The Importance of Being Lauren

I have been taking college classes since I was 14 years old. I always thought that by the time I reached university level classes I would learn how to stop being a procrastinator, but that is NOT how things worked out. My first full semester of BYU was when I learned how bad it was. I turned in a paper that was only half written after spending the entire night and early morning working my hardest. I somehow got a B+ on that paper, but it was a wake up call that my bad habit needed to change. I got better over the years and only procrastinated slightly, as in I had most of the work done before taking time to slack off. Being in graduate school has not helped very much. I feel like it is slightly easier than undergrad. I am only working one job compared to the three I worked in undergrad. I was working on a graduate school midterm in February and I was having the hardest time completing it. I literally did all of the household chores that needed to get done, I did my laundry, I even mo...

Two Saturdays a month I have to drag my butt to the Financial District for grad school classes. This requires getting up early, putting on real people clothes, and gathering my school supplies. It's a 40 minute commute, one transfer, and getting into contact with way too many people (hindsight is 20/20 people, I didn't know a pandemic was going to hit). On this particular Saturday a former roommate came into town and I spend way too much time talking to her, so I missed my usual train. This was a mistake, I should have thought about how busy the trains get around 9:00am, but ya girl was obviously not thinking. Anyway, so the train was packed and I struggled to find space for me and my big ass backpack. I was standing in the middle of the subway car far away from any available support poles, and I was hating my life. A few minutes into the commute a guy tapped me on my shoulder and said, "Hey there's some room over here and you can grab onto the pole." I said ...

I am on week 7 of self-isolation and I've been going a bit stir-crazy. I am blessed to have a job that I can do from home, and I have been able to self-isolate in a safe place. I am grateful for the many blessings and comforts I have in my life during this trying time. This afternoon Mel sent a text to the group chat blasting Stef's blog from 2007. I spent an hour going through the archives of my own blogs throughout the years. I was on the floor laughing at some of the experiences I had shared and I'm grateful that I have those memories to read all these years later. Writing brought me a lot of joy before going to BYU. Being a Sociology major meant that I had an insane amount of academic writing each week, so I never had time for fun writing.  I feel hypocritical when I tell my students that they should be writing everyday, because I haven't kept up with my own daily writing. I am going to challenge myself to write a few times a week to keep my writing skills f...

I wanted to take the time to write about a cool experience I had in my last semester at BYU. I moved a lot when I was in Provo. I am a restless person and I crave change. I decided to move to a new apartment from January-April of 2019. I didn't know the area very well, I didn't know the roommates, but I felt like I should move in. It was during this time that I was going through the most serious trial of my faith. I had never gotten back into reading the scriptures daily since my mission ended, I pretty much only prayed at meal times (yay habits), and I only ever went to sacrament meeting. I would go to random sacrament meetings every week even when I didn't have to work. I was disconnected from the church. I didn't feel God in my life anymore. Even though I wanted to stop going to church, I could never seem to make a clean break. I kept going through the motions. One day I was called in to meet with a member of the bishopric. He asked me if I needed anything and ...

  Stage 1: Excitement It's been almost a year since I got my TFA teaching placement, man, what a year it has been. My last semester at BYU was spent working as an after-school teacher at an elementary school. It was a low-income school, and some of my students had special learning needs. I loved my special needs students, and while the work was challenging it was also fulfilling. My placement was 7-12 dual certification general and special education. I was so excited. I felt like my experience teaching in the elementary school had prepared me for this placement. I was so naive... Stage 2: Confusion The special education course at my graduate school only has two classes a semester. Neither class was helpful in the least. My school had an IEP meeting during a professional development day in the first month of school. I was already overwhelmed by teaching full-time, graduate school, and learning classroom management. The meeting was a brief overview of the expectations the school has ...