Week 10: Staying at Home, but Trying to Have Fun

Hello all,

As you know I've have been very strict about what we have been doing for social distancing. This week I worked on a few assignments and relaxed in bed. I have been spending a lot of time with my mom and dad playing board games and watching movies. I have also been baking a lot of stuff.
This week I made banana bread, chocolate peanut butter brownies, and some cookies. I have also been making dinner so I can really learn how to cook.

This blog would be a lot more different if  I were actually in school and class, but this is how I am currently surviving as a math major in this pandemic. A lot of these things are keeping me sane as I can't go out and see my friends or do anything, so I've just been cooking and working. For my sorority we have been doing be video conferences, and that is what I have been doing to keep in contact with my friends. I am so grateful for that.

Something especially fun we did this weekend was use our carpentry skills. We combined my mom's carpentry skills and my math skills to make tiny picnic tables for squirrels to sit on. I helped with the angles and helped my mom cut out the pieces and glue and nail them together. We put a screw up through the middle to be able to put corn cobs on once we can go to the store like normal.

Have a fun and healthy week!

Ava H.

Update: Sceduling and Housing

Hello again, just thought I would mention I recently scheduled for my new classes for Fall 2020 semester and I got into all of them!

I am taking 2 education courses. One on serving individuals with disabilities and one for professional practices with math.I am taking 2  math courses. One is calculus 2 and one is linear algebra and vectors.I am taking a psychology class on adolescence and youth. For a total of 16 credit hours, and of course I will be involved in the theatre productions!

I am very excited to get back to college and take these classes, and as a plus a lot of my friends are in my classes and I am living with my two best friends next semester! so exciting!

Ava H.

Week 9: Same Old, Same Old

Hello everyone!

I am still continuing with online classes for the rest of the semester due to COVID-19 and it has not been easy. I am loosing my mind staying at home and I have not been out of the house in over 2 weeks. Online classes are still a struggle, not being able to go anywhere has been making me a bit depressed, but video calling my friends and boyfriend has really been a life saver. I am so happy to have this kind of technology while this pandemic is going on.

I have just been working on my classes and my mom has been working from home so we have been spending a lot of time together. I have been baking a lot, I made cookies this weekend. I get a little bored sometimes, but I really have been trying to keep myself busy and trying to get some sun everyday to keep me from being sad.

I really have been trying to do my best in classes, and I am very ready for everything to go back to normal so I can see my friends again! I apologize if my blog is repetitive, but not much has gone on these past few weeks because I am home.

Stay smart, stay healthy! Until next week.

Ava H.

Update!!! We got pictures of our show and what the poster was going to look like, and then also just a bonus picture of my other cast friends :)

Week 8: Online Classes

Hello all! We have been updated this past week that my college is now going online for the rest of the semester. I am very sad, and on Saturday I had to drive up there and move out of my dorm for good. It was a really hard day, and I will miss it up there very much. I already cannot wait to go back in August, and I am very hopeful that that will actually be happening.

So now that I am home for the rest of the semester and we have switched over to doing online classes, and if I am being completely honest I already dislike them. I much prefer seeing a professor in real life and getting real life help. I find myself feeling terrible sending multiple emails with a lot of questions. I am just glad that I will only be doing this for half of a semester, and I realize that with my personality online classes are not for me.

Sometimes I find myself not being as motivated online as I am when I am actually at college, but they way I like to keep myself on track is I wake up like it is a normal day at college. I make myself get out of bed, shower, get dressed, and I do my work at the normal pace I would at college. I really have been working hard to make sure I get everything done I need to get done.

I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy out there and following the rules that have been recommended by the government.

Enjoy your week and work hard!

Update: Just adding some photos. Here's a mirror selfie with my computer haha!

Week 7: Back Home

Hello, I am sad to say that due to the COVID-19 virus my college has closed down and I am back home. This has been a crazy second semester of college and I could never have imagined that my first year of college would be like this. This has been a crazy stressful time for me and I have also been pretty down in the dumps while all this has been happening. I am scared and stressed, but I am still hopeful.

