The Classroom from the Eyes of a TA

Today was my first day ever as a Teacher Aide (TA). I was TAing for Mr. Richards's economics class during 3rd period. Now, the reason why I decided to TA for Mr. Richards was because he made me love economics as much as I do now.

Anyways, as I was being the TA today, I realized how useless I was on the first day. I didn't get the chance to do anything other than whisper the answers to Mr. Richards's questions into Michelle's ear.

However, Mr. Richards told me I will have to talk to him tomorrow (if we even have school tomorrow, Wednesday, or even Thursday, for that matter) about what I will be doing. I already have my expectations set, to use this software...

Snow

Here in Connecticut, there has been a lot of snow recently. In fact, we broke a record of snowfall in this season, 74 inches to be exact. I will be one of the few people to not complain about these weather conditions, because I actually can accept the fact that I live in New England and that we're going to have a lot of snow. Granted, this is much more snow than any of us are used to, but still, if you live in New England, this is what you're going to have to deal with!

By the way, we've had 13 days of school this month. We're only going to have 15 by the end.

My Mac

Keep in mind that I'm a nerd. I will discuss my computers from time to time.

Most people don't believe me when I say that my Mac doesn't run Mac OS. My Mac is a 12 year old PowerMac G3 Blue and White. It comes complete with a 400 MHz G3 processor, 256 MB RAM, a 40 GB Hard Drive, a DVD burner, and it runs....Debian 5.0.7 PowerPC edition. Here's the proof...
Now, I'm not one of those hippie types that thinks "OH MY GOD! IT'S LINUX! I LOVE LINUX!" No, I'm not one of those people. As I speak, I'm typing on my laptop, which runs Windows 7. Anyways, the reason I'm writing this post is because, I just wanted to tell you all something about this machine.

It runs pretty damn well. It runs an operating system that is only 4 months old, with 12 year old hardware. In fact, I used to run Mac OS X Tiger on it (from 2004) and it ran much more slowly than Debian does. I remember in Microsoft Word 2004, typing seemed much slower than it did in OpenOffice Writer 3.2.

I find it pretty interesting how such old hardware can run so well. It's hardly slower than my year old laptop (with a dual core 2.2 GHz CPU and 4 GB RAM).

Mary's Study Hall

Well, I'll be the first to say publicly that I will truly miss study hall, hosted/monitored by Miss Walton, or as we called her - Mary. As a result, I am going to reminisce about this great time of junior year.

Granted, for the first few days, the study hall wasn't all that interesting. I either talked to Casey or Mr. Richards (it was originally hosted in his classroom), given that Katie was too far away - and I didn't know Miss Walton all too well, nor did I know Michelle all too well either. Then came my good friend Jimmy. He really made things interesting in there, due to the fact that Miss Walton (or as he called her, Mary) was once his neighbor - so they knew each other well. Due to this, she would let Jimmy and I spend the entire study hall tweeting, when I was supposed to teach him math.

One time, another teacher wanted to switch rooms for her class. Unfortunately, the new classroom was functionally a big closet, and all our memories from Mr. Richards's room were gone! To add to the pain, Miss Walton started discouraging Jimmy and I from tweeting (although the math.com loophole worked). If anything good came from the new room, it was just that I became friends with Michelle and Cody.

Most of my memories of that study hall are centered around the development of my friendship with Michelle, who enjoyed my storytelling, even when everybody else thought my stories were stupid.

However, tensions were building in study hall due to some minor disputes. These minor disputes lead to a division - with a table setup between Michelle, Jimmy, and me - and another table setup between Casey, Cody, and Katie. We (Jimmy, Michelle, Casey, Cody, Katie, and me) were all unified at one time, but we will split this coming semester. Michelle and Jimmy will be in economics (and I will be TAing their class). Cody will be somewhere, while Casey and Katie go back to study hall.

Despite all the issues we have had in that study hall, I must say it was probably the most memorable class of my junior year. Because of promises I made to Michelle and Casey, I will be double majoring in economics and film, with a minor in journalism. Watch how that will work out.

I am Ian Peters

I am Ian Peters. I should probably note to you that I am known for criticizing the grammar of others, but generally I only criticize the grammar of those who have many errors, because I recognize that we are all human and make errors.

Second, I should note that I am an oddball. Most people feel the need to point that out to me. However, I know that I am not the most average person in the world. I don't aspire to be average, I never will aspire to be average. You can judge me all you want, but you won't change me. Wow, that sounded very sappy.

Third, I am a unitarian universalist. Most people don't know what that means. All it means is that I respect everybody else's religious views, as long as they don't believe in killing others. It also means that I can have any religious views that I want, but in my case, I'm so apathetic that I just don't have any views at all.

Fourth, I love my cat.

Lastly, Windows 7 was not my idea. Half of the features advertised in the Windows 7 ads have been in Windows for years, but nobody normal knew those features existed. It was just an ad campaign made because crazies think that Microsoft ripped off Mac OS when they made Windows Vista. Speaking of Macs, my Mac doesn't run Mac OS.

Channel 8

Seriously, who watches Channel 8? People from New Haven. That's it. New Haven people.