I've realized that I do a lot of these blog posts while I'm in the middle of doing another assignment. Sometimes my brain just needs a break from looking at the same work all the time I guess. I'm doing a take home exam that includes many multiple choice questions. Several of the questions include statistics that are nowhere in the designated reading. How am I supposed to just know the "percentage of children of low-income recent immigrants (that) live with married parents?" Spoiler, google doesn't understand what the heck I'm talking about. The same is true for some of the true/false questions. There's what the book says, then there's what the exam questions say. I get that we're in college and we should be able to use our own critical thinking skills, but still it's a little confusing when the questions don't seem to match the reading.

Blogging is hard. I really don't have that much to say. I wouldn't say my life is boring because I am properly entertained by it, but I wouldn't expect an outside audience to view it as riveting either. I'm normal. I go to school, spend a lot of time at the gym, do homework, watch netflix, eat sad college kid food, and sleep. I've never quite understood those famous youtubers that have TONS to talk about all the time or those famous bloggers that get a kick out of sharing the details of their lives. I have a facebook that I pretty much never post on except for very special occasions and change my profile picture maybe once or twice a year. I don't have a twitter or instagram or whatever else the kids are doing these days. I only have a blog because I have to (no offense Dr. Klein). It may be hard to believe since I'm the kid that asks a ton of questions in class when everyone is ready to move on or leave, but I really don't have that much to say on a regular basis. So I find myself trying to dump out the random ramblings dancing around in my brain and formulate a somewhat comprehensible paragraph. Blogging is really, really hard.

So my boyfriend is going to be gone playing music on a cruise ship until the end of October. I finally got the Valentine's Day gift he sent me yesterday; it had been delayed because of the weather. Inside the fancy box was a simple but beautiful silver necklace inlaid with (what I thought were) gemstones. I was overjoyed. I had no idea he had gotten me anything plus he usually I was impressed with his ability to pick out something that matched my style. I immediately called him to thank him for my gift when he informed me that the "gemstones" were in fact something much, much nicer (if you catch my drift). I was amazed but this fact didn't increase the value of the necklace for me. Of course I'm 10x more terrified of losing it now, but knowing the materials that were used to make the necklace didn't change my view of it. I was excited to have something I liked. I was deeply touched that my goofy but kind-hearted boyfriend wanted to spoil me a little. For me most of the fun lies in discovering I actually have mail and then getting to open a box. (For me anyways) it really is the thought that counts.

The history of speech therapy is actually pretty interesting. Part of me is surprised people even cared about speech therapy in the "olden days" but at the same time it kinda makes sense especially considering how much we still judge others based on their dialects and idiolects. While reading about theories of phonology, I almost think of it as a progression of common sense. Distinctive features theory seems so complex and specific but is still very limited. I would never be able to think of all the intricate details the distinguish one sound from another. But it does seem rather odd that it took such brilliant minds so long to recognize that speech is more than just the sounds that come out. Even children can recognize the complexities of speech but we rarely ever acknowledge those complexities. I'm sure that within the next fifty years there will be some new cutting-edge theory identifying another dimension of speech that will seem like "common sense" once it's discovered.

Valentine's day has always been kinda weird for me. For one thing, it's my parents' anniversary. Like most little girls, I always wanted to know all about my parents' wedding. I wanted to know where it was, what did my mom's dress look like, how was the service. Unfortunately my dad isn't much of an open book when it comes to these things and my mom refuses to tell me much. I've only seen maybe 2 or 3 pictures from their wedding. My mom simply eludes to the fact that this was a painful and confusing day for her because even though she was marrying the man she loved, half of the guests didn't show up and the other half just showed up out of spite. Valentine's day always makes me think of weddings and families and love. What does love really mean? Why the heck do we even care about Valentines day anyways. I sent my boyfriend a link to a story about a guy who had his girlfriend drawn up as different disney princesses for valentines day. He of course responded saying "great, now what am I supposed to do." I promptly added that he could just do exactly what he did last year, nothing. It was fun to pretend like I was hurt but I really don't care about gifts or cheap chocolate. I guess one of the most important gifts a person you love can give you is security. Something my parents' didn't feel on their wedding day. How could they when they were surrounded by family members that told them they were making a horrible mistake.

So I'm working on the distinctive features/phonological processes homework for speech disorders throughout the lifespan. I feel like this is all a big trick that I'm not getting. Like when you take a math test and you're like "that seemed pretty easy so I either aced it or failed miserably." That's how I feel while working on this. Like I think I'm getting the concept but at the same time I'm thinking "there's no way it's this easy, I must be missing something." I think this should be a completion grade rather than an actual competency grade. This is my first time doing this woman! You can't expect me to get it right. Especially when you're constantly changing your instructions. I'm very easily confused. I'm like a puppy, consistency is a necessity.

