.

Read your syllabus entirely on the first day of class!

Gah! Seriously? Impossible! Yet another discouraging week, I can hardly believe it. Meetings popping up at work, kids getting sick, one car working… blah, blah, blah! And yet, I need to remind myself to just take a breath and try to get one thing done. Get one more thing done, and then another, and then another. It would be nice to have many more ‘anothers’ crossed off my list by now (!), but I am where I am and can only move forward. I am reminded that, even though my personal situation is stressful enough for me, it could be challenging in other ways:

My friend’s daughter is in London, going to school and planning to stay there permanently. However, she recently came upon certain enlightenments that could cause her to lose her student visa, set her back in school, and ultimately curb her chances of successfully getting back into the field she already has a foot in when she returned. Within 2 days, she had to meet with school officials, gather information, come up with a business plan to submit, and sit and wait… She finds out this week if it will work out, or if she is back in the states next month. She has built a life there while going to school as she has always known she wanted to be where she is, and she has been successful in her studies. I am even waiting impatiently because my friend is SO ANXIOUS to hear what is going to happen!

So, reminder for me is that I could be feeling much more dire than simply frustrated, and that I need to keep trying solutions until I find something that works. It will happen, even in week 5 and beyond 🙂

…an epic fail! Not only was I unable to meet my goal of getting on a particular subject early, but I was unable to even keep the same pace I have been the past 3 weeks! I am utterly behind in every class this week, plus my computer was being snarky and I was unable to get onto the blog site (until now, on another computer). I realize about myself that it is important to be flexible with goals because I tend to over-focus and become obsessed with meeting them and then some, but this is ridiculous. Could be a good thing, except that if I get tripped up somehow, it all comes crashing to a halt. Regardless, I’m really not sure what happened this week. I mean, life got in the way, there is a lot going on of course, but usually I am only behind in the one class I set the goal for! Oh well, movin’ on through and will try again next week!