March Madness

     If there’s one thing that I love just as much as Café Rio or cookie butter, it’s March Madness. In the Hardy family, March Madness is taken very seriously. Even when I was just seven years old my family would compete with one another to see who could create the best bracket. Some people remember their father sitting next to them at the dinner table helping them with math homework, but my father sat next to me as he helped me make my selections. When I was still learning to write, my dad would sit next to me and say, "Okay Rachel, who do you want to pick to win: Southern Illinois or St. Mary's?" I would then ask him important questions such as what their uniform color was and where they were from, and then he'd write down my answer. We filled out my entire bracket like that. During the games, my dad would circle the teams I picked right and crossed out the ones I picked wrong.

    Knowing this, you can probably imagine the sheer horror I felt when I was finally turning the page of my calendar to March and realizing there simply was too much to do, none of which had to do with basketball. So, in the spirit of the Madness, I created a bracket and got to work.

Getting a real person job: I am excited to graduate. Really, I am. Unfortunately, when I pulled out an old list of goals I had made for myself back in young women’s, the last thing I put was ‘go to BYU.’ That was it. My 13 year old self could name all the Mary-Kate and Ashley books to ever exist, but somehow failed to plan anything after college. So I decided it was time to get a real person job. However, attending job fairs (which is an experience similar to walking into the mall where the men at kiosks try to convince you that you NEED a nail buffer)  and sitting through class discussions on how to ‘sell yourself’ in interviews was a little much for a girl who recently took off ‘pet sitter’ from her resume.   

Finding an Apartment: Now that we’re almost graduated, Emmie and I decided it was time to look for a place to live in the fall. Some of you may be thinking, “Wow, they’re sure getting on that early.” WRONG. Apparently the time to look for that was during my preschool days, because all the places we wanted to live are full. After we realized this, we lowered our housing expectations and searched again. Still full. We lowered our expectations and searched again. STILL FULL. It got to the point where instead of asking management companies if they had covered parking, my only question for was whether or not my other roommates would be tarantulas. I thought I was handling the stress of being homeless quite well until I started stopping people mid-conversation, frantically asking, “Where do you live?!” Now I understand how criminals are so misunderstood.

Teacher Work Sample: In the elementary education program, your senior capstone project is called the Teacher Work Sample. When people ask me what this is, I explain to them the process of retrieving, calibrating, and synthesizing data in ways that expound and nurture my students’ minds. Usually once I’ve gotten into 10 seconds of my spiel, they get so bored that they stop paying attention, which is a good thing since I’ve run out of big words by then. Really I just use big words because people think teaching elementary school is merely finger painting, but the teacher work sample is actually a project where you teach a unit and then analyze your data for 80 pages. Many of the girls in the program posted a picture on their social media page of their finished project, crisp off the printer in a nice labeled folder. Some posed in front of the McKay Building, gracefully announcing their swan song. My picture, however, was a little different.


Teaching: I am now student teaching in a sweet 4^th grade class. In this case, the word ‘sweet’ is defined by the girl who came up to me during class and said, “Miss Hardy, why do you always wear the same clothes? Either you wear that shirt with oranges on it that makes you look like a farmer, or you wear your business woman shirt.” Like my relatives, my students are constantly concerned about my dating life, with students leaving me notes such as this one:

 

 

One of the best things about teaching is that even if you do dress like a farmer, the students still think you’re awesome. As I walked my students out to recess, the two walking closest to me decided that they would be my bodyguards. I didn’t realize how serious they were until one of my other students came to ask me a question and a bodyguard jumped between us, wielding a stick, screaming, “STEP AWAY FROM THE PRINCESS!” My bodyguards now follow me out to recess every day and ask what tasks I want them to complete, so it’s the elementary school experience I always wanted. When I saw my bodyguards were scratching their arms to mark themselves as my chosen ones, I told them they were taking it a little too far, but secretly I now totally can see where Voldemort was coming from.

Game Show Hosts: Last weekend a good friend from the ward texted me and asked me if I would like to be a game show host. Since my true life goal is to steal Ellen Degeneres’s show, I said yes. I co-hosted Provo’s own Science Safari with my good friend Bobby. We became Ranger Rachel and Safari Bob as we tried to teach kids about different types of animals. (I used the word ‘try’ because occasionally I read my script wrong and tried telling the kids that a snake could run faster than a lion. Whatever.) The good news is that they let me use a head set like Britney Spears. It is still unknown whether or not there were Ellen talent scouts in the audience.
 
