Perspicacious

Perspicacious.  Having or showing penetrating mental discernment; clear-sighted.  Synonyms, see Stacey Neilson.  That’s me!

Took another practice GRE today.   It was a doozy. I chose to take the one the official GRE website has as an example of the new paper-based test.  And damn, that thing is WAY harder than the practice questions in the study books.  WAY harder!  Most of their sentences in the verbal section don’t make sense at all.  And half of it is reading comprehension passages, which I do NOT comprehend.

But I owned it!  Well, not the verbal, I’m still missing 16% of the questions on that one.  But I kicked ass on math!  I missed 3 out of 50 questions (or 6%).  Which, if the equivalency charts comparing the new scores to the old scores are correct, I’m in the 94^th+ percentile, which is actually equivalent to a 790-800 on the old test (the best score you can get)!  It’s HUGE!  And even though I’m not performing as well as I’d like to on the verbal, I’m still in the 91^st percentile, apparently.  I’m gonna own this thing next month!  Suck it, grad school!

Chikwina Health Center Gets Solar!

About two months ago we had a health center staff meeting, where the Nurse talked about how difficult it was to deliver babies in the middle of the night with only flashlights and candles for light.  Someone (I think Chitani) said they already had a 50W solar panel that they would give to the health center if we bought the rest of the equipment we needed.  No problem!

Friends of Malawi is an organization of returned volunteers and government workers from all over the world who used to work in Malawi, and they have a lot of money.  They give grants of up to $500.  We only needed about $350 to get our solar up and running, and thankfully, they approved my grant I sent to them that said as much!  Once they sent the money, Mr. Phiri and I wasted no time in going to Mzuzu to pick up our supplies.  Lights were switched on for the first time 24 hours later!  We win!  It’s the first legitimate lasting thing I’ve done out here!  I’m sure the parents would disagree with that, but it IS really nice to have a physical manifestation of my efforts.

If you haven’t seen the pictures on facebook yet:

Health Center during the day

Health Center at night, pre-lights (with a camera flash)

Health Center at night WITH lights!

Electrician hooking us up!

Day...

and night!

Our first patient treated under the lights! Gracious got a little
excited when he heard I was taking pictures and fell over a rock
running over.

Medical Assistant is open for business!

Vitiate

Vitiate; meaning to corrupt, put wrong, spoil, or make worse.  Upon further GRE research I have found that the programs that I really want to do post-PC, I mean the ones I’m studying my ass off for, have recently decided that the GRE is now “optional”.  In other words; obsolete, nugatory, superannuated, and/or obviated.  <Insert imprecation here!> Furthermore, I’ve also recently read that they’ve changed the scoring of the test, among other things.  Now, instead of verbal and quantitative each scored out of 800, they are now each scored out of 170.  While this may not seem to be very important, it means I have NO IDEA what I’m shooting for anymore - NO IDEA how to compare my previous GRE tests and NO IDEA what a good score even is.  It’s very disorienting.  And so, my initial motivation to kick ass on the GRE has been vitiated (dunno if I’m actually using that word correctly, but the GRE doesn’t test on that, so I’m sticking to it). 

But regardless, I am continuing on with my 30 day challenge.  I had to take a few days off for a little weekend get-away at the lake, but I think I’m officially on day 12 and going strong.  I took a full length practice test today and only missed 10% of the math questions, which is almost on target (now that I’m making up what a good score is, I’m shooting for 5-8% missed on math), but I missed 17% of the verbal.  What are getting me are these new multiple-multiple choice questions.  They’re dumb.  Oh, and reading comprehension.  That’s always been dumb.  But on all the verbal and quantitative sections I finished with 15 minutes to spare consistently.  Maybe this first test in the book was just super easy to increase our confidence, but if that’s what all the tests turn out to be, I’ll definitely have the time to make sure I’m getting correct answers. 

In conclusion, the GRE is dumber than ever.  Somehow, the GRE Powers That Be have come up with ways to make standardized testing even more esoteric and useless.  And for that, they shall burn in hell.  But at least I’ll probably have a decent score and end up with a worthwhile career that no one will curse me for.  So, suck it.

Microscope Mayhem!

Their first interactions with microscopes!

Two Form 4 students practicing how to focus

So when my family came to visit last month (blog post to come) M and D brought me two little natural light microscopes to use in my Biology classes.  HUGE hit!  The teachers were elbowing each other out of the way to see onion skin magnified at 1200x.  And the kids were just as excited. 

Robert explaining how to make a salt crystal slide.

