... but it's not because of the sandstone.

watched a great little doco last night. i say little, because although it went for about 45 minutes without ads on the abc, it actually documented 2 and a bit years of someone's life. it was called 'take a seat' and its a pretty epic tale of a dude cycling from the top of the americas to the bottom on a tandem bike, with the aim of doing the damn thing for the first time ever, and also of meeting assorted strangers and convincing them to help him cycle along. it was amazing to watch 2 years progression of this guy who starts off 25 years old. by the end of it his hair went down past his shoulders and he was as skinny as a marathon cyclist, but you could just tell that he had changed on the inside too. he seemed calmer and less edgy about being alone for long stretches. i wish that he had cut the film longer (there was no one there recording with him - it was all handheld or prepared by him and his new mates with the camera on the ground and stuff) there is so much more that i would have been willing to sit there and watch.

first tutorials in mteach today. or maybe theyre called 'seminars', i dont know. jargon and stuff is half the battle in tertiary education i think. i remember sitting with wikipedia and my intro statistics book open in 1st year psych while reading research papers and trying to get my head around them. sperring mentioned that there is an argument at the moment for developmental psych to be taught to all education students instead of the current case-study program that sydney uses. this interests me, what with my psych background. i remember hating hating hating developmental lectures, but the content in tutes was always pretty fascinating (i mean, aside from the endless gratuitous baby videos). everyone was a child at some point, so its relevant, and the strategies for teaching are always caught up by your theoretical frameworks - how you personally believe the mind works. the reading for ICT funnily enough addresses these theoretical issues and analysis of the justification and explanatory models for ICT design feeds straight into the heart of the matter. with all this emphasis on evidence-based learning, i can't help but think that it is necessary to at least include a basic dev. psych overview to the course.

i got home to the heart-warming but slightly distressing-in-its-potentialities sight of 89 unread items in my rss box. im glad i added some picture-y things. after all that stuff on learning through different modalities, it was the pics of the 'blue marble' and the glassesless 3DTV that made me realise that stories in pictures should never be mocked or underestimated. apparently, i need to think of ways to bring ICT into my teaching areas and i think pictures and internet access are a big part of it.

overhead biosoc discussing club activities outside holme today in the quiet. that gave a warm fuzzy feeling. also, scones.

i too, shall pass.

apparently, the mteach at usyd is ungraded. that is to say, you never get a mark out of 100 - you just get a pass/fail. not, of course, that a 'pass' is like an arts 'pass'. its not 51% = too much effort. the workload hasnt quite begun yet but they are already making nervous with the threat of multiple reflection statements and the dreaded self-directed learning. oh my.

so i thought, why not re-start the blog to document me going through this whole process of 2 years of becoming something completely other to what i was before. i mean, i'm sposed to continue writing everyday, and although i find it easier to write creatively with pencil and paper, i am also sposed to work on my "ICT" skills. that is information and communication technologies, newbs. so yes, i boldly make a vow to the silent emptiness of the electronic superhighway to write on this thing at least once a week - to blab on about whatever meta-entertainment news i stumble upon in life (also newly known as google reader), and to reflect (ohgoditsstarted) on this process.

its got me thinking, i dont know why i feel uncomfortable being creative while typing. you see, when i type in this tiny little window they provide you on blogger, i never stop. i mean, i go backwards, but i try not to overly edit. i find that it is better for me, on looking back, to see the unadulterated expulsions of my brain as it tried to sift through the various things that happened to me. my mind works a lot faster than my articulatory brain does, let alone my non-secretarial-standard fingers on this keyboard. i've heard it said that some people find writing cathartic. occasionally that happens to me. eg, after ive watched a particularly moving piece on the telly. but most of the time, it doesn't leave me. thoughts linger. concepts fade only to re-materialise again. connections between modularities in my life begin to make themselves. i don't really have to put a lot of effort into this kind of free-association kind of thought. once or twice ive come up with a gem that i deign to put on a piece of post-it, there for anyone traipsing through my room to find. more often i find it impossible to sleep at night for the cacophony of crap circling around in my headspace.

our lecturers told us to collect news items about the education revolution that is apparently taking place in the country. i can feel the excitement. you just have to open the paper, or listen to mothers in suits on the train. something is coming. its a bit trippy, that the entire system that i took so for granted while coming through myself as a high-schooler is being switched around. kids learn about the asia-pacific region before year 7. they learn the articles and functions of grammar (which amuses me because the only time i learnt more than that a verb was a doing-word was during latin classes). the things that i think i fear most about being a teacher are probably ICT and the cult of personality. i hate the idea of telling every kid that theyre great, but that was how my generation was raised in class. i hope i can unlearn what i have absorbed.

i finally decided to take the plunge and let rss into my life. ive signed up to about 7 feeds. some are just fun things that ive been reading once a week for the last 2 years or so, you know, mostly comics. but ive decided to try this thing called 'growing up' and patch myself into government media releases, reuters and arts sites. its scary, knowing that if i don't check my mail for a day things will begin to clog up. i need to increase my efficiency, just like the robot that the usyd site told me i was when i tried to sign up.

ive had to beg off some of my volunteering commitments (i told myself this was to give me more time to focus on learning), but then i turned right around and signed up for some other stuff. i had a lot of fun last year, when i experimented with 'just say yes', and so i want to keep it (not completely indiscriminately). seeing the world shake and the days get shorter, people dying All The Time, and reruns of the day after tomorrow, makes me realise how terrifyingly fragile everything is. not to take things for granted. fills me with a moderate urge to make something with my life that is not playing with fake money on the sharemarket (or as i call it, 'imaginary land'), or pushing papers around while sitting on ergonomic chairs. i want to celebrate rube goldberg toys while realising that it is going to mars and teaching manners that will change the world - not finding out if reese and ryan are back together. we need to celebrate what makes us human without indulging in self-glorification. it doesnt yet make sense. but one day i think it will.