Baylor Family

Not my actual Baylor family (hey cousins and sisters!)… my Baylor family. Ya know, the kind you form through bonds of disturbingly long/pointless essays, ridiculous group projects, and mockery of professors. That Baylor family.

My Baylor family was quickly formed through our wonderful world of middle school math. We’re all a crazy bunch anyways… I mean, there were nine of us in the entire University -- that’s gotta say something. Then, of course, we went ahead and formed a smaller, clique-ier group within the nine. We were kind of an eclectic group of people: a sorority girl, a definite over-achiever, a military brat/sweetest person ever, the funny/witty sarcastic one, and whatever kind of category I fit into… the athlete/all around fantastic procrastinator? But I know, without a doubt in my mind, that I would not have made it to graduation without this group of incredible girls.

We have some ridiculous stories. Some are included in the following synopsis, but this is for sure, not all of them:

We should really begin by thanking our professors, because of them we bonded through textiles. Without their apparel choices, we might not have started this lifetime bond. Everything from corduroy duck pants to pleated jeans worn by our favorite nerdy, male math professor. Let me be clear, this mockery is out of pure love… I love those embroidered ducks and the old man that wore them; seriously, we would beg him to wear them. The highlight of our nights would be when the duck pants would make an appearance at the Baylor baseball games. This, said, professor had season seats and we pretty much had season seats. We then decided we should have a pumpkin carving contest, so we did. We got some intensely designed stencils and ended with some pumpkins that hardly resembled  anything close to the stencil, but we bonded. Once you touch someone with slimy pumpkin goo, you automatically move up a few notches on the friend scale. By the end of our sophomore year, our friendship was pretty much solidified. Junior year brought on our study sessions. Sid Rich (the math building) knows no study party like a 4-8 math study party. We eventually got to the point where we just were not capable of studying without Taco Cabana tortillas, queso, and guac. It = brain food, duh. I think somewhere in this year is when “the picture” surfaced. Thanks to the witty one and my notable procrastination we convinced the over-achiever to, at the last minute, let us use her 5^th grade picture at the end of a group presentation. This was no ordinary picture. First of all it was 70’s theme, secondly she had massive coke bottle glasses, and lastly it was one of those pictures that you beg your mother to please hide or switch out with a new one before your new significant other comes over because you just don’t know how you would reasonably explain it to them.  Once we had access to this picture it showed up on every email, presentation, paper, group project we ever did again…. Not exaggerating. It also started the phrase “peace, love, and 5^th grade [Barbra]” (the name has been altered for “pride” reasons) I might still use that phrase today. We spent hours upon hours in the basement of Moody using DreamWeaver to create our e-folios… which I’ll just say we did a lot of creating. But you know what they say, “when you create together, you stay together!”… or at least that’s what I say! We formed crazy bonds with our professors… somehow everyone loved us even though we spent the majority of class trying to put paper in each other’s hair without them noticing! One night I stormed out of class when my entire project didn’t save and I was going to have to start from scratch. No one stopped me, no one told me to come back, and we were able to laugh about it the next week. (I don’t even think I made it up) And even now, some of my professors follow this silly little blog of mine because that’s what happens at Baylor. (Hi Mrs. Smart!!!) And if it hasn’t been clear from the synopsis already, we have about the maturity level of the ages we teach. So obviously, graduation wouldn’t be acceptable without one last hoo-rah. In our wonderful methodology classes we always got to play with snapcubes. So we stole a few snapcubes and wrote a message on them from our 4-8 math gang. As we walked across the stage we each handed our professor a snap cube and made her figure out the message later. Surprise!!

Now we’re on to real life stuff.. like naming our 4 legged children after our favorite Euclidean geometry professor. But seriously, after being in the real world for 3 years now, I’ve realized we’re not normal. We’re not just people who have put in a tremendous amount of hard work together and parted ways forever. We’re a family. A family that I know I could still call on today if I needed to, and have in the past. Our mockery of professors quickly morphed into admiration, those long group projects might be implemented into my classroom today, and I wish I could tell you I found use for that 15 page essay over 20^th century math, but I cannot.. that would be lying. I, however, would not be lying if I said I cherish all these memories and would give anything to have a study night in Sid Rich with my wonderful Baylor family again.

 

Did you think I was lying about the paper part?

Try and decode that mesasge! ha 

With our life support and the greatest teacher on the planet!