Courtney Huff English Comp 100
Reflection Week 4
Home: I am having feelings of being very overwhelmed this week. Trying to wrap my head around not being able to be everything to everyone I continue to try and blame my short comings on my sickness. I finally broke down last night. Fighting back tears has been an issue with me since I was a child. I always thought crying was a sign of weakness, therefore I chose not to. My husband came home last night with our son and dinner from Seasons. Embracing him as normal for a hug and kiss, I wrapped my arms around that man and could not let go. Weeping in an uncontrollable way he just held me. My focus has been school, work, the kids and their schooling I have found myself putting him on the back burner. We have been friends for over 16 years and in love for the last 8. I know he is not going anywhere, but my mind likes to dance around in its own way. Come up with situations that do not exist, then I put false narratives into my own reality. I know he loves me and supports me with everything, but a man who has little to no attention will seek attention where it can be found. In his assuring way, he grabbed me and told me I need to relax. I took his advice and spent the night with him and the kids. A friend of our family has a property that has a huge pond. In that pond lives the biggest, most beautifully colored coy fish I have ever seen. Some with black and white markings, others with the brightest orange and white, one even looks like a tiger with his stripes. There are also two pre-historic large turtles. We have taking on the responsibility of feeding them twice daily while he is recuperating in the hospital. After dinner we packed up both kids and dog and took the 5 minute drive. The house sits back in a no way out road. As you enter you see two houses on the side, each with dogs barking. My Remy girl did great. She did not bark back, but almost clobbered my son who I let sit in the way back with her. We pull over the little bridge and looking over the acers of land, with the fall sun setting over the big oak trees I could feel myself letting go a little. Almost like a physical feeling of the stress coming out of the top of my body and my shoulders feeling lighter. We played on the property till well after dark. Anthony and Grace caught a bull frog, we played tag, and enjoyed being together as a family. Myself and Grace decided to hide from Ant behind 3 large pines, he let Remy go and she sniffed us out with the speed of light. Packing everyone back in the car, Anthony and Remy choose the same seating arrangement in the way back and Grace became adamant that she was sitting in the back. For those of you who have dealt with a 2 year old little girl you will understand it was not easy to convince her that she should sit in her seat. You know what, the hell with it, she can sit in the back. For that fact so will mommy, you know to make sure everyone is safe. All in all I needed those moments. I felt so much better after taking some time just to be with my family who I feel I have been neglecting recently. Work has been interesting with the Papal visit. Our mother office in Presbyterian Hospital has been closed and I have been lucky enough to house two of the best nurses we have. I was having a conversation with Sandy our congestive heart failure nurse looking for insight on where I want my education to land me. Either finishing my BSN or getting bachelors in healthcare management. She thinks I should go for management as I have been running my office for the last 6 years. An interesting topic did present itself in a discussion we were having. As this was Sandy’s first visit to the Media office since it opened 15 years ago she was questioning what else was housed in the building. I let her know a large Penn internal medicine was upstairs, and Penn Good Shepherds physical therapy was in the suite adjacent from us. There was a hearing health care in another suite, which at that point Sandy asked why it was closed. I informed her that the woman who ran it was in a fatal accident and the suite was now unoccupied. We both seemed to have an unannounced moment of silence. I then moved in for an idea I have been very passionate about for the last few months since the suite becoming available. In our office we are equipped to do routine stress testing and stress echoes, but we have no nuclear cardiology. Being as our office is in Main Line jurisdiction and not in Penn territory it is hard to get this specific study in our network when ordered by our physicians. Don’t get me wrong, I have my die hard Penn patients who will go to our Radnor location, Valley Forge or even to Philadelphia. For the most part we hand Riddle Memorial and Lankenau most of our studies. So I presented the idea to Sandy to rent that space for us to begin to do nuclear cardiology. Offering nuclear stress tests would not only be more money generated by our site, but also more convenient for patients who want Penn care without the travel to Philadelphia. Well Sandy gave me a huge ego boost and thought it was amazing. She gave me some ideas on how to present it to our Chief cardiologist as well as our CEO and Director of Outpatient Operations. I think this might actually become a reality as long as I can prove the financial outcome and trying to figure out how to fix my budget to handle the initial startup costs. Another project to get myself completely wrapped up in and overwhelmed. It will be a work in progress, but my patients will be so much better off with care Penn offers vs the Main Line….YEA I SAID IT!!! Also, I have a headache for more than a week. I wonder if my brain is creating new neuropathways being generated by assignments from this class. HMMM
