It’s time for the real world…

Dear Kylee: 

I am pleased to officially inform you that you have been admitted to the Five Year Bachelor’s to Master’s Degree Track with the School of Education at the College of William and Mary.  The Office of Academic Programs offers its best wishes for your success in the field of education. 

…(insert technical deadline information here)…

We look forward to hearing from you.  If there’s anything we can do to help you in this process, please let us know. 

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Ward, Jr., Ph.D.

Associate Dean for Academic Programs

When this email came through on my Blackberry on April 20, 2011, my face lit up, my mouth widened into a big grin, and my fingers furiously dialed the familiar seven numbers that read as “Mommah” on the screen of my phone. My voice cracking, I told my mom the news, and she was overjoyed, proud of me and excited that I would continue in her footsteps in being an elementary school teacher. I, on the other hand, suddenly realized – things just got real. And thinking in the future at that moment, I realized, on the day that I got that letter, that 2.5 years ahead in the future I would be (fingers crossed) in charge of approximately 25 small children – real children, with all of their idiosyncrasies and their overbearing parents, with all of their trips to the bathrooms and students like me in elementary school who didn’t understand the concept of silence in a classroom.

Now, it’s over four months later, and the date of the December Graduate ceremony (on the 10th of December) is creeping towards me much more quickly than I would like. There are four weeks left of classes. There was an email sent out by the Graduation Office about a “Graduation 101” info session happening next week. I suddenly feel myself starting to refer to things as my “last time to do ___________”. I’ve been getting a little bit of a taste of the real world this semester, however, and that’s been because as a last semester student in William & Mary’s School of Education, I have to take a class entitled – Education F65: Research Methods, a graduate-level class that serves as a pre-requisite for the 5th year portion of the School of Education.

I’ve heard horror stories from students at other colleges and universities about the monotony and repetitiveness of their Research Methods class and after one class with Dr. Kyung Hi Kim, I was a little terrified and thought that those horror stories might be the truth. But I came back the next week, and I have come to find that this class opens my eyes to so many things that I’ve never heard of before. It’s given me the unique opportunity to interact with graduate students that range from people in the counseling program, to higher education, to people who are getting their Masters’ Degrees after being teachers in school systems for a long time. Dr. Kim teaches the information in a way that is both funny and interactive, and the best part of all? Because the class meets from 4:30-7:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, a different person/group of people is responsible each week for dinner.

The last week in September, the only other undergraduate in the class, Allyson and I decided to bring in homemade chili, cornbread, macaroni salad, and the infamous banana puddin’ that I mentioned in this blogpost earlier this summer. It was a hit and the entire class was extremely impressed that two 21-year old undergraduate students were capable of cooking one of the best meals of the semester. Other things I’ve enjoyed eating are shrimp & chicken gumbo, bbq, lasagna, tortilla soup, and sopapilla cheesecake. And for our last class during which we take our exam, Dr. Kim herself is cooking us a Korean feast. She claims that students need nutrition in order to function well for their finals. That’s what I call a good final exam, right?

Here’s to next Tuesday, because after tonight, I can’t wait to see what meal is in store for me –

xoxo.

Kylee