Real Estate

I found out yesterday that another friend has taken the studio plunge. It's like a virus spreading through the admin staff at work and I sort of want to catch is, so long as it doesn't make me too financially ill. In the last two months two friends of mine have moved into studios, *hopefully* forever abandoning roommate life. Well, until they are living with someone they're also sleeping in the same bed with. The thought of living alone is so tempting...no flood on the bathroom sink's counter, only one butt using the expensive, cushiony toilet paper, no one else's mail clogging my mailbox. It would only be my fault if the place was dirty, it would only be my stuff in the cupboards, it would be up to me to decide just how long a magazine should sit on my coffee table before it gets recycled. These and other perceived perks are what have me wishing to catch this illness.

Then the practical side of me steps in a says that it's not feasible on my salary. But it must be if these other people are doing it! There's no way that either of them make any more than I do and I would even venture to guess that they make less. So I ask myself how they're paying $1200-1300 per month in rent and what it would take for me to get to that amount. It wouldn't take much really...just sacrificing my unquenchable desire for savings and retirement funds. Ha. But seriously, that's it. Nothing else in life would have to change except I'd stop putting away the vast majority of money I currently set aside for those two things on a monthly basis. Or if I sensibly used my tax refund in 2009 to essentially pay off my student loan debt, then that would free up $250 each month to put toward rent (or whatever else really), which would lighten the impact on my savings/retirement allotments.

Ahh, I don't know. But I don't have to do anything about this yet. My lease expires on April 30 and honestly, this apartment is really awesome (except when it leaks or is under construction or when the heat doesn't work or when the water cuts out or...I have to stop or I'll get depressed) and cheap. Besides, who knows what's going to happen post-graduation next year! Maybe I'll get this job that I'm going to recruit on-campus for and I'll move to Charlotte (more on that later). Or I'll leave higher ed and move into a corporate job where I make more. Or I'll become a traveling salesman. *shrug* That's for me (and you) to find out.

Thinking back to my teaching days...

I'm taking a class this semester called Curriculum and Instruction in Higher Education and the first week's readings are all focusing on the love and lure of learning and that the subject, not the teacher or the students, should be the center of every classroom. The articles also argue that you cannot divorce love of the subject from the classroom and that teachers/professors/researchers should be able to show their exhilaration in their subject, as that emotion will help draw in others who are curious about it.

Now, I'm not necessarily in love with the English language, but when I taught it I now realize it should have been the center of attention. Since it was my duty to make conversation, the students were often the center of my classroom. I mean, we definitely spent the time talking, which I guess was one way of making the language the center of attention, but I think I probably could have done it better. I wonder why the Fulbright didn't bother to give us any sort of training on being a teacher? I think even having the TAs read an article or two like the ones I just read might have given us ideas about how to approach the classroom, how we might make the subject come alive for the others through our own passion for it. Granted there is an assumption in this literature that the students are in the classroom because they chose to be and not because they are forced to be, which might not work so well in high school English classes, which are generally mandatory. However a love of the subject could still shine through and engage those who are open to it according to these authors.

This doesn't mean I want to teach again, but if I come across the opportunity, I'll do it differently after this class I think. Assuming I survive the courseload that is.