Summer Institute

Food functions as a bookend for the Summer Institute. We begin with muffins and coffee at the first PreInstitute, and we end with a brunch for Closing Ceremonies. Okay, that's going nowhere.

Milestones:

• first car, Penelope Alexis Newberry, a burgundy 1974 MG Midget convertible, which I still think was the coolest car I ever owned. I loved that car.
• first publication, a book review of Academic Literacies by Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, published in ???. Grrr, I can't remember the name of the newsletter, and I never thought I would forget it. I even tried looking it up and couldn't find it. I
• first peer-reviewed article, a journal article about using ethnography in the classroom to have students study the cultures of their undergraduate classes, published in Notes on Teaching English
• first boyfriend, Brett Smoot, I think--I'm not sure about the last name. We were in fifth grade, and he gave me a Shrinky Dink heart. Does anyone besides me remember Shrinky Dinks? We lived in Delaware, and I think I have my first boy/girl party in either fifth or sixth grade. Ah, kissing tag, spin the bottle, post office . . .
• first baby kick, that just happened this past Sunday night. Everyone had been asking if I had felt them kick yet, and I kept answering no, wondering if I or my babies were somehow slow. The ultrasound the week before had reassured me that all was well since one clearly kept kicking the other. They were moving; I just couldn't feel it. Finally, I read in What to Expect that the first kicks don't feel like kicks. Then I felt them. They feel more like bubbles bursting inside my belly. It's like the Lawrence Welk show broke out in there.
• first job, well, that was probably babysitting, but I'm going to skip ahead to the first job at a business, which would be working at McDonald's. I worked there one summer when I was fourteen. My sister worked there, which might be why they hired me despite my being too young to actually get a work permit. I only worked that summer, quitting before cheerleading camp started since I knew that I wouldn't be able to work many weekends because of basketball games. (My high school didn't have a football team, so we cheered for basketball.)
• First teaching experience, I still remember my first day in the classroom at Florida State, wearing my white dress with the wide collar (remember those wide collars from the 1990s?). I looked like a girl going to her first communion or a girl getting ready to become a nun rather than a teacher, but I thought teaching meant dressing up, and I thought dressing up would help separate me more from the kids I was teaching, who were only five years younger than I was. I didn't want them to know my age.
• First Summer Institute, I was a nervous wreck, not sure how any of this would work out, not sure if community would form, not sure how Fellows would handle the switch in co-directors--one co-director had already committed to grading AP exams, so he missed the first week of the ISI, and we had a substitute in his place. I wondered who would become the next co-directors since both co-directors were moving out of town (and one out of state) almost immediately following the ISI.
• First flight, trip to Utah, I think, or maybe the trip to St. Louis. Now I can't remember which one came first. Hmmm. Any way, one trip (St. Louis) I took by myself, and Wes went with me to Utah. I still remember flying into Salt Lake City. Our plane didn't land until 9:00 or so, and the landing was a bit interesting. Apparently, our plane left Atlanta late, and the pilot made up the time in the air because when we got to Salt Lake City, it felt like the plane just stopped in the air. Wes and I looked at each other, both of us thinking the same thing. We have having a Wiley Coyote moment where we just ran off the cliff and realized that we had stopped. It was pretty cool. When we landed, it was dark, and we still had to pick up our rental car and find our hotel for the night. The next morning we would drive to Provo, where the conference was. When we woke up the next morning, we were amazed by the beauty surrounding us. We hadn't seen the mountains the night before. Absolutely beautiful.
• First trip out of the country: the three-week faculty development trip to India, a beautiful country. I learned so much there, about India, about myself, about my independence. That trip was followed by three study-abroad trips to London with side trips to Scotland, Ireland, and France and a trip to Greece with Wes for a wedding. All of my international trips (aside from two cruises with family members) were working trips.

Thanks, Shane. I enjoyed this topic more than I thought I would at first.