'Uptown Girl' Update

I couldn't resist labeling myself 'Uptown Girl,' since my friend Megan used it as the subject line in a recent email to me. It's fitting not only because I just moved to the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, but also because Uptown Girl was my absolute favorite song as a kid. I mean, what adolescent girlie girl didn't want to be Christie Brinkley in that video?!?!

Anyway, after exactly a month, I am finally settled into my new home. The increase in square footage makes such a huge difference compared to my former matchbox-sized apartment in Lincoln Park. Another sharp contrast? My past and present neighborhood! Uptown is definitely more "gritty" than Lincoln Park, but I actually love the very urban setting. I use the term "gritty" because Uptown isn't as meticulously manicured as Lincoln Park, nor is it all that safe to go trolling around late at night. But, my Uptown neighbors are friendly and say Hello (or, in many cases, "Hola"), whereas the snotty affluence of Lincoln Park meant that neighbors didn't so much as make eye contact. Don't get me wrong, I loved Lincoln Park during the 8 years I resided there, but the sense of community was severely lacking. I'm guessing that was due to the population mostly consisting of a disagreeable contrast between conservative yuppies and party-centric twenty-somethings. Uptown, however, is incredibly diverse. Broad ranges of racial & economic diversity, a variance of ages and sexual orientations all play roles in coloring in my vibrant neighborhood. Uptown also seems to embrace all varieties of crazy, an aspect which causes me to entertain the thought of putting off cable installation indefinitely. Also, even though I'm further north from downtown now, Uptown feels more "city-ish" to me. In fact, my friend Sara perfectly described it as "Sesame Street, 227 and The Wire" all in one!

In addition to recently moving, I've also been spending time with my "mentee," which has been such an incredible experience so far, and we've only had two outings. (Side note - In order to maintain confidentiality, I won't use her name when I write about her in this public setting.) She is 11 years old and very bright and sweet. I'm already taken with her desire to learn so much about the world around her, and I aim to exceed her expectations as a mentor through encouraging her to never lose that eager and positive mentality. At such a young age, she has overcome so much hardship in her life, yet she still remains a very enthusiastic girl - an attribute I find infinitely inspiring. I don't always have the best luck, but I sincerely feel as though I hit the jackpot in getting matched with my particular "mentee." I cannot wait to

see what future adventures are in store for us!

Another update to report: After many months of anticipation, the AUSL teaching applications are FINALLY available! They came out on Thursday, but because I don't want to be hasty, I'm going to find some quiet time tonight to fill it out. I've been preparing for this opportunity for many months, and because I only get one shot, I want to be extremely careful with what I choose to fill into those blanks. All of my supporting docs are ready to go though, so I will be officially "applied" by Monday of next week. Wish me luck!!

And finally, with regards to my New Year's goals, I'm down to having just one more book to read, and running 4 races, all for which I'm registered. The class I ended up taking that I can cross off my list was a canning class from The Glass Rooster. My friend, Jennie, who perpetually keeps an eye out for all activities unique and entertaining, stumbled upon an article about canning classes from The Glass Rooster, and so we immediately signed up. Oh - canning qualifies as an entertaining activity, you ask? Well, to be honest, my friends and I could watch paint dry and somehow find ourselves in a fit of giggles, so yes, canning was, in fact, entertaining. And now I have tomatoes coming out the wazoo! During the class, the canning instructor shared some really interesting stories about her life on a farm growing up, along with her transition to city life, including exhausting every effort to preserve the importance of obtaining real food. Additionally, the whole canning process reminded me so much of my Grandma Elsie, who was a canner extraordinaire. It continues to shock me that the art of canning has completely skipped a generation or two. How on earth did that happen? Oh yeah, money-hungry corporate America got involved, blindsiding us by sneaking cheaply produced, overly processed foods that have unidentifiable origins into our grocery stores. Ok, I won't get off on a tangent, but I guarantee that watching Food Inc. will make you just as bitter about our food industry...

So that is all for now! Phew! A lot sure has happened in the past month or so. It has been such a busy year overall though, and I can hardly believe that we are almost at the end of the 9th month of 2010!

Math + Steph = ......Genius???

It's no secret that I have always shared a love/hate relationship with math - minus the love. Subsequently after being introduced to long division in 5th grade, my mother toted me to a math tutor on a weekly basis. But, at that point, I still had no idea my future in math would be a dark tunnel of decimal points, digits and even more dreaded division.

