So.  The semester is finally coming to a close.  It’s crazy how time flies by — it honestly feels like yesterday I was arriving at Midd with my parents, not sure who anyone was or where I was supposed to go.  So much has changed.  Before I get into the bittersweet endings of the semester, I have a “fun” little experience to share with you all.

Things had been going great, and the end of the semester was shaping up quite nicely after a relaxing Thanksgiving break.  But I didn’t feel like myself all week.  After nearly fainting in the dining hall last Tuesday, I started to get nervous about every little thing.  Eventually there was no one thing making me anxious anymore – it became everything.  I felt lightheaded all week, and really didn’t feel like myself at all.  Which was terrible, because December is my favorite month of the year (Christmas + my birthday!).  As I struggled through each day, I couldn’t do much more than watch movies without feeling terrible again.  On Saturday night, I woke up in a full-blown panic attack, which has to have been the scariest moment of my entire life.

But why is this even on my blog?  Because technology saved me.  When I woke up, I immediately texted one of my friends, who came rushing into my room with three of my other hallmates.  We sat with our CRA for a while, and I texted my mom to let her know I had gotten worse.  Being the absolute saint that she is, my mother left Boston at 3:30 am to come and pick me up.  She got to Midd by 7:30 and packed up all my stuff for break to take me home.  I can’t help but be incredibly thankful for cell phones with this past weekend’s experience.  What would have happened if no one had been there to calm me down?  Would I have been able to make it a few more hours without seeing my mom?  I have no idea.  But I’m so glad that someone was able to develop a mobile technology that keeps us instantaneously connected.  Not only is technology fun, but it’s also really crucial for emergencies.

Not to leave my story on a bad note, I did get back home safely and have seen many doctors who are helping me through everything.  I already feel more like myself — and I haven’t seen the real Meg in quite a while.  Although it really sucks to be missing finals week and not to have had the chance to say goodbye to my friends, I’m glad that I got home when I did and was able to seek help.  A crazy end to a crazy fall.

So now, the wrap up for the semester.  This fall has been full of so many new experiences and opportunities, and I’m surprised we’ve made it this far.  Despite our often sleepy faces after our 3-hour classes on Tuesdays, I would say that this class has helped establish a community between the 15 of us.  I’m glad I had the chance to meet everyone, and I can’t wait to see what happens in our next few years at Midd.  Have a fantastic break, and Merry Christmas!  See you all in J-Term.  Until then, stay classy.

Although I’m a huge advocate for digital media, I’ve realized as finals week approaches just how much the media world facilitates our distractions.  The past few days, I haven’t been feeling too well so I’ve gotten my work done pretty early in the day and hung out in my room the rest of the time.  Every night, I’ve sat on my bed and thought about how much studying I could get done for finals.  I think about all the Chinese characters I have to memorize or all the Calculus formulas I need to learn how to use.  But then I see my computer sitting on my desk and remember that I can spend my night watching Christmas movies.  Or looking online for Christmas presents for my friends.  Or finding new Christmas songs to listen to.  Much better use of my time Likewise, I always find myself on my phone texting or Snapchatting someone when I should be doing work.  Or even when I’m sitting with my friends — if my phone buzzes, I automatically pick it up to see what notification I got this time.  There is digital media all around us, which is a great thing most of the time.  But at points when we need to focus, it doesn’t go away.  I’d definitely say one of the hardest things I deal with is having the constant notification reminder that something is going on somewhere else, but having to put my phone on silent and tune out of my media to focus on my schoolwork.  I definitely don’t want media to go away anytime soon, but I do wish it wasn’t so hard to get away from at the times when I need to.

