My health is not so good. I am losing my voice from all of the stress (and screaming at the UA vs. ASU game--BEAR DOWN, CATS!). I have been running on adrenaline for so long that my body has finally just crashed. I am still taking my iron pills, but they are giving me other health problems, so I switch on and off from taking them. I feel tired all the time when I don't take them, but I am sick when I do take them. It's just a lose-lose situation, really. I went to the orthopedic doctor a couple weeks ago and I no longer have to wear my arm in a sling. My elbow, however, is not healing as quickly as he would like it to, so I have to do intense physical therapy on my own, which I have been bad about doing. My arm should be completely by Thursday of next week at my next appointment, so my friend Kyle down the hall is going to work with me every day to get my range of motion back. Basically, I am just all messed up...
The day before my birthday, I had a meeting with my adviser. It was basically a major session of "Let's Crush Allison's Dreams, Shall We?" We were discussing the fact that I need to declare a major and minor soon, so I asked her if I could major in Secondary Education with an emphasis in Extended English and a minor in Educational Interpreting so that I can be qualified to teach both English and American Sign Language. She informed that Deaf Studies and Educational Interpreting are not minors they offer for Education majors and that the state of Arizona does not offer a teacher certification exam for ASL teachers, so if I wanted to do anything with sign language, I would have to a) change my major altogether OR b) wait until I graduate and get accepted into the masters program. Even then, they would be teaching me how to TEACH the deaf, not teach hearing high school students sign language, which is what I really want to do. I kept thinking to myself, "How come this isn't possible for me when I know I had two great sign language teachers in high school? They must have had some way to be able to teach ASL..." So I emailed Mrs. Thomasson (my level 1 ASL teacher and one of my all-time favorite teachers in high school) and asked her how she became a sign teacher. She told me that she took 24 credit hours related to Deaf Studies and then took the Arizona Educator's Proficiency Assessment (which is the exam that all Arizona teachers must take to become certified) in order for her to get certified as an ASL teacher. So I am going to speak with the head of the Deaf Studies/Education Interpreting department and see what advice they have to give me. I am thinking I am going to have to double major in Educational Interpreting and Secondary Education, but I think it will be well worth it. If I have calculated my credits correctly, I believe that I have fulfilled half of my required credit hours already and I am only a freshman; double majoring will be a piece of cake. I really want to make myself marketable as a teacher so that people will be begging me to be working at their school, and working half as an English teacher and half as an ASL teacher will not only allow that to happen, but teaching both is what I want to do. It's my passion to teach and I want to be able to teach the two things I love and (hopefully) help my students to love them just as much as I do. Plus, if I teach English for only half the day, it'll be less papers to grade. :)
I really need to get started on my paper considering it's due tomorrow and I haven't even started, not to mention, I still have two finals I need to study for. Can't wait to see you all over Christmas Break! Love you all.
