I'm in the final lap of this marathon we call education. I had my last official visit from DePaul, and got my final evaluations from the University and from my cooperating teacher. I'd have to do something truly egregious not to pass now, or at least not to pass the student teaching portion. My marks weren't as stellar as I'd like them to be, but they were good enough. The guidance counselor drives me to school in the mornings and I was telling him that while it seems to me that my classmates are mostly thinking about how they're going to be graded and the jobs they're going to get, my biggest concern is, "Am I being a good enough teacher that I'm not harming my students' education?" and the counselor told me that judging from the comments about me he gets from the students, I'm doing great. He says the thing he hears students complain about the most in regards to me is that I go too fast, and that the complaint he usually hears the most about my cooperating teacher is that her accent makes her harder to understand. He says that the complaint "goes too fast" is practically impossible for a math teacher to avoid and not to worry about it. However, my university supervisor also feels that I'm going too fast. In comparison to the other math teachers in the school, I am going at about the same speed as the other two who aren't tracking, and the ones who are are going slower with their slow group and faster with their fast group.

What with the comeback of my joint pains, I was thinking arthritis, but the nurse on the phone with me today said that when her son was my age, he had pains like I'm having and they turned out to be... growing pains. Yes, dear readers, growing pains. That kind of makes me feel silly, but also oddly cheered. However, the nurse also suggested that I get myself checked for RA and lupus, because, y'know- I am at high risk. Ugh. I was looking those up myself yesterday. The thing is, my ESR and CRP, both typically high in people with RA and lupus, were one third the bottom of normal, and undetectable, respectively, the one and only time they were tested (which I think was June).

My next doctor visit is another three weeks into the future but now that it's scheduled I keep wondering about what my lab values are going to be and which tests I should ask for. I asked the nurse on the phone why my erythrocyte sedimentation rate and c-reactive protein would've been so low when there was clear inflammation present, and she said maybe the lab messed up with my sample and she recommends a retest.  So I'm thinking maybe I should have those tests rerun. I'm also thinking about getting a gene test for a celiac risk profile. The A1c and the TSH are sort of obvious. I'm thinking about a random microalbuminuria test. Maybe yes, maybe no. I might want the monofilament thing redone to get a better idea about whether I really have neuropathy or was just having a bad day at my last test (ok, maybe that's a long shot, but so what?).

I wanted to put on xangazon that I'm watching a video I downloaded from the Chicago Public Library online branch, Easy Sign Language, but it wouldn't let me. So, I'm watching that. It's kinda basic for me, but on the other hand, it uses some different signs from ones I use. And it's in a class format, whereas I usually learn sign from dictionaries and actual immersion, and while those are both great, dictionaries are hard to use and static, while immersion tends to leave me piecing things together sloooowly.

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