Back in School

You guys may have noticed the lack of new things recently. There are many reasons for this. First and foremost being that last year sucked--had several family losses that made for a miserable year. Yes, this is why there were only 2 posts all of last year. Enough on that. Another reason is that I have gone back to school. 

A little over a year ago, I posted that I was going through training to be a doula. I'm still doing that, and I love it. Well, last summer, I decided that I would like to take a leap and start working toward providing medical support during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum, not just non-medical. I am following the (long) path to becoming a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM). Although there are Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) and I greatly admire their model of care, it is a felony to practice as a CPM in my state (go NC--can you read the sarcasm?). So, I am taking the longer route to be a CNM. 

The first step in this process is getting my RN (registered nurse) certification and associates degree in nursing. Subsequent steps will involve transferring to a 4-year to convert my associates to a bachelors and then completing a masters of midwifery program. So, right now I am enrolled in my local community college taking pre-nursing classes (since, you know, the last science related course I took was high school chemistry almost 20 years ago now). If things go according to plan though, I will be starting part time nursing classes this fall and finish in two years from that.

In the mean time, I'm going to continue working as a doula, and I'm going to keep working on my art. It may seem like a lot, but I really enjoy doing this work. In many ways, it's now what I do to wind down. Well, maybe "wind down" isn't the right phrase. "A change of pace" might be a better way of putting it. I enjoy my classes, but they can be quite stressful. I could probably get by with doing less, but it's important to me to take the time necessary to actually learn the concepts, not just memorize what I need to know to pass the tests. Life long learning ftw! 

There will still be new art and new things posted here. There just won't be as much as there was when I started this blog, back when I was trying to make this into a full time thing. Full time art did not work well for me; I ended up getting burnt out after about a year of it. I'm happy making it a part time thing now. I'm also learning to be more purposeful in the time I have with my art... well at least some of the time. I am sure there will be plenty more of the impulsive projects and whatnot because that's just what I do. 

Schoolhouse Disney for Real

Back in January, I made a big decision (by my standards) for my family (well mostly my kids and myself). I completely dropped the curriculum we'd been working with for that school year--just threw the entire thing out the window. We invested in something new for us. I won't go into too much detail on this cause I'm sure most of you reading this won't care about our homeschool habits, since this isn't you know a homeschool blog. What I have been doing up till now was following a pretty grade-specific generic curriculum for each of our boys. This wasn't too bad when it was just one, or even when it was two. When it became three, it was difficult--not really, only when it came to scheduling and time (this way was getting really time-consuming). When it became four--okay so it's still only three in school, but adding a newborn did make a real kink in my available time for not just school but everything else ranging from personal time to art to whatever, you name it. Anyways, what I picked up was a year-long, not-grade-specific, unit study. It mixes literature, science and history/geography together, so I can do school for everyone all at the same time. The actual work given to the kids is scaled by age, and math is, of course, still separate and my middle-schooler is getting extra science to prepare him for high school science. But, this has been a major time saver for me, and the quality of discussions has gotten better because I'm not feeling so rushed to get through things.

 This year we're focusing on a comprehensive world geography and ecology study. We're spending a little bit of time in every continent, learning the countries and the ecosystems found in each region. The studies are centered around 2-3 week case-studies focusing on specific countries. So far, we've studied Canada, US, Mexico, Brazil, Norway, France, and Germany. Right now we're in a 3-week study of Kenya. We got to spend last Wednesday at the zoo, since NC has some really amazing Africa-themed exhibits. We've also been able to integrate a lot of stuff my dad brought back from his trip to Kenya/Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro--you might remember my post a while back on the quilt I helped my mom put together for him.

Anyways, that's getting off topic (only a little though, by my standards). This curriculum gives us a free 2 weeks at the end of the school year, which will fall in December (yes this has kind of messed up our school year temporally). I spent a little bit of time debating whether I wanted to add another country--but then I'd have to pick one, and there's so many fun ones to choose from--or maybe travel somewhere--but then where would I go. Well, skimming through some homeschooling forum posts, I was reminded of the World Showcase part of Epcot in Disney World. There are only a couple of countries that we're studying that are not represented there. It seemed like a great way to practically visit every location we're studying (or at least a lot of them). So, we are planning on spending our last week of school on a field trip to Disney. We'll probably spend about half the trip at either Epcot or the Animal Kingdom as those locations go with our unit study theme the most, but I'm sure there will be time for fun too.

