Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Pathway to Ugh...

Ugh...

The last week and a half has been the MOST emotional week EVER.  On February 9th, I lost my best friend, my mother.  I had spent the last week in the hospital almost every waking hour with her.  I was her advocate.  She has been sick with cancer for over two years.  The last three weeks she had refused to go to the doctors because I believe she knew and did not want to hear the words.  My family urged me to make her go to the doctors. Fortunately I put  my social worker cap on and told them she has a right to self-determination. Every day she would recite her birth date, social security number and president of the United States; she knew as I told her often as soon as she was unable to make her own decisions I would take her to the hospital.   We often had talks about what she wanted in the end, as painful as they were and the backlash I started to receive from relatives, I followed her directions as it was ultimately her decisions that drove my brother, her love of her life (Jerry) and myself to follow her wishes.

I sit here and reflect on my mother's life... My career path as a social worker started  at a very young age.  I contribute my calling to social work to my mother. She was a social worker in her own right. Growing up I can remember having all the older people in the neighborhood over for dinner.  A couple of times a week my mother would cook dinner for all the elderly people and they would either come to the house for dinner or the children would deliver dinner to them.  When ever the elderly need something my mom was there.  I really did not realize until this moment how the actions of  my mother played a tremendous role in my life.

In the end my mother taught me how to be a social worker more than any book ever could.  With two life lessons: the right vs. wrong and respect.


Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Pathways to Blogger


Wow!  I just had a groundhog's day moment signing into blogger... Sign in, wrong email, contact your administrator as the account is not activated, ok I can handle this, use the email I created specifically for this class wrong again! Rinse repeat start all over...sigh. And I sit here thinking of my fellow class mates who may not be technical (I do consider myself a little bit technical)   The syllabus states that you should spend 4 hours on this course weekly...yeah but add an extra 30-60 minutes to trouble shoot how to even get onto blogger!  Ugh.

I figured it out!  So....here my steps to signing into blogger =)

Ok so you are logging to HSU to figure out what is do for this week.  You check your email to see responses or notes from teachers, yada yada.  You go to 480 and you notice it is blogging week.  The stress is escalating anxiety and frustration is starting to consume you!   STOP IT!

1.     Relax.
2.     SHUT YOUR BROWSER down (Every browsing window and tab)
a.      The reason why everything has to be shut down is that your browser is smart, it already knows you were signed into a type of Google account (HSU utilizes Google email) it automatically tries to sign you into HSU email.  To prevent frustration shut down your browser and start over with a new browser window.

3.     Open a new browser window
4.     Go to Gmail.com 
5.     Sign into the account you created specifically for this class not your .edu account the .gmail account
6.     Once you are signed into your account go to the right in the title bar, click on the more drop down menu
7.     Go to Blogger and start blogging.

Hopefully this is stress free blogging for the rest of the semester =)