My first parking ticket and other joys of teacher's college

I drove to school today. Like I said in my previous post, normally I will drive to York on the days I am only there (and not at practicum) to avoid paying for parking at York (plus reading on the bus is much easier than reading while driving, plus it's the "green" way to go), but up 'til today it was still a little up in the air as to whether the I/S teacher candidates would be visiting their host schools in the afternoon or not (the J/I teacher candidates did visit their schools this afternoon) so I brought the car just in case. Being a novice to driving places in the morning when lots of people are trying to get to work/school/whatever, I decided to leave myself plenty of time to get there. I left here at 6:36 a.m. I was parked at York at 7:18 a.m. The mandatory orientation activities for today started at 9:00 a.m. I think next time I drive I will leave a teensy bit later. Oh, apparently no attendants are in the booth in the flat-rate lots (read: cheapest on-campus lots if you don't have one of those parking permits those who drive there every day purchase) at 7:18 a.m. I drove in, paused at the booth, shrugged and went on in (the "arm" was up), assuming we paid on the way out. There was no machine to get a stub or anything, either. I even walked up to the booth after I'd parked to see if there was any helpful signage to explain...nope. When I came back to my car that afternoon, though, I could spy from quite a distance that there was either something tucked under my wiper blade or a strange patch of sun on my car. Well, it wasn't the sun. It was my first parking ticket. I should explain at this juncture that the daytime flat rate for this lot is $9.00 for the whole day. My parking ticket was for $18.00...but only half of that if I paid it within 10 days. In other words, this is just standard procedure for how early birds like me pay their flat rate fee (I confirmed this with the parking attendant who was in the booth on my way out). The tickets don't count against my student record or York parking record or anything; it's just how they handle the fact that no attendant is there at that time in the morning and they have no stub-giving machine in that lot. Insert sigh of relief here (I was afraid the fine would be higher, too).

I now have got mostly-answers to two of the three things I said I was still uncertain about in my last entry: I now understand that the apparent conflict in my schedule isn't really a conflict, and while it has yet to be confirmed, the host school they are trying to place me in is Agincourt Collegiate Institute--a mere hop, skip and a jump from my place (I have to drive from Ellesmere to Sheppard and then over a block...I think I can handle that!). My third uncertainty was regarding textbooks; I do know most of the ones I'll need for this semester, but I have to find out about one course yet (and won't likely find out until we have the first meeting of that course on Sept. 12). Our campus bookstore has had to change the way they handle our getting our books "due to fire regulations" (I don't believe it)...they have to take our course list from us now and get the books for us, and we can't go down to the text floor ourselves during this week or the next few weeks. I think this will cause huge lineups...and I don't think that includes the step where you go to the cashier and pay for the books the staff got for you, either! Thankfully the bookstore is offering free shipping on textbook orders shipped anywhere in Ontario during this period, so I've ordered all the books I could locate on their site and am just waiting for them to arrive, and will order the rest once I know what they are/how to locate them in the online system (with free shipping, it doesn't matter that I am placing multiple orders this way, hooray). No lineups for me, thank you very much, unless no one's home when the books arrive and there's a lineup at the post office.

The last couple of days have been pretty interesting. We did some group exercises yesterday using different group work styles, then analyzed not the content of what we'd discussed in the groups, but how effective/etc. those different group work styles had been. Later in the day we similarly did some problem solving in groups, then looked at not only the solutions to the problems, but how we'd approached and learned how to solve the problems. By that point we had all also been through some activities either that day or the day before on personality styles (the True Colours system first, then some discussion of intraversion versus extraversion), so often in our discussions on the problem-solving and even in our interactions today someone would pipe up with, "hmm, that's a very blue thing to say" or "you're a gold, aren't you?" I have done the True Colours system before but I was surprised by how hard it was for me this time around to put blue, green and gold in order...when I added up their scores for one portion of the "what colour am I?" type exercise, one was a 23, one was a 24 and one was a 25 (not respectively...don't remember which was which without dragging out my sheet), and looking at the pictures and statements in other parts of the "what colour am I?" exercise had me really wondering which I identified most with, then second-most with, then third-most with. I identify with the blue's desire to maintain harmony, with the gold's desire to be on time and respectful of the rules, and with the green's independence and (though to a lesser extent than when I was younger, perhaps) curiosity...and I could go on. I think my True Colours can basically be described as "not very orange at all"! I am not generally the adventurous, fun-loving risk-taker...not to say I've never exhibited orange traits at all, but they are far from dominant for me.

The first part of today dealt with what practicum would be like and what the roles and responsibilities were of all involved (us, the host teacher, course directors, etc.). Once that was looked after, the real highlight of the day started: some of the alumni from the past two years of the MST program came in to share how they found the program, advice, and answers to our questions. Those who graduated two years ago have already taught for a full school year after graduating, so they were able to tell us what information they used from their courses and so on, but those who graduated last year also had very valuable things to say. I didn't get to ask all my questions but I'm sure they'll all get answered in due time (or will turn out not to matter anyway). Once that session was done, we got free food again...it wasn't a pizza lunch as originally scheduled, but the mini sandwiches and cookies and danishes and other sweets and juice and so on were still good...unless you're a vegetarian, which it turns out at least one of our classmates is. He ate a cookie and that was it (guess he didn't feel like having anything to drink). Then I took off and enjoyed having a free afternoon, since I'm an I/S student and won't be doing a site visit like the J/I students. I'm back at school tomorrow (which includes a BBQ, hooray), and then we have Friday (and Monday!) off. Tomorrow morning we will be with all the students from all the B.Ed. programs that York runs, which means we'll be with a lot of people. I hope they have lots of hamburgers.