This may be considered inappropriate but I'm gonna do it anyways. I truly admire a certain professor in this department. She's a black woman that was impoverished during childhood and has become a speech pathology guru. That's amazing. When we have class I thoroughly enjoy learning from her, the only problem is we've only had class twice this semester. This is my third time having class with this professor but it's always the same. We hardly ever have class because of certain complications. Like I said, we've had class I think only two times so far this semester (maybe three). We went over the syllabus in the first meeting although many of my classmates have complained about not having access to the syllabus which has happened to me before also. In the next class meeting we went over chapter 1 in the book and we were told to do a cultural collage project that would be due in about two weeks. I thought of this as a perfect excuse to do a fun art project so I spent a lot of time making my collage. We ended up not having class again and therefore we still haven't presented these collages. Today around 5 or 6pm, an email was sent out by said professor stating that our "ethnographic interview" projects would be due tomorrow. The questions for this project are stated in the syllabus but it was never discussed fully in class or by email and we don't have any kind of grading rubric. I am a little peeved that this project is due without any previous mention and hardly any direction. I know how I'm going to spend my evening tonight. Let me just tuck this other project I spent hours on over in the corner...

I'm a special ed minor currently in my third special ed class. This one is focused on working with kids with EBD (emotional/behavioral disorders). My professor, Dr. Marlowe, decided to structure the class around the books written by a special ed teacher he wrote a book with called Torey Hayden. The first Torey Hayden book we're reading is called One Child. It is about a six year old girl named Sheila that is temporarily placed in Torey's self-contained classroom until she can be moved to the juvenile ward at the psychiatric hospital. Although Sheila is destructive and disturbed, she is basically a genius. Every time she is given an IQ test, she exceeds the ceiling so neither Torey nor the school psychologists can accurately gauge just how intelligent Sheila is although it's clear she's a prodigy. At six years old, Sheila already reads on a fifth grade level and comprehends vocabulary that even some adults struggle with. As someone studying speech and language disorders, I find it Sheila's speech patterns very interesting. She is a Caucasian female living with her father in a migrant camp but her father is rarely around. She has no running water in the one bedroom shack and only one pair of clothes. She was abandoned on the side of the highway by her mother and is regularly abused by her father. Although Sheila's reading comprehension is off the charts, she speaks in a dialect all her own. At one point Torey speaks with Sheila's father. His speech is typical of someone of a lower SES and education level. Sheila rarely uses the past tense but correctly uses conditionals. "Be" is used instead of "am", "are" or "is" and "do" is inserted in a seemingly random pattern. Torey has had samples of Sheila's speech sent off to be analyzed on multiple occasions but as far as I've read has not received any response.

I'm spending the weekend with my sister. She has a dog named Noel who is a true enigma. My sister and her boyfriend adopted Noel about 7 months ago and she has been a handful. She's skiddish, runs off, doesn't respond to her name, and is just generally strange. We're convinced that before she was in the animal shelter, Noel had an abusive owner who was probably a black man judging by how skiddish she is around my sister's boyfriend and my dad. My sister says Noel acts more like a lazy cat than a dog most of the time but when I see Noel at my grandparents' house or my parents house she's completely different. She runs, and jumps, and plays. My sister maintains a superhuman schedule between working full time, being a full time nursing student, and going to clinicals but I think Noel really just needs more patience and attention. My mom has talked about whether Jessica should take Noel back to the animal shelter just because they aren't a good match for each other. As I'm writing this, I can see a difference in Noel's behavior. She is laying on my lap, even licking my hand which are things that Jessica rarely reports. Noel needs more attention and patience and I'm afraid that if she goes back to the animal shelter she may not be adopted again.

On Mondays I have a lecture surrounding the techniques to use with emotionally/behaviorally disturbed children. Yesterday my professor, Dr. Marlowe, said that we all have charisma. That word doesn't come up very often in everyday speech but when I do hear it I'm flooded with childhood memories. My sister and I would spend a lot of time at our grandparents' house in Winston-Salem because my parents are educators and my dad was still in doctoral school at the time. I can remember only being about five years old and "helping" my grandma in the nursery at her church on Sunday mornings. There was another man named Jerry that stayed in the nursery with Grandma. I thought Jerry was the greatest. He would always tell me I had charisma in a voice that sounded like he worked in radio. I didn't know what that word meant but I thought it sounded important, upscale, posh. Charisma is defined as "a divinely conferred power or talent." It can also be a "compelling charm or attractiveness that inspires devotion in others" which is exactly how dictators and cult leaders are described. I loved having "charisma." Also Jerry called me Madisen Mayodan which was another word I didn't understand whatsoever. It actually wasn't a couple months ago that I saw the sign for the town of Mayodan as I was driving back from Virginia. I now assume that Jerry must have lived there before he lived in Winston-Salem. Now when someone says I'm charismatic I just look at them in disbelief and shake my head. Charisma seems like such an elusive praise that I couldn't possibly live up to.

Not gonna lie, I kinda forgot all about blogging this week. Not much has really happened however I did realize that most people actual introduce themselves when they start a blog which I failed to do with my last post. Hi, I'm Madisen Linnea Dingle. I like to make fun of my last name because other people are going to do it anyways, especially in the south where a dingleberry is a piece of poop. I'm multiracial and that means a lot to me since race and identity are issues that come up pretty often in our culture. I just turned 21 in January so my fridge stays stocked with wine and assorted cheeses. I love dogs, exercise, my boyfriend, and netflix. Those are the broad strokes. I find speech, language, and culture fascinating and also have a soft soft for children. Almost everyone in my family on both sides is either an educator or some kind of health care provider so education + physiology just kinda makes sense for me. I guess that's enough introducing for now.