Personal Profile Paper 2

I still don't have much to report today. It was a pretty easy day as far as school goes. My students were in the computer lab all day today typing their personal profiles. I spent the day doing some reading and I finished the letter to Prison Pete. I feel bad that I haven't been very good pen pal, but hopefully he'll appreciate getting a letter. He's been transferred again so I'll have to get his new address. I'm posting the second paper of the personal profile project that my students are completing.

I do not consider myself to be very active socially. I have a few people that I consider to be good, close friends. Unfortunately some of them now live fairly far away. I have several people that are friends but really would probably be considered more acquaintances. These are people I know and talk to them when I see them, but I don’t call them up or hang out with them. For the most part, I spend my time alone or with my son as I am usually too busy for other things. I do have several friends that are “online” friends that I have never met in person, but they are still special. I also do not date socially like I once did. I am still single and perhaps prince charming will find his way to my doorstep one of these days. I have just decided to stop looking for him. Right now life is usually filled with other things and I don’t have time sit around worrying about my social life. I am happy with the way things are for me.

Intellectually I consider myself to be very bright. I am by no means a genius, but others have said I am intelligent, including my students. I know that sometimes I may talk over their heads but hopefully they will learn some new words while in my class. I don’t think it is wise to dumb down too much. In high school I usually made A’s and B’s and I graduated 16^th out of 332 students. I didn’t apply myself much in high school and most things came fairly easy for me. In college I made mostly A’s and a few B’s. I graduated with honors in college (Magna Cum Laude) with a 3.82 grade point average. My best subjects in school were band, speech, and English. I once had an I.Q. test administered and I was told it was 138. I figured that was pretty good.

Emotionally I tend to hold most things in. I can be and am very emotional at times, but I generally do not like to make a show of it. I especially do not like to watch sad movies with other people. When I finally watched The Passion of the Christ, I had to do it alone with a box of tissues. Some things that make me happy are riding rollercoasters, getting flowers, and sincere compliments. I would consider myself to be sentimental but not sappy. I tend to not show extreme emotions one way or the other and stay fairly controlled with my emotions.

Religion has become extremely important to me. For the past year, I have been attending Mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Canyon and am in the process of converting to the Catholic faith. I have been in RCIA classes since September and will be confirmed at Easter Vigil on April 15, 2006. This is actually quite an extreme change for me as I had not been “religious” in any sense for almost fifteen years. I used to attend Baptist churches when I was growing up until shortly after going to college. I got to a point where I felt that too many people in the church were hypocritical and I decided that perhaps I was not cut out for calling myself a Christian. I stopped going to church regularly, though I still believed in God and prayed from time to time. Two years ago I met up with an old friend and was indirectly introduced to the Catholic faith. For a year I studied the faith on my own and then made the decision to go to my first Mass almost a year ago on Palm Sunday in 2005. It has been an incredible journey for me and I have found myself a better person for it.

Economically I am probably considered to be middle class. I have been extremely poor, but never wealthy. When I was in college and a single parent, I lived on welfare for about four years as I finished my degree. When I began teaching in 1994 I got off welfare and started earning a regular paycheck. As a teacher, I don’t make a great deal of money but it’s enough to get by and have the necessities of life. It’s not always easy because my son is a teenager and he is getting very expensive. One of these days I would like to be free of debt and am working toward that goal.