Amid all this craziness, my brother called me last Friday. I asked him how he was and he said he was feeling pretty down. Immediately I knew it was a family emergency. In that moment I was ready to run to my car and drive all night to be wherever my family was. I asked my brother what was wrong. “Well,” he said sadly, “Louisville won. You picked that right, and I picked that wrong. It’s messing up my bracket.” And then, for the next hour, we stayed on the phone discussing games and stats.  

Life’s a little crazy, but if I could make every month of the year March, I would.

 

More Sleep, Less Selfies

    Daylight Savings Time left many people waking up exhausted and groggy. Many people use it as an excuse for anything. You woke up late? It's because of Daylight Savings. You want to go to bed at 7:00? Daylight Savings. You didn't empty the dishwasher? Daylight Savings. That person you really like but have never talked to didn't profess their love to you today? That darn Daylight Savings! This seems to last for the rest of March as people liberally blame all their woes on a loss of an hour. Everyone complains about losing a precious hour of sleep. However, I never miss an hour of sleep. Instead, I choose to lose an hour of something useless or boring. Why miss an hour of sleep when you can miss an hour of your second cousin's girlfriend's neighbor's baby shower instead? Here are a few things I suggest skipping before you skimp on your sleep:     

Eating Healthy Food: There are thousands of articles saying that celery is a negative calorie food, because it takes so many calories to chew that you don’t even gain any when you eat it. That’s pretty cool, unless you actually try to eat it. Celery takes way too long to eat. It’s way too crunchy and loud, and I would starve to death before finishing an entire stalk. The same goes for carrots. To save time, eat something less time consuming, such as cookie butter. This can be conveniently eaten by the spoonful and it’s one of my all-time favorite joys in life. When I was first introduced to it, I came to class the next day and informed the other people sitting around me that something life changing had happened to me. My professor overheard me and announced to the class that I had a big life event happen that he wanted me to share with the class. A few gasps were heard as people thought I was announcing a mission call or an engagement. I spent the next few minutes discussing the discovery of Speculoos’s Cookie Butter from Trader Joe’s. Needless to say, I felt slightly embarrassed for the girl in my next class who stood up to announce her engagement.

Using unneeded materials: Eat ice cream straight from the container. Drink milk straight from the carton. Eliminating scooping ice cream and washing the bowl will save you at least 37 seconds of time.

Selfies: I will be the first to tell you that YOU are beautiful. You're a wonderful person, and you are probably really great at coming up clever hashtags. #SelfieSunday? That's true poetry right there. #FlashbackFriday? No one is as good with alliterations as you. However, I firmly believe if you sacrifice one or two solid selfies a month, you can catch up on that hour of sleep. If you’re lucky, someone will snap a picture while you’re sleeping and caption it, “Caught the bae sleeping. #SleepingBeauty”

Trying to have Super Powers: You are super. You can do super things. You can smile at people and make people feel good about themselves and stand up for what you believe in. You can hold open a door or write a thank you note. If you’re Kyle Collinsworth and are reading this, you can break the NCAA record for triple-doubles in a basketball season. Go Cougs! The point is, you’re super and can do super things. That being said, stop trying to force your super powers and see MULTIPLE COLORS OF THAT DRESS THAT DESTROYED THE INTERNET. 

Changing the Clocks: Because of Daylight Savings, every 6 months time is spent finding all the clocks you own and changing them to the right time. When I was a wee child (see also: last year) I didn’t know how to change my clock in my car. Instead of reading the user’s manual in my car, I just left it for 6 months until the time was correct again. At least 2 minutes of my life was saved. (It would’ve been 5, but time was lost during those six months trying to remember what the time actually was.)

Throwing Valuable Items Away: When President’s Day rolled around, Katherine and I decided we wanted to celebrate it right. Everyone kept posting pictures of their Valentine’s Day celebrations, but hardly anyone remembered to post a picture of their favorite Founding Fathers! Unfortunately, our carefully hand crafted President’s Day costumes were nowhere to be found, so new costumes were made.

After taking all these steps, you’ve probably saved at least SEVEN hours, so go do something great with them. (In this case ‘great’ means leaving Café Rio burritos on my doorstep.)