March Madness 2012

It's that time again! Everyone is watching the teams on the bubble and getting ready to fill out their brackets. Hopefully you've found a pool to join; if not, you can join and create pools on sites like CBSSports.com, ESPN.com, SportingNews.com, and YahooSports.com. You still have time to create a pool of your own, set it up on one of these sites, and have them take care of all of the scoring online.

There are lots of places to look for help with your bracket. If you Google bracketology, you'll get several results (just make sure they are for this year and not a previous year). ESPN has a bracketology site with predicted brackets, results, and a bubble watch for the next few days. CBS Sports has a bracketology blog with predictions, bubble watch, strength of schedule, and team comparisons. You can quickly get dizzy researching all of the predictions and trying to get your bracket just right; but thankfully, there is always a Cinderella team that will be a bracket buster. I try to pick the teams with the best chance, but can't help but root for the underdog (even when they bust my bracket).

There have been lots of studies about the effect March Madness has on productivity in the workplace. Endless articles about the millions of hours and billions of dollars lost. Just like every story, there are two sides. So, if you look hard enough, you can also find articles about how March Madness increases employee morale and enhances productivity in the workplace. I'm just happy that the first four days of the tournament are during spring break. I can watch the games with my Dad and not worry about productivity.

If you weren't near a TV, it used to be difficult to keep up with the tournament results and games. We're in a new age, so if you have an iPhone, iPad, or Android device, you can now watch the games on the go. The NCAA tournament has gone mobile. You can also watch all 67 games live online at the NCAA March Madness site.

Need some help figuring out how to watch at work? Here's a helpful video :)

When a Phone Was Just a Phone!

These are the phones I grew up with, but both of ours were beige. Mom and Dad had a princess phone in their bedroom and we had a wall phone with a 20 ft cord in the kitchen. That 20 ft cord was a nightmare when it became twisted and stretched, but it was great when you preferred to sit on the couch (or out on the front porch) to talk instead of at the kitchen table. We didn't have answering machines or voice mail and you couldn't call anyone's pants pocket (or wherever you carry your phone). I remember that there was an extra fee each month to be able to use a touch tone phone when they came out, but it was so much quicker to dial :)

I still have that princess phone and wall phone and plan to actually have them installed at some point.

That brings me to my current phone -

 

When I got all of the way to my car this evening, I realized I had left my phone on my desk. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you've ever parked on a college campus, you know it can be a bit of a hike to and from your car. That's when I found myself thinking "when a phone was just a phone..." fairly nostalgically. It isn't the first time it's happened, but my complete thought was "when a phone was just a phone, I would have left it in the office and just gotten it the next day." Here is the problem, now that we carry smart phones that contain phone books, appointments, quick access to the Web and email, and apps that we use everyday, the time has long passed where I would say never mind and just get my phone the next day. And what would I do without Word for Friends!

I've quickly fallen into the trap of convenience and access, and my phone truly is my personal assistant. If an appointment isn't my phone, I don't make it. That was apparent a couple of weeks ago when I got a text from a colleague asking where I was; the meeting had started. Unfortunately, I was at home because I didn't think I had anything that afternoon...it wasn't on my calendar. I'm terrible with directions, so without MapQuest on my phone, I'm in trouble. Unless it is on the charger, my phone is usually on me or beside me. I'm hooked on being able to look something up on the Web at the drop of a hat. If I hear something on a show I'm watching, want to double check a fact, get more information, or just look up the name of an actor whose name I can't remember, I grab my phone. I also compose and answer a lot of email on my phone. I was never much into texting before my iPhone because I didn't want to take the time to rotate through six options for each button; it was much quicker just to make the call. I still don't go over my 200 texts per month plan, but I text a lot more than I would have guessed.

As a tech geek, I love gadgets. The downside is getting dependent on them and realizing when I get home that I've left my gadget at work, or getting to work and realizing I've left my gadget at home - but I wouldn't change it. The upside this time that I also got an extra 1120 steps toward my first day on the Presidential Active Lifestyle Challenge. I can't complain about that.

My Community College Story

A few weeks ago, SCC President Ron Chesbrough asked us to share our community college stories - Telling Stories: Making the Case for Public Higher Education. I'm running a little behind -- but it doesn't take much at all to get me on the community college soapbox -- here is my story.

I took my first college class with my mom. I think that experience set my opinion and passion for community college. When I was a sophomore in high school, the local community college (Mineral Area College in Park Hills -- though at that time it was Flat River) offered a basic computer programming class through my high school (West County High). Thanks to Mrs. Rawson, we were small but we were on the front end of computer education in our area. My mom and I attended the class in the evenings and learned to program on Radio Shack computers, The school also had a couple of Apple IIe computers, but those were to the Radio Shack computers what the two electric typewriters were to the class full of manual typewriters. The class was made up of people of all ages and professions with their own goals.

A couple of years later, I began full-time at Mineral Area College. I knew I was transferring to Belmont University in Nashville when I was finished, so I met with a counselor there and built my schedules each semester according to our transfer plan. The makeup of my classes at MAC this time around were similar to my first class. I really enjoyed the diversity; it kept things interesting sometimes when my 18-year old self didn't think they could be. The classes were relatively small and help was there if you asked, though in my new-found freedom, those 8 a.m. classes seemed completely unfair and proved difficult to attend. My music theory class was only four students - me, another student my age (with perfect pitch!), and two returning learners. That was one of the most memorable classes for me. It could have been the class, the comradery, or the fact that it was a 5 credit hour class four semesters in a row. I also spent a lot of time in the music department those two years. My high school band director, Mr. Schunks, and college band director, Ms. Moore, worked with me to prepare and helped me to record an audition tape for a music scholarship at Belmont. Neither had to do it or had to take their own evenings and go to the extent they did, but I was (and still am) very grateful that they did.

My first teaching positions were in community colleges. It wasn't a stretch for me to remember being in those classes myself, and I hope that it still isn't. I see friends and family in many of my students and their situations, which I think helps me relate and be a little more empathetic at times. Maybe (hopefully) it also gives me a little edge when I make those connections, but the truth is that it happens without thinking. I'm, by far, not the only teacher to have this experience.

What is your community college story? Leave a comment here or on Dr. Chesbrough's post.