With all of this happening, the show that I am currently in has been postponed. I am so upset by this because the whole cast and the director has worked so hard on this show. I do not know when this show will be happening now, and there is still some uncertainty whether it will be happening or not. I don't know when we will be back together.

Along with this all of the sorority events of mine has been cancelled including big/little night and activation. A lot of the things I have been looking forward to has been cancelled and I cannot even put into words how disappointed I feel.

I am still hopeful through all of this that we will eventually go back, everyone will be okay, and everything will eventually go back to normal. I just can't wait for this all to be over.

Update: At least I can see my cat!

Week 6: Spring Break!

Hello Everyone!

This blog has kind of taken a turn. I am still a math major and I am still surviving, but this blog really has turned into a diary about my life as a regular college student. I am still taking the same old classes I need for my majors, and they are actually going really well! I have a speech tomorrow which I am nervous about, but I have been practicing a lot. I also have a trip with my Implication of Diversity class next week to view at Canton City Schools, which I am excited about!

This past week was spring break, and it was much needed. On my time off the concert choir here at my college went on tour! We went to a few states and many cities. We sang about 10 concerts in 4 days, it was a lot of hard work. I sure did have fun while on tour though. It was a whole four days of just making music with some of my closest friends. I even made some new friends along the way!

We started off going around locally and we sang for three schools, then ended the day singing in a church. Then we travelled to West Virginia and sang in a church there. We stayed in Home Stays where basically an old person from the church gives us a bed in there house to sleep in for the night. All of the ladies I stayed with were very nice. After West Virginia, we went to Duke University in North Carolina and sang a concert with their choir and it was beautiful in their chapel. That same day we travelled to Knoxville, Tennessee and sang at a church there. Then for our final free day we had a whole day to ourselves in Nashville.

Unfortunately, the one and only free day we had there was a tornado. It hit within a 10 mile radius of our hotel. It was very scary for our whole choir and I am so thankful that we are all now back home safely. We all worked together to make sure everyone in our choir was in a safe spot in the hotel. My heart goes out to those families who lost people during this terrible storm. They are in my thoughts. This trip will be unforgettable for all of us.

Now we are back to classes and back to our usual schedules. Until next week!

Ava

Week 5: Busy Bee

Good evening!

It is a relaxing Sunday night for me after the very busy week I have had. I have been working hard at rehearsals for my next show and trying to memorize all 129 of my lines. My off book date is coming up fast and I really have been trying hard to look over my lines AT LEAST once a day. During rehearsals I have actually been pretty impressed with myself with how much I know. I really have been doing my best!

My academics have been going pretty great I think! I have some pretty great grades, my lowest being a B plus! I can't complain at all about that! I still want to try and make it an A like the rest of my grades, but there are still some things that my professor needs to put in that I think I did pretty well on! I also turned in my application to the education department on Friday, so I am very excited to hear back from them. I can't wait to get my education advisor and meet with them.

Also this week if I haven't been in class or rehearsal, I have been working in the scene shop for some community service hours to go towards my sorority. I have been working on paper macheting these super cool masks. I think they are going to turn out super cool for the theatre department to use! This weekend was really nice and relaxing because I got to visit with my boyfriend who goes to a different college than I do, and I haven't seen him in a month. I am happy that we got to spend some quality time together.

Have a great week!

Week 4: Open Bid, Show Week, and Classes

Hello! I hope everyone's week was as fantastic as mine.

This week I got an open bid from a sorority on my campus and I am so excited that they wanted me to be a part of their sisterhood! I got a cute pin to show that I am a new member that I have been wearing everyday until I get activated. It has been such a fun experience and everyone is so nice! I am very happy I am joining a club full of my friends and I can't wait to see what new friendships I get to make in this club. Hooray for Greek life!

This week was also opening week for the show Fortinbras. I was in crew for this show, so I was not on stage but I did plenty of work offstage. I worked on the sound board. So I got to mess with volume and playing the right sound effects at the right times. I also got to play some pretty sick scene change music and I just had a ton of fun with my other powerful tech crew ladies! The show went super great and the cast was awesome. So happy I got this experience!