One of the best things about the holiday season is how little I depend on my computer.  I have spent the past few days with my friends and family, celebrating Thanksgiving and quickly transitioning into decorating for Christmas.  I am the biggest Christmas fanatic you will ever meet, so on the way back from our Thanksgiving dinner in New Hampshire, we were already blasting the Christmas tunes.  Friday was spent hanging Christmas lights outside, dancing around the house, and putting up every single decoration we own.  We even set the dining room table with holiday colors, and essentially had a Christmas dinner on the day after Thanksgiving.  Why did we do this?  Besides the fact that it’s never too early for Christmas, I wanted the house to be perfect the next time I am home.  I am always incredibly spirited throughout the month of December — I wear a different Christmas sweater every day (they get progressively worse as the month goes on) and I’m all about the Christmas lights everywhere.  But because I’ll be away for the first two weeks of December this year, I wanted to make sure I leave everything so the transition is seamless when I arrive back home on December 15th.  Today, I went to one of our local grocery stores to pick up a baby Christmas tree.  The entire staff outside was laughing at me and judging me so hard as I ran around all the trees and tried to find the best one for my dorm room.  Ok, so I’m bringing a fake tree because of the dumb fire safety regulations, but I still got a mini tree just to have one at home.

Throughout all of this madness and fun, I realized that I hadn’t been on my computer much in the past few days.  This seems to happen a lot around this time of the year, and I guess it just happens often on breaks, too.  There’s so much to do and so little time, that it seems wrong to waste it on my computer.  Bad news for the homework I have to do, but great news for my happiness.  I think it’s worth taking some time away from school work and spending it exactly how you want to.  Now I’m just counting down until the day I finish finals and turn my computer off to head back home for the holidays.

Get ready for my Christmas sweaters, see you all on Tuesday.

On Friday, Will and I taught an 8th grade Computer Technology class about how to use social media sites to enhance learning.  But before I even talk about what the actual class time was like, I think it’s important to look at how we got there.  The planning process for this lesson was long and drawn out over several weeks, and it wasn’t until a few days before our class that we found an idea that we really loved.  I spent days trying to think of a cool way to engage the kids in the class, while still teaching them something valuable.  We had to remember so many factors: What if the kids didn’t use social media already?  How do we test that they understood what we just taught?  How do we keep them interested for 30 minutes?  So many questions running through my mind, but not enough ideas to help solve our problem.  On Thursday afternoon, however, we thought of something that suddenly made the whole project so much more exciting: we were going to bring a beach ball into class and have the students answer questions that were written on the ball.  What 8th grader doesn’t love throwing a beach ball at their friends?  Everything fell together with just 24 hours until our lesson, and I was honestly very excited.

So what did I learn from the teaching project at the middle school?

1. I learned that time goes by extremely fast when you’re teaching a lesson.  About halfway through the class, I started worrying that we would finish too early and have to come up with more activities.  But we finished our presentation with just 10 minutes to spare and our beach ball activity took up the rest of the time.  It was really surprising that everything passed so quickly but I’m glad we planned accordingly for the amount of time we had.

2. I learned that 8th graders are a lot more sneaky than I thought.  We gave the kids a poll to answer about whether they use Facebook or Twitter, and many people responded with “Neither.”  However, after talking to the teacher and walking around the room during discussions, it was evident that many more students used the sites than had reported so.  Additionally, one of the kids tried to convince me that he was born in my hometown, which isn’t very well known and also doesn’t have a hospital….so there’s that.  I work with middle schoolers at my summer camp, but I’ve never really experienced this level of ‘lying’ before.  I guess in that setting they don’t feel the need to be as deceptive as they are to new teachers in the classroom.

3. I learned the value of making sure that the students understand the material that was just taught.  When we did our beach ball activity, there were still kids that weren’t sure how to answer some questions.  We took advantage of those moments to reinforce what we had just taught and explain it in another way by relating it to the situation that was on the ball.  I think that’s one of the hardest parts of teaching — sometimes teachers get so caught up in how much they love a subject that they forget to make sure that their students are following everything that is going on.

Overall, it was a really fun experience planning a lesson and teaching in the middle school.  I’m planning on being a high school teacher, so I loved getting to work with kids again and starting to learn about what it takes to organize daily lessons.  Given the opportunity, I would definitely do this again.  Great experience.

