BUSTED!!

2nd Night of Duty:
Started out kinda crappy cause I found out that those on duty had to help out with our Earth Hour celebration from 6 - 10. It was good music, but kinda boring.
10:00 came along: time to start rounds!
(Rounds is where you take the security wand and walk every floor putting it to the walls at the end of the hallway, you go with a partner) I was with Jennie tonight.
Start on the 18th floor.
Suite side was fine. Get to apartment side: *yell* *bang* *laugh* WAYYYY too loud, couldn't be ignored. soooooooo
*knock knock knock*...
"shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..............."
"*knock knock "RA's Open up."*
...........
*knock* "RA's we know your in there open up!"
We were going to let them go with a warning, but now that they wouldn't open, when we knocked 5 times.... and since we had heard a big bang we had to call DOC (Director on Call) She keyed in, and there were 3 girls all of which claimed that they didn't hear the knocks, or assumed the others would get it. Jenna (DOC) yelled at them and we continued on rounds.

While walking the 16th floor our radios go off "DOC to any available Secondary" Margaret responded. Then DOC said "I could use two more." "This is RA Amanda, Jennie and I are available" "Meet me on the 13th floor apartment side" "10 4"
Get to the room, Jenna and Margaret were already there, the room was soooo loud and there was odviously a party going on. We went in, it was a 80's prom party so they were all dressed up. There were about 15 people (four tried hiding in the rooms), and lots of alcohol. Every room was emptied and searched for alch. I had to escort someone out of the building.

After that bust Jennie and I decided to go back to the suite side on 13 cause we thought we smelled marijuana before. Sure enough, it had gotten stronger. We found the room in the cove, and I called DOC while Jennie knocked on the door. They had been playing Beer Pong and had been smoking weed (wet towel under door, window open, ashes in garbage). The girl whose room it was was very upset cause it was her birthday, but obviously we just can't let it go. I escorted her three friends out while Jena and Jennie made them poor out all the Beer. I walked her to the garbage room to throw it away.

We didn't finish rounds, first rounds came up to finish them so that we could get a start on all the paperwork. The paperwork took about an hour.

We busted 3 parties in 1 hour. The people on late rounds (midnight) busted 5 parties. 8 parties busted, that is crazy.

It was quite a night.

Catch up

I've been doing ok. Have had some unneeded drama with the school and with my boss, but other than that, I'm doing pretty good. Spring break was good, need, and relaxing. I'm getting back into class mode so that's good. Right now I'm on duty. And I'm primary.... blah! That means I have to stay in the RARR (RA Resource Room) from 5 pm to 2 am since it's a weekend.... grrrrrrrr. And I can't leave the building except for two hours the whole weekend. UGH! I'm tired and I just wanna go to bed. o well, I get paid well, right?
I got to go to Chinatown today. It was interesting, their shops are really cool! Full of lots of fun things. Anywhozer, I'll post pics later of them when I get out of the RARR.

German Keyboard

BAHAHA!
So I went to get my macbook looked at today, and all went well. They updated it, and put a new keyboard on it cause my had chips on it was really really dirty.
About three hours later they call me "Um. I think we put a german keyboard on your macbook.." Sure enough. There are extra keys- a, u, and o with two little circles over each. There is a euro sign right by the E. And the z and y are switched so it's "qwertz" not "qwerty".
I'm taking it back tomorrow so they can fix it back to normal. I think it's hilarious.

CPS

Today I had my first experience of CPS (Chicago Public Schools). I made sure it was one on the North side of town, trying to ease my way into it. When I was walking past the school the first thing I heard another student say to the other was "Hey you have my weed right?" ............ what a way to start the day. I checked in with security by going through a metal detector, got a lil sticker with a green circle on it, and headed to room 426 to meet with the teacher I would spend all day with, Mrs. Cate Mascari. She was such a sweetheart! She is from Australia so she has an accent, but she is amazingly nice. The kids she was dealing with weren't half as bad as I expected either. She really liked her, and respected and listened to her cause she gave them respect also.

My eyes were opened though so some of the things that were typical CPS high school. At least one girl was pregnant in every class. It wasn't a weird thing to them, in fact a lot of them wanted to keep it. The average ACT score was 14 because 60% of the students were Latino and couldn't read English well. One kid was considered a genius because he got a 28 (just one higher than mine, and trust me I'm no genius lol) The average reading level was grade 5 or 6. A girl in her first class was talking to her about all her stress, about how there was a shooting in her neighborhood and now her brother, even though he wasn't involved, has to "lay low". She was shipped in from the south side every day. It was scary to know that this was actually kids lives.

