No Day But Today...

Soo basically, the title literally says it all.

Today in our drama class [Note: this is not the undergrad version of drama...this is a certification for teaching course, taken as one of the secondary core courses ie: the core courses are your English, Math, Social Studies, and Science while the secondaries are your Music, Phys. Ed., Art and Drama.] we learned the art of relaxation techniques...some of which we could actually use with our future students, others...probably best left for more mature crowds where physical contact is a non-issue.  We got to learn the basics of reflexology, a proper neck massage, and best of all, a full-out proper back massage. Best. Class. Ever.  Our drama class is held in the same studio as our art classes, so there are these huge wooden tables on wheels that generally serve as our art tables but today...they were our modified massage tables.  Hilarity ensued.  It was so incredibly relaxing though, and for the first time ever this year, I felt totally at ease with the people in my cohort...no issue at all with a more-or-less stranger giving me a back massage, which is saying something.  Great way to start the morning.

Then during the lunch hour, I met up with a long-time friend for a free yoga class offered by our student union every Wednesday.  What a work out!! I must confess...I'm a yoga virgin! I've been wanting to try it for years, but with the schedule that I keep and the fact that I don't drive, it's rather difficult to a) find the money to pay for classes, and b) get to proposed classes.  Once we found the bloody place (across the street and 3 doors to the left, down 2 flights of stairs and up 1...you get the idea) it was great. I'm honestly pretty sure I gained a full inch in my spine from the ridiculous stretching we did...and not even close to the generic stretching I was used to from 14 years of dance.  I'm talking about all the poses etc...you need extreme upper arm-strength! By the end of the forty-minute session I was in a light sweat and in an extreme amount of that good kind of pain that comes from stretching your body to its max.  I now realize, several hours later, how terribly out of shape and inflexible I've become since quitting dance four years ago...major ouch.  Heating pad, here I come.

My 12 years of hallelujah chorus comin' at me from all sides occurred in my Math class. Now...I'm not the worst person in math, I'm honestly not.  But I will be the first to admit that I am definitely not the best, not even close.  I always struggled with math from the time I was very little until grade 12 and even in university.  It doesn't help that my father does math for a living (Certified General Accountant) and knows numbers like he does his heartbeat...him and I were never on the same page when it came to my understanding a math concept.  He saw it one way, and I just didn't see it at all.  My current Math professor is an outright genius and is the founding father of a lot of theories and ways of teaching kids math, so getting to be taught by him is a bit of a miracle in disguise for me.  I'm not going to get into explaining everything that he taught us today, but honestly, if I had been taught some of the basics in this way, I'm 100% positive that I would have had a much more successful school math career.  It was literally like 12 years-worth of the hallelujah chorus came shootin' at me; obviously I knew multiplication and division etc, but the way he taught it makes SO much more sense it's ridiculous.  I also found out that that very classic way of doing long division that we all learned in school (in this example: how many times does 5 go in to 5, drop down the 6 etc etc etc) was actually abolished from our curriculum almost 14 years ago...and teachers are still teaching it this way *facepalm*. Basically, our teachers learned how to do it this way when they were in school (actually, it was originally first used in Italy in the 1400s and was called the addenda algorithm...just a little history buff for y'all there...) and they taught us, even

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though it was taken out of the curriculum in 1996...change comes with fear I suppose.  My professors driving force is to be able to break through this perpetuating cycle and use the ways that actually make more sense (smart, eh?) instead of using these long, drawn-out, painful processes.  I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I can't wait for my next math class.  *claps hand over mouth*.