last essay done! now all i have is the timed writing final. not stressed about that as i have no idea the topic. i have no control so why stress. if i get a C or better on this last essay, i will REALLY not stress. in the end, it wasn’t bad. i still rail against the standard and unbelievably boring format. but my writing is better. i have slowed down and started to stress less about reviewing my work.

i think one of my struggles in life is this sense that i need to do better by society. that i can’t just sit here and suck up oxygen. i have to give back. by that i don’t mean just volunteering or something. i mean that i want to make society better in everything i do. having learned recently how much energy americans use, more than anyone else in the world, i now feel guilty for having my air conditioner set at 74. if i want to throw out an aluminum can instead of bringing it home to recycle, i feel HORRIBLY guilty! even the papers from my dry cleaning (which i limit as much as possible) i am fanatical about recycling.

i am thinking seriously about changing my name. what do you think of Heather A Black vs Heather A Smith? Nurse Smith? Nurse Black? i bet they will call me nurse heather.

i have written about the texas schools on a number of occasions. i fear they are going the way of the CA schools. the CA schools were going in the right direction there, for a while. when they mandated 20-1 (20 kids to one teacher) it was a huge improvement. but they have abandoned that. christine will have like 35 kids in her class this fall. anyhow, texas struggles with our prisons too. i read grits for breakfast, a texas legal blog which tracks the prison situation and generally all things legal. the author references CA a decent amount there too. he recently posted an entry called education-vs-prisons which included the following graph:

pretty scary, eh?

now that summer school is done i will be:
-using my one-month unlimited yoga coupon at eastside yoga
-baking my little heart out
-studying german using the rosetta stone software (i figure my best chance at finding a job in europe is in germany, so i had better conquer the language, oh, and i am dating a german guy, whose mother doesn’t speak any english and i really like her a lot)
-offering myself to anyone that needs something super organized
-dotting my Is and crossing my Ts before school starts
-varnishing the cats!