Last week, we started our winter training program for crew — and I started out much too strong.  At the end of our 10k erg piece, I had managed to completely blow out my back.  It hurt to sit up or move even the slightest bit for days.  So, on Friday, I decided to go to the athletic trainer.  Upon arrival, he almost laughed at me as he identified at least 7 different places in my back where I had muscle spasms.  I have to admit, I was really upset and nervous that I would be out for the whole season.  But then he introduced me the stem machine.

For the record, I know this is going to deviate from our focus on media, but I think this technology is so cool.  Plus, I’m sure that media played a role in researching and developing this machine.  For those of you who haven’t experienced this, you’re basically hooked up to a machine that produces electronic shocks which cause your muscles to move without you having to exercise.  It helps reduce the spasms and work on the muscles to make them stronger.  It felt like I was getting a back massage, and kind of freaked me out when I remembered that there was nothing but little stickers touching on my back.  Sure enough, my back felt a little better after this was over.  I’m so impressed that people have managed to develop a technology as simple yet advanced as this.  It’s pretty awesome.  I honestly think the sky is the limit in the world of technology and media — props to all the super smart people out there.  Until next time.

Today, I had a midterm for my Creative Process class due at 5 pm.  We had to write two related essays about readings we had done in class, and were required to turn in a hard copy.  On my walk over the the CFA at 4:15, I realized just how much I needed a computer for this assignment.  I couldn’t help but think back to the Disconnected documentary, in which the students wrote their essays by hand and transferred their work to a typewriter.  Sure, it wouldn’t have been impossible, but my experience writing these essays would have been long and tedious, and I likely wouldn’t have the energy to sit here and write even a short blog post.

What would typically be a very painful experience was actually painless today.  I plugged my headphones in, pressed play on an iTunes playlist, and flew through my first paper.  I took a 45 minute break to watch the Women’s Soccer team win the NESCAC title (GO MIDD!), then came back to my room to write the next essay.  I finished the assignment in the shortest amount of time it’s ever taken me to complete an essay assignment — just about 3 hours.  I wrote seven pages of what I considered to be quite good material.  I’m really thankful that we have computers and word processors that make it so much easier for us to do assignments like these, because I honestly don’t know how I would have made it through high school or be surviving college at this moment.  Although I’m definitely not advocating for more essays, it really wasn’t all that bad with the help of my little friend the MacBook Pro.

Last week, I decided that I needed a “cleansing weekend” to focus on myself and de-stress from the rigorous academics at Middlebury.  So this past weekend, I did just that.  Throughout the weekend, one realization really stood out to me: I honestly don’t know where I would be without music.

On Friday, I worked on a sculpture that I had to make for one of my classes.  As I was sitting on the floor of my room gluing pieces of wood together, I was also blasting music from my computer. On Saturday, I spent the day just painting for fun (I love crafting, it’s fine), and again I was playing music.  Today I walked up to Shaw’s to buy some food, and I listened to my iPod for the whole walk there and back.  (I live for those little moments when I’m walking down the street listening to music and I feel like I’m in a movie.)  And as I write this right now, of course, I’m listening to music.  Since it’s officially November, I’m beginning my Christmas music phase….. I don’t even care if I’m a month too early, I love Christmas.

So to sum this up, my weekend alone made me realize how much music enhances my life and how important it is to me.  Whether it’s country music (my fave), throwbacks to my middle school days, or the current Top 40 songs, I always have music playing in my room and wherever I go.  Computers and phones have made it easy for me to have music literally at my fingertips.  I’m pretty thankful for digital media, because I really really really don’t know how I’d live without music.

Here’s a few of my faves if you’re in the mood for some chill tunes:

Some country:

A throwback:

Recent stuff:

Over the past week, I have been thinking a lot about education and how to help kids become interested in what they are learning.  I work at a summer camp and teach Photography, so I’m familiar with making lesson plans for classes.  But I can’t stop thinking about how to truly interest kids so that they want to learn.