Robert came over and helped me conduct a 4-day microscope workshop with the Form 2’s and 4’s.  They learned the parts and how to care for the microscopes and how to focus them at different magnifications.  They learned how to make their own slides and dye specimen.  They identified parts of animal and plant cells, which they had previously only seen crude drawing of on the chalkboard.  The teachers even participated in the workshop so they would know how to teach it on their own.

Robert teaching my kids!

Drawing and labeling plant cells

Form 4's and Form 2's teaming up to make slides

  

Me!  Explaining how to dye specimen on a slide

Madam! Is this right!?

Besides the impromptu demonstrations I did last year on how plants work, using wine glasses as test tubes, this was their first practical lab work they’ve ever done!  It was amazing how focused they were the whole time.  I've never gotten them to quiet down so fast and stay on task for so long!

Props to Mom and Dad!

The 30 Day Challenge – Round One: GRE Study

I’m attempting to break up the next 8 months left of my service into 30 day challenges to help me mark the time.  We’ll see how long it lasts.  This month is 30 days of studying for the GRE.  I've made it to day 3!  I’ve signed up to take the test on October 20^th, so really I have 50 days, which is good in case I’m not good at this 30 day challenge thing and need some buffer time to study.

I’m psyched about this GRE, actually.  I’ve been teaching math for about a year, so I know my brain hasn’t atrophied, and I really don’t have that many words I need to learn.  There’s that point of diminishing returns after you’ve learned the GRE testers’ favorite words, so I’m just not gotta waste my time much after I’ve got those down.  ALSO, they’ve thrown out those BS word comparison questions that I’m so terrible at.  Ya know those ones that are like CAT:MOUSE.  I was so bad at those!  AND! And on the paper-based GRE test they allow you a simple hand held calculator. WHAT?! I might very well rock this thing.  But cross your fingers and knock on wood and all that.  Just in case.

Anyway, today’s GRE word of the day is “obsequious,” meaning to be overly eager to please.  The word brings to mind Doug’s puppy, who so desperately wants Doug’s approval that he licks Doug in the mouth as a hello, brings him smelly rags to roll in, and copies his every destructive move, such as digging up my newly planted tomato garden.  It also brings to mind other behaviors I’ve experienced in Malawi when the punch line of a conversation is “give me money.”

The Baby Circus - My Thoughts and Goings On of September 3rd

So I got 8 months left out here – a blink of an eye, really.  I might extend it another 2 months though if my building project requires me to (I hear back from the Peace Corps Headquarters this month about the approval of my Health Center building, the government sent me a letter of commitment for their portion of the funds!).  Plus about 2 month of traveling around Southeast Asia afterwards.  So about 10 to 12 months till I’m stateside!

I know I’m being effective out here because the baby that lives next door who I used to be able to make cry just by looking at her now wakes me up with gleeful cries of “Stacia!” outside my window.  She might just be showing off that she can talk now, but I like to see it as a sign of my acceptance by the community.

Today was the first day of school.  Naturally, only half the students showed up and the headmaster changed everyone’s schedules around so I went from teaching 2 biology courses to who-the-fuck-knows.  This place is just SO silly sometimes.  We DID, however, successfully rearrange the teachers’ office.

Talking about that baby that doesn’t cry at the sight of me anymore – her mom is trying to bathe her in the tap at the health center across from my house and she let go of her for a second to reach for the soap and her naked little child took off running around the neighborhood.  She’s squealing and flailing her little arms and giggling uncontrollably.  Mom’s still trying to catch her.  My village is more a circus of children than anything.  An adorable, hilarious, naked, squealing baby circus.

Said baby and her family.

I’m not proud of this.  I just watched a lizard drown in one of my buckets and I didn’t think to help it out until it was too late.  I watched it give up and die after one last desperate fight.  I feel really terrible!  Like, really bad.  What would the Dalai Lama say?  I coulda done so much to help it!  But it freaked me out and I didn’t want to get too close because I don’t like reptiles.  I coulda put a stick in there so it could pull itself out, or filled the bucket up more so it could reach the edge.  But I didn’t!  I just watched like a moron.  An f’ing moron.  I feel so guilty.  Well, I hope it’s little lizard soul can appreciate that it warranted enough of my attention to be eulogized in this blog post and read by people an ocean away.  Sorry, little friend.  A moment of silence.

Let’s go back to the naked baby girl who lives next door.  Now she is fully clothed and standing in the road outside my house staring at me with a huge smile on her face and an orange m’freezi (frozen flavored ice in a baggie) sticking out of her mouth.  Her mother is standing five feet away yelling at her to come home for dinner.  She’s still smiling, shaking her head so that the m’freezi whacks her on either side of her face.  I love the baby circus!