This blog is not very much about math, but I will still talk about the classes I am in. It has been such an eventful week I pretty much just floated through my classes. But one thing that stuck out was the lab we did in computer science. We had to code this robot to jump over hurdles. I cannot explain it super well, but it was challenging and it made me think a lot. I also probably asked way too many questions, but I mean, whatever you have to do to succeed. It was just a super fun program and I was happy we got to work with it.

Have a great week!

Update: I can finally wear my letters!!

Week 3: The Usual

Good morning all!

This has been one heck of week, and I am very exhausted for some personal reasons. Classes have been more or less, the same this past week. We've been learning a ton in my diversity class that the idea of cultural education should be implemented into every class subject that is taught. It has been a lot of fun coming up with some ideas on how to teach culture in my future math class. On the note of my diversity class, I finished up my 10 hours of student tutoring this week and it makes me very sad, I really got to form a relationship with those kids and they made it so much fun! They were sad to see me go, maybe when the fourth graders are in high school I'll be there teacher! wouldn't that be funny? Our supervising teacher said that me and my friends that tutored there were one of the best groups they had ever had, just because of how much we interacted with the students. I really am going to miss it there.

In regards to my theatre major, rehearsals have been the same. We started blocking some scenes. Blocking for those who don't know means staging exactly what you are going to be doing in a scene. Blocking has been great, and I'm trying to learn my lines as fast as possible. The other show that's going on right now is Fortinbas. This show takes place right after Fortinbras comes in at the end of Hamlet and takes over Denmark. In this show I am on stage crew and those dress rehearsals are starting. I have been a very busy girl and this week really has been tiring! Wishing for a better next week!

Until next time :)

Week 2: Student Turtoring

Good morning!

I am super excited to talk about the second week of classes I had and the chain of events that has happened! Last week I started student tutoring at the Civic Center in Zanesville. I was super nervous on Monday, because it was my first time ever tutoring before. I was set up to help fourth through sixth graders with their math homework. I found helping them very fun, but I really learned a lot while I was helping them.

The way that the teach math is so different now. I had to help a little girl with long division, she was so smart! She learned long division in a completely different way than I was originally taught. This was challenging for me because she had to teach me how to division with her method before I could actually begin to help. The both of us ended up working super well together and that mad me feel so fulfilled. She told me that math wasn't her favorite subject but she liked doing math with me, and later that week she ended up calling me her new best friend. It made my heart completely melt!

I have also mentioned previously in my blog that along with my math education major, I also plan on a theatre major. I am currently in a production called Living Dead in Denmark. I play one of the female leads, the rather brutish Lady Macbeth. The best way to describe this show is "Zombie Hamlet" and my character gets to kill a lot of zombies. So this past week I have been learning how to do stage combat. The way of making it look like you're hurting someone, but being super safe about it in the process! Rehearsals have just been a ton of fun! I learned that I get a (fake) battle hammer! I am living in an action movie! It has been so much fun working with my fellow cast members to learn how to fight in a safe manner. I don't know about the stage combat part of theatre, but I definitely think the teamwork part of theatre will come in handy when I work in the classroom in the future.

Until next week!

Week 1: My Classes

Hello! My name is Ava, and I am a mathematics major in college. I want to get my education licensure, and I plan to teach high school students. I would like to teach calculus or algebra, but it really doesn't matter, I love all math! The classes I am taking this semester are kind of interesting, because I am also going for a theatre major in all of this hoping at whatever school I teach I can work on building their theatre department.

I am taking Intro to Computer Science which is why I am writing this blog. It is for one of our projects. I am also currently taking Intro to Education, which is a class on deciding whether you want to be a teacher or not. I take Implication of Diversity where you learn about the different diversities/cultures you may be teaching. I am taking Speech to learn how to communicate in front of audiences which will be helpful considering I want to be a teacher. For the theatre portion of my degree I am in Technical Production, in this class I learn about the backstage workers, and how a show is put together. I am also involved with th concert choir and theatre department.

In my blog I will be talking about my classes and student teaching experience. I also have a part in the college production I am in so I may also be talking rehearsals and performances I have.

I just want to keep this blog as a diary for this semester, I have a lot of friends going into this new year and I am so excited!

Update: Here are some pictures of me in my element (The Theatre)

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