I struggled with math in 6th grade, too, but it wasn't until 7th grade that I officially declared war with math. Just when I thought nothing could be worse than long division, I was introduced to algebra. Worse than that, I was introduced to the algebra teacher, Mr. Smith. This guy eagerly sniffed out the fear of math in 7th graders, so (not surprisingly) I was assigned to sit front and center in his classroom. His classroom, by the way, was so clean and organized you could perform surgery on the desks. He drew X's on the floor to ensure that, when all desks were placed on said X's, they'd always be lined up properly. And, if he ever noticed papers or notebooks on his desk a bit askew, he'd pause to line them up so everything was parallel. But, besides his obsession with cleanliness and organization, math seemed to be this guy's whole freakin' world. In fact, on the first day of class, he shattered any sort of youthful idealism I had by declaring, "math - not love - makes the world go around." Great.

As you may have gathered, I was not a star student in his class. In fact, I had so much trouble with algebra that I can recall more than a few times, in response to his frustration with me, he threw chalk and erasers. Creating a plume of chalk dust in his otherwise pristine classroom cemented my suspicion that he was, in fact, really angry at me.

But, I was angry at him, too. For instance, every day we'd go through the drill of him asking me to put my glasses on, and I'd have to dig the hideous specs out of my book bag. (I already had braces, so even though I was blind as a bat, I hated wearing my glasses due to the whole 'nerd alert' double whammy factor). Also, he once made me miss our school's ice cream social by keeping me after class to help with something giving me extra trouble. Oh, and by 'help,' I mean, 'scream at me.' That was the last straw. He finally broke me. I cried right in front of him. He won. Math won. Math: 9,632,000 Steph: 0

In 8th grade, I somehow managed to skate through math by the skin of my teeth, and I'm pretty sure that was only because the teacher was sympathetic to the fact I'd been in Mr. Smith's class the previous year. Then, in 9th grade, I failed Algebra. FAILED. The teacher sent interim reports home to my parents praising me about how hard I tried and that my attitude was good, but the actual math part just wouldn't click. So, to salvage my GPA, I decided to stick to non-college prep math the next two years.

Even though I always did well in my other subjects in high school, it still bothered me that I never passed college prep algebra. As a result, I did the unthinkable my senior year: I signed up to re-take that algebra class that had defeated me as a freshman. On the first day of school, I walked into Mr. Hackim's class and declared myself doomed. You see, Mr. Hackim was the varsity baseball coach and had a reputation for being incredibly intimidating. I could instantly tell that this burly man wasn't going to take crap from any punk kid who dared try to provoke him. But, as my insides were curdling during roll call, he walked over to me, looked me up and down, and proclaimed to the freshman students, "Stephanie is in charge." For the first time in a math class since 5th grade, I exhaled. I ended up doing really well in that class, too. Mr. Hackim even sent a letter to my parents explaining how he "would stay in teaching forever if he could be guaranteed to always have students like me." Apparently, Mr. Hackim wasn't so intimidating after all. And, I happily learned, neither was algebra.

After passing my one required math course in college, I figured math would finally be shelved for good, and was satisfied to come away with only a few battle scars. But, during my senior year, I randomly signed up for a computer class I heard would be an 'easy A.' I learned a bit about Microsoft Excel in that class, and for the first time ever, math made sense. The elusive math 'a ha' moment was, at last, actualized. It wasn't just the formulas that made more sense to me in spreadsheet form, it was applying math problems to real life situations, i.e. financing a car. I learned to like math so much that I began creating personal budgets on Excel, and have been doing so ever since. Additionally, I do math for a living now. Even though I had zero finance experience, my company promoted me to my current position based on my Excel knowledge and organizational skills (no doubt an attribute I inadvertently inherited from Mr. Smith). As I've mentioned many times before, I'm not passionate about my job, but discovering I was actually good at something involving a lot of math was empowering.

So, after reading about my rocky and, at times, taumatizing history with math, you might be as shocked as I was to learn that, after receiving my official scores in the mail last week, I scored highest in MATH on the Illinois Basic Skills & Content Area tests. WHAT?! Yes! I called my parents and brother right away, who, recalling my 7th grade horrors, were quick to reference Mr. Smith's name.

The lesson to learn here, kids, is that even though you may struggle with something at one point in your life, it doesn't mean that you can't or won't conquer it at another point. I predicted that thoughts of Mr. Smith's class would haunt me for the rest of my life, and they have, just not in the way I thought. For example, it was his voice I kept hearing while studying for the tests, and not in a bad way. I finally 'get' that it wasn't that he didn't like me, it was that he knew I had the potential to understand the material, and he was frustrated that I had failed to see my own potential.

Finally, Mr. Smith is an example of the type of teacher I want to be (minus the chalk/eraser pitching, of course). I'm talking about not letting any child fly under the radar, no matter how much they'd rather disappear into the background.