The Importance of Being Lauren

The schools year is quickly approaching (although, not fast enough for me). It has been a challenging two years of teaching, going to school, experiencing a faith transition, and living through a global pandemic.  I've had a terrible experience this year with a guardian who hates me. She belittles me every chance she gets. She uses me as a scapegoat to blame for every issue her students has in school. She is condescending and patronizing. I always leave conversations with her feeling anxious and overwhelmed with emotion. The last two weeks have been especially bad, because her student has been getting into trouble. I have been feeling helpless and emotionally exhausted. I always feel attacked when I talk to her, and it's ridiculous.  I brought this lady up in therapy on Tuesday, and I've decided to write what I want to tell her. Here we go: I really care about your student. We had built a great relationship between September and November, before schools shut down again. I h...

TRIGGER WARNING: Potential Kidnapping During quarantine I had the bright idea that I was going to sell everything I owned. It was a desperate time for me as I was paying $2500 a month in rent after my roommates moved out because of COVID. I had great experiences selling furniture and other big ticket items, and met really lovely people.  One day as I was cleaning out my room I found my old iPhone 6 and decided to try to sell it. I received multiple offers within the first couple minutes of posting it. I set up a meeting time with one of the first people interested and made sure to chose a place far enough from home so they couldn't know where I live.  I chose a place between a very populated grocery store and a post office. It was about 10 blocks and 2 avenues over from my apartment and I thought I was super smart to choose such a busy place to meet the person.  As I was walking over to the meeting spot the guy started sending weird messages. It started with "wow you're r...

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 ...

 Teaching is one of the best decisions I have ever made. I have never had a job that makes me feel so happy and fulfilled. My students are amazing, many of them are hard workers, and they each have such vibrant personalities. They inspire me to work hard and become a better teacher. Teaching is also really difficult. It is emotionally taxing, and I am constantly feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work I am expected to do. A few weeks ago I was started feeling overwhelmed by the needs of my students. How can I teach these kids how to read and write? They should have learned these skills forever ago. What can I really do to make a difference? What is going to happen to them when they leave the school next year? Are they going to be able to succeed in high school? I am coming into teaching without any real training on how to teach students with special needs and yet I am expected to write IEP's to help them. I feel like I am causing more harm than helping. I didn't talk t...

 I'm so excited to start teaching next week in New York City. I have been anxiously awaiting my school and subject assignment. Emphasis on "anxiously". You see, I have a problem with relinquishing control. I get anxious when I do not have all the information I may need, or when things do not work out the way I planned, and when I do not have a plan. My experience with Teach for America thus far is teaching me how to recognize this problem, and I am currently working on ways to get better at going with the flow.  It is interesting how lonely the big city can feel with the other 19.49 million other people bustling around me. You can walk for hours and not have a single human interaction if you want. On the other hand, you can make friends in an instant. I have had so many meaningful conversations with strangers at parks, malls, free events and yes, even public transportation.  New York City has provided its residents beautifully kept parks. The parks have become my refuge f...

I have never written down this experience before but I feel like it is time for me to accept the facts so I can move on. In 2014 I was called to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was assigned to labor in the Nevada Las Vegas Mission for a period of 18 months. I was asked to learn Spanish in 6 weeks through an intensive training course in Mexico City. At first I thought it was funny. I had literally prayed the week before that I could go somewhere cold because I was tired of the Houston heat. When filling out the preferences with my Bishop I clearly put that I was not interested in learning a language. I had just failed college Spanish and I knew that there was no way I would be able to learn a new language. So God put me in one of the hottest states and asked me to learn a language that I thought was damn near impossible to learn. As a naturally positive person, I thought about all the people I could help and I accepted the call. I spend 6 long ...