The thing I liked the most was you could tell that to most of the kids, choir was the one thing they liked about school. It is the reason they come to class instead of skipping, and probably the reason they will graduate. She gives all her students in her advance choir her cell phone number and tells them if they ever need anything (ex: jail in middle of the night) to call her. She hasn't had anyone call yet, but she says it's reassuring to them to have someone who cares. Less the half the parents actually come to parent-teacher conferences.

The don't do musicals because they don't have the money, talent or time to do it. She has two small children at home she needs to be with and she can't afford to do musicals right now. I thought it made sense.

We had to go do "lunch", basically walk around the cafeteria and make sure no fights break out. Fights happen about 3 to 4 times a week, moreso among the older students. I was told to get out of the way if a fight was to happen and let the men handle it.

We talked about CPS in general. She has taught at suburb schools, and she loves CPS so much better because she can be the difference in a kids life. It's more rewarding. She says it depends on the school, but generally they are pretty safe. And that the kids actually get protective of the teachers that they like. She said starting salary is $46,000 but doesn't increase that often after that. You have to live in the city to work with CPS though, sometime they give you a few thousand to get started.

I have a lot to think about now. I know if I taught at a suburb school I would get better off kids who could afford private voice lessons, and I could do more with their voices. However, I also know that if I get into the right CPS school, I could really be the difference in a kids life, possibly be the reason they get their high school diploma.

I get it, why God has sent me on this path: to save kids with music.

:-D

I get to go home for Spring Break in 3 days! :-D

YAY! I'm excited! I need a break from everything.

I'm doing better though, I watched a few 1996 Packer Games on NFL Network and played some volleyball so I feel better now.

This week needs to fly by please!

3 days! :-D

just one of those weeks

This past week or two have been just bad bad weeks.
I've been stressed about classes which have gotten ridiculously hard lately. Don't know what's up with that.
I've been forgetting things. My advisor was ticked at me cause I forgot about her class... even though I still got there before it started, I forgot I was on duty tonight, I forgot I was on duty when I took off and had to find someone to take it for me...
Found out some bad news from home which got me depressed, and really just threw off my whole balance.
I'm trying to avoid drama with the RA job.
I had a "judical" for not walking Jamie out of the UC, didn't really matter... Tony doesn't care.
My friend was bitching at me that I didn't put in effort for our friendship anymore...

I'm just scared that all of these things are going to add up to something huge and horrible at some point.

I need a break, I need to get away. Hopefully this weekend will help...

GOD GET ME THROUGH THIS PLEASE!

:/

I'm having such a bad week.

Just bad thing after bad thing happening. I'm so sick of this. I need spring break now.

Life

This past week was one of those weeks you look back on and hope you never have to do again. It was just a bad week. I was sick, and stressed, and it was just bad.

On Thursday night I went into Ganz Hall of Roosevelt University and recorded a tape of me singing the national anthem for the "Oh Say Can You Sing" contest.

Since Thursday, as of now, I have 101 ratings. 4.5 stars and 619 views! YAY!

If you know anyone who hasn't voted please please please tell them! I want this bad and I'm actually competition now!

Thanks to everyone who has helped! :D

Friday night I went to bed REALLY early cause I had the Basic Skills Exam on Saturday.

Saturday, woke up at 5 am to go to McCormick Place and take the 5 hour Basic Skills Exam. It was basically the ACT with out the Science portion. I think I did pretty good, but we'll see I guess. Later, at 3:30 Jamie, Amy, and I got all dressed up and went to see Mrs. Norman perform for a concert. The bus ride there was awful, the bus driver got out of the bus, left it running, with the door open and went to talk to construction workers for 10 minutes. blah! By the time we got htere it was packed and we couldn't see. But we made sure we moved up for the finally. Mrs. Norman was AMAZING! I LOVE watching her perform! We saw her afterwards, and it was cool cause we are her students and people were asking for autographs and stuff and I just felt really proud to be studying under her. She found us a ride back, cause we were is south chicago and it's not that good at night...... after ward I watched some tv with jamie and biv and then went to bed.

Sunday, I finally got my Pacman posters up. It looks awesome! I already got like compliments on them! One of the guys was like "this is def. my favorite this year!" and another was like "O cool! Better than last months! Those just didn't make sense!" lol so I'm glad my resident like them!

Well, I gtg do homework!