Class: Being present at this week’s class was not as easy as normal. If you refer to my blog post Mindset Video Notes..I Want My Metaphoric Cookie and read the comments hopefully it will be understandable. We did however drive the class more from a student centering vs the teacher. It was very exciting because Mr. M had discussed this as one of the ways he teachers. He was quiet, I will not state silent because he grunted, clapped, snapped, and when I told him I knew what he was doing because I read the other classes blogs he even let a laugh escape. His method was described on the board as disrupting the fixed pattern of a college classroom. I believe he accomplished his task by communicating with us in a non-verbal way. Our class rocks because we all got it and had class without Mr. M having to verbally instruct. I will thank whoever behind me on the sixty second clock. We watched Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset and then he put on a YouTube clock of 60 seconds. UMMMMM what. I started looking under my desk, at the closest trash like what the hell is that count down for. Then an angel behind me yelled out “free write” and then it started. I hope I am not the only one who had no clue on this one. This continued through the other videos we were assigned to watch for out blog on mindsets last week. Well we did not watch all of them and my notes were left at home so I was scrambling trying to remember what I watched and what I wrote. The things Mr. M questioned were not what I took notes on. For example who were the speakers on Ted Talk and why was it important that we need to listen to what they say. My notes were more on the subject of growth vs fixed mindsets. I am still learning to question my world and want the knowledge I obtained. For example Mr. M said the word Socratic Method. Here is another element to this class I am going to have to look up is the first thing I thought. However, I wrote the spelling to the best of my ability (it was wrong) and googled in my first moment of free time. I am happy that I did it is a method to teach critical thinking. Not just in a critical thinking class, but how to become a critical thinker and question the world around me. I will most defiantly do more research on this. My mind is currently stuck on the problem-posing part of Paulo Freire Banking Concept. I still cannot get a firm grasp on that and how it links to having a growth mindset. I seem to look at growth mindsets more as an act in that time vs a person’s outlook in general. Mr. M did shed a little light on this as we discussed my I believe. I thought I found my topic on the Adaptive Mindset paper because of the passion created while doing my I believe. Turns out I might have to re-evaluate due to the center I have in my mind does not exist in reality and it does not show a growth mindset. I need to work on a better grasp of the two. In the beginning of class, we took a survey based on our mindset. I answered strongly as growth. I do however wonder if that survey were presented for us to take on the first day would my answers have been as strong? Maybe they would have been the exact same, but with the knowledge Mr. M has laid on us with his position through arrangement of his articles I feel it may have swayed my level of agreement to some degree. Feeling slightly fearful of revising my blog on the banking concept, I am glad for it to be assigned. I did not have a firm grasp on the reading and information presented and researched. I am hoping with the information I have now a better writer will shine through the words I will give. When I get stuck I’m calling Art. He has his head wrapped around the concept and I see him connecting the problem posing with the growth mindset. Art is defiantly my main man. I think him and myself took off when commenting was actually assigned for our class. COME ON GUYS LETS HELP EACH OTHER. Art is above me on our classes list and he had to read my mindset and comment. As it happened for me, it must have happened for him too, attention was grabbed and before I knew it we were all over each other’s writing. We even devised a plan to come out of our security in the class and sit next to quieter individuals and really get this class rocking. A page for our class, created by our class, and managed by our class may be coming soon. We have to work out the who, what, when, where, and whys first. Finally, context was discussed. I am personally guilty of just hitting bullet points with my past two reflections. As I let loose on my keyboard this week, I felt like I could actually breathe. Almost like I have typed away some of my aggression I have been holding. I feel kind of liberated as I end for this week! I seem to be following my steps from My Writing Process. I am at my desk in a quiet, dimly lit room. Coffee at my left and note books at the right. Making sure I have enough time to get the creative juices flowing. I did get a chance to use electronics as I wanted. It did help pushing the button on my phone to voice record then play later while writing. Efforts are really being given towards Mr. M’s process. I want to be a great writer, and when I get that one story I want to maybe have it published.