Ever since visiting MUMS, I’ve been really excited to start working with the kids and learn more about teaching.  I think that our trips to the middle school will definitely benefit the kids, given that they are probably more likely to listen to college kids preach about how useful something is rather than their teachers.  However, despite how excited I am, I still can’t seem to come up with an idea for which aspect of media I will teach or how I will tailor that tool to the class I’m assigned to.  I’m starting to realize just how difficult it is being a teacher.  On one hand, specialized teachers (Math, Science, English, etc.) are very interested in their subject and it is easy for them to enjoy and understand what they are teaching.  On the other hand, they have to balance this love for the subject with an ability to inspire that love in their students.  I honestly don’t know how great teachers are able to make us motivated to learn the material they teach — but I think it definitely has something to do with using topics that the students are interested in, first, and transferring the skills gained to a topic that might not be as exciting.

It will be interesting to go through the whole process of writing a lesson plan in the coming weeks, though, and I’m excited to see what ideas we all come up with.

There is so much that I could write about the past 92 hours, aka our long weekend for fall break.  I could tell you how exciting it was to see all my friends again for the first time, how amazing it felt to sleep in my own bed, or how great my mom’s cooking tasted after eating dining hall food for a month and a half.  But there are three big moments that stand out in my mind from this weekend:

1)    Head of the Charles.  This is the largest crew race in the world, and hundreds of teams come to Boston to participate in the international race along the Charles River.  My high school team, Arlington-Belmont, had three boats in the race on Sunday. I stood on the Eliot Bridge with 50+ other members of the team – some alumni, though mostly juniors and seniors still on the team, and the new freshmen rowers.  As our boats passed through the bridge, we had a “calm before the storm.”  All fifty of us were dead silent, acting like any other fan on the bridge.  As soon as we saw the bow of our boat come through, our team erupted in cheering.  The race headquarters announced over the loudspeaker that we were the loudest team on the water the entire weekend.  People heard us from another bridge further down the river.  We all lost our voices, but it was completely worth it.  Though I’m trying to convey just how special this moment was, words honestly cannot describe how we all felt.  That team is my family, and I now know that they always will be.

2)    Leaving.  The last thing I did on Monday night was say goodbye to my best friend’s family.  We ended up standing on their porch for a while and just talking about life – college classes, how I absolutely hate hiking, how they’re going to “turn me into a hiker,” etc.  Even though it was only about 10 minutes of my entire weekend, it was the moment that meant the most.  Standing with four people that love me just as much as I love them, I was reminded that I wasn’t the only one who had missed the times when we were together.  Just like when I left in August, I had started to convince myself that I was more upset to be leaving than anyone else.  But I saw just how much I mean to this family and it made me even more thankful to have them in my life.

3)    The Present Moment.  This was an incredible weekend with all of my friends (four of my Midd friends came with me, and I got to see every one of my friends from back home).  So nothing could go wrong, right?  Nope.  I am currently writing to you from a Mazda dealer’s Customer Lounge in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Not more than 40 minutes after leaving my house, my friend’s car lurched and two warning lights came on.  We immediately got off the highway and saw that transmission fluid was also leaking from the car.  Soooo we called Triple A (YEAAAH first time using my membership whaddup).  A tow truck showed up and I rode on a four-lane highway on my friend’s lap to the Mazda dealer, leaving three of our friends at a Dunkin Donuts in the town over.  So now we wait.  We have to wait 5 hours for the car to be fixed, had to call our coach to cancel practice this afternoon, and turned a 3 1/2 hour trip into a 10 hour mess.  Can you say Orientation Week story for next year’s freshmen!?  Yeah basically.

And to relate this to media… Moments 1 and 2 of my weekend were completely technology-free, which made them so much more special.  Actually, most of my weekend was technology free because I just didn’t have time to look at my phone with all that was going on.  But at the end of the day, if we didn’t have technology to call all our parents and Triple A, I probably wouldn’t make it to Midd until tomorrow.  So I’m pretty glad we have those things called iPhones.