Blog Post #1

     As my blog's title suggests, my name is Eleanor Pomerat. I was born in Mobile, AL and have lived here all of my life. I enjoy singing in a choir, reading, traveling, spending time with my boyfriend, and learning the French language. I attend the University of South Alabama. I cannot tell you that it is because USA was the very best school that I was accepted to, but it was the best choice I had based on academics and tuition. Also, being at USA has allowed me to live at home and thus keep my costs down. I live with my parents and my younger brother and sister. We have two cats named Bella and Ling. I also have a wonderful chihuahua puppy named Mini. She is truly a runt at less than a foot tall!

     I spend much of my time babysitting and I have for the last 8 years. I really love spending time with the children that I watch each week. If I hadn't spent so much of my time babysitting; I don't think I would have realized that teaching was the thing for me!

     I switched my major to Elementary Education this past fall after spending 2 years in the Biomedical Sciences degree program. While I was in the Biomedical Sciences program, I aspired to become a pediatrician. I wanted to go into medicine because I thought that in pediatrics I would be able to care for sick children and watch as toddlers gradually grew up to be adults. It took me 2 years to realize that I would spend the next 12 years of my life, in school, pursing a dream that would never really come to fruition. You see; I finally realized that as a pediatrician I would never be able to spend much time with each child and that 5 or 10 minutes caring for a child wasn't enough. I wasn't sure what to do, so I took the summer off from school and I stayed with some family on the east coast. I spent the summer seriously thinking about what career path would allow me  to spend a great of time with children and also fit my personality strengths. After speaking to some of the family that I was staying with, I figured out that Education would be a great field for me to enter. Some of the things I thought about were how much time I'd spent babysitting and how much I still loved spending time with each child, how I would be able to see each child every day and watch them grow over the course of the school year that I had them and maybe even longer. After that, I knew that Education was for me, and it was easy to narrow down that Elementary Education was the best fit.

     I'm pursuing certification to teach special education, because I think that in order to teach anyone with special needs, I should be well-trained and I know that autistic children are often put in the same classroom with non-autistic children. I'm also pursuing certification to teach French, as I am a French Citizen and because I think that everyone should learn a foreign language.


On Randy Paush


     I really enjoyed watching Randy Paush's video on time management. I agree with Mr. Paush that if everyone planned everything and didn't procrastinate then much more would be done and well. I loved when he asked how many people in the room would be able to produce a to-do list, as I usually have one on me. Also, his advice to do the biggest, hairiest thing on your list first makes a great deal of sense and is something that I will admit I usually don't do. Finally, I loved the old saying that he mentioned about the frogs: "If you have to eat a frog, don't spend a lot of time looking at it first and if you have to eat 3 of them, don't start with the small one!"

I do not know him from anywhere else. Although, I did see "The Last Lecture" pop up near his name quite a few times and I've heard of  the "The Last Lecture" and some of the story behind it.