We started planning and saving for this trip in mid-February since this is the kind of thing that we could not normally afford to do. We got a bit of a head start with this year's tax return, and for the rest of it, I've saved most of what I've made from Animazement and Anime Mid-Atlantic and from Etsy. We've also tried to cut out little things here and there and put the extra we've saved aside for the trip--like drinking less soda and getting less desert. Well, we just hit the point where we actually get to go last Friday (July 5)!  I made this chart right after we started saving to give us a visual of our progress.

The red and yellow sections represent the cost to pay for park tickets and lodging (we're going to be camping at the Fort Wilderness on-site campground because it's cheaper and we don't mind sleeping in a tent since it'll be December and not sweltering anymore). This will also cover gas and groceries (we'll be packing our own food at this point). Not bad for an 8-day Disney trip for a family of 6!

The four blue squares represent what it would take to allow us to visit the water parks or some of the other extra locations there--I've been to Disney's 4 main parks but I've never actually been to any of these other places. It's one of those optional things. The green is what it would take for us to be able to eat on site as opposed to packing our own food. Depending on how far down that part we get, I might put off the water park extras in favor of the food. Chances are, we won't need all that amount, but I'd rather budget extra than come up short and hungry. Also, I'd like some room to play and not just go for the cheapest of the cheap for food. One thing I'd really like to do is to take a day and go snack hopping where we go through every country in the World Showcase, and pick up a couple of snacks to share--everyone gets to try everything, and then afterwards we'll discuss what we liked and didn't like, compare flavors, etc.

So this is something big that's been going on in my life, and I'm super-excited that we're actually going to get to go. I really wasn't sure we could pull this off, and I want to send a big thank you to everyone who stopped by my art tables at AZ and AMA or who purchased something from my Etsy because you guys have really made this possible. <3

Gamification

About a month ago, I found a link on Twitter for the site http://www.coursera.org. I don't even remember who posted it, but they're awesome, whoever they are. XD Coursera is a place where you can take classes for free. The classes are on tons of different topics and taught by professors from top recognized universities. It almost seems too good to be true, right? You can't get college credit for any of the courses, but for me it's a great way to expand my horizons. I don't have the time or money to go back to school for anything, but this is something I can do.

I signed up for a course called Gamification taught by Dr. Kevin Werbach at Penn State University that started last Monday. Once the class started, I got access to a two units of video lectures broken up into 5-15 minute segments. I especially like that aspect of the way Coursera does things. I can find small bits of time to watch one of the video parts much more easily than I could an hour or so to watch the entire lecture. I also have access to discussion forums specific to this class. I will get some homework assignments. For those of us who do all the homework and have a grade score of 70% or above will get a certificate of completion for the course once it's finished.

So far, I'm incredibly pleased with how this is going. I've finished the videos and homework for this week. Tomorrow, I'm going to sit down and go through the suggested reading articles and read those. Gamification is a fascinating topic. It's about applying game elements to non-game things, like business, education, or personal fitness. I'll admit that I was attracted to this topic because I'm a bit of a game geek. The subjects we're tackling in this class are close to what my husband studied while working on his PhD. It has been interesting because Dr. Werbach is approaching these topics from a different perspective. This first week has mostly been an introduction to the topic, but I look forward to seeing where it's going to go.

This class apparently has more than 63,000 people registered for the class from all over the world. Based on a class survey (of which only 40% of the students responded too), there's nearly 150 countries represented. The  class has a hashtag for Twitter for students to discuss class topics, but I admit it's been almost impossible for me to follow because of the sheer volume of people participating. The class supposedly has a Facebook page and presences on other social networking sites, but I haven't tried touching those yet. I have a feeling if I tried digging into those, it would end up becoming a huge time sink for me; that's definitely something I don't need--I've got enough of those without getting any more help. =P

I've been really psyched about this class. I'm already looking at picking up a couple of other classes to start next month. I'm thinking maybe the one on Greek and Roman Mythology (I spent a lot of time studying that once upon a time, but it's been more than a decade now) or maybe one of the programming classes. If anyone reading this feels like joining me me, drop me a line. I think it'd be fun to have someone to chat with about this on Twitter or whatnot.