Final Update

Adelaide's Blanket, Hat, and Flower

This will be my final entry for a long while if not for good. I likely will begin a new blog should I decide to keep blogging.

12/1/11 22:37
Today marks the day that I lost my daughter Adelaide Felicty Kim. During a routine visit to the birth center, we were unable to find her heartbeat. We were sent to the hospital - where we currently reside - and had it confirmed at 17:30. She had been gone for a while it looked like, and now Heidi needs to deliver the body.

Words alone cannot describe the intense difference in emotion between when I first saw Adelaide's tiny heartbeat for the first time and then witnessing the ultrasound's silence and the lifeless body where my daughter's heart used to be. I screamed with my eyes. My mind screamed and screamed. I sat silently. My wife reacted instantaneously, hours after I screamed my mind out. I could only cover her with my body and hold her as we sobbed. We knew, as we got up and talked to the midwives. We knew, as started heading to the hospital. We knew, the moment we saw the ultrasound's lifeless body.

We cried.

Uncontrollable. Unstoppable. The tears did not give me a choice. We had no say in the matter, utterly powerless. And now, as I wait next to my wife with increasingly bad, artificially induced contractions,completely powerless.

-Break-

12/4/11 8:30a
My daughter was born almost exactly two days ago on December 2nd, 2011 at 8:18. She weighed 1 lb and was 10 inches long. She was beautiful.
It is the most horrifying thing imaginable to hold the lifeless body of your child. To hold your broken and battered future, shattered before even given a chance. I've been around, I've seen some pretty horrible images/videos/experiences. But nothing compares. Not by far.

A sorrow deeper than I could have comprehended washed over me as I held her for the first time. It was unbearable, and nothing could have prepared me. I am a parent. Not was almost. I am. No one that has lost a child they truly cared about would say otherwise I know. She was my daughter, and I was her father. I'll never dance with her at her wedding. I'll never cheer her on during times of trial or get to help her with her homework or hear her call out for me when she's scared. I'll never know the joy of watching my daughter Adelaide grow up. But she is, and always will be, my daughter.

A wound deeper than I could have imagined has been inflicted. I have no chance to say, "Hello." I have no chance to say, "Good-bye." I have only the time that we shared together indirectly. Her face in the ultrasound, her kicks in Heidi's stomach. I miss her so much already. I didn't realize how much I wanted to meet her. The daughter I won't meet until perhaps I meet her in heaven with God's mercy. I hope that I can dance with her with her standing on my toes.

For now though, I will wait and know that she's waiting for me somewhere. For now, I'll move forward. For now, I will do my best to make her proud of me as her father. For now, I will look forward to one day hearing the words,

"Hi Daddy."

-Ken

Magnificent Monday: Holding On So Far

Magnificent Mondays is supported by readers like you. And the graffiti in my classroom, because nothing says "I support you and value the information you're trying to teach me" like "squiggle, squiggle, block sign " graffiti.

Today was an interesting day. I forgot my lunch, coffee, breakfast, and lesson plans all in one go. So... that sucked. On the flip side, the student council was selling cupcakes during lunch today. I had 3 of them. They were delicious.

It becomes more and more apparent the kind of student body I am teaching as the year goes on. For example, I literally had a student incredibly excited about his D. Not his B, his D because a D means passing. Now, I'm all for practicality, however I like to think that if you are so involved with doing as little amount of work as necssary in order to pass that you get excited about a D, perhaps a re evaluation of how things are going is in order. Again though, I'm not working with the average student.

Today, we had a circle in my 6th period. It went sort of well in the same way that running through a pack of wolves while carrying a bag of meat might go well. Major props to my co-worker for helping to mediate the entire process. She was keen in pointing out after the fact that some of the students were being a bit malicious and that they have a tendancy to find a weakness and exploit as best they can. For example, letting them know I am a new teacher was percieved by some as a weakness and they jumped all over it. In retrospect, that may have been a bad idea and I did spend a majority of the time a bit quiet listening to others basically do their best to tear at me.

Unfortunately for my students, Mr. Kim does not know the meaning of fear. I think that tomorrow will be interesting for those that begin to realize that the harder they try, the less weakness I have. It'll be a good lesson for them though, and more importantly will maybe get them out of the "it's not at all my fault" phase and into the "well maybe I could pay attention and talk less a little more" phase.

Aside from that, I'm looking forward to having a great holiday! Cheers!

-Kenneth

Magnificent Monday: Kind of Fail

Via Wackyparadise.com

This one in particular isn't part of a series really, more just kind of here as a bit of an update. I guess in retrospect this part in italics, the part that is witty and humorous in some way, and that introduces the main post in some manner wasn't very necessary. So... I present to you the above image of a cat and a poptart doing the fusion dance from Dragonball Z to form Nyan Cat!

Okay, first off if you did not click the Nyan Cat link, please do so as it is the theme music for this post. Go ahead, I'll wait.

So... couple things. First, keeping this thing up and running was way easier when I was a student. I had, you know, breaks and time and motivation. Mostly that last thing. I'm not going to spout out some long rant about how tough life is and how I don't have time for this blog anymore because, honestly, I do have time. I'm just being lazy. So... maybe I'll stop that, maybe I won't. Record stands that I won't. Now, I'd like to take up my previous postings, and if memory serves correctly I had three postings a week. Also, if memory serves correctly, that was a bit too much for me to really keep up with. Plus, looking back on my history of posts, as spotty as it is, indicates that I did pretty well for a while with posting on Mondays and Wednesdays. And so, I shall do this, except that I will post on Mondays (can't really move Magnificent Monday around much) and will be moving Ken's Take to Thursdays.

Now, before I hear cries of foul and false hopes. I'd like to point out that I am actually scheduling time to do my blog posts. (I can do that now, what with a consistent schedule and all.) I've thought about simply moving on from this blog and starting fresh, but then I realized that such a move would result in the complete loss of 1. my reader base (as limited as it is) and 2. the clear amount of growth I've experienced over the years. This really has turned into my very own journal. One that won't get chewed up by the dog.

And so there you have it. My vow to get back on board with this whole blogging thing and stop being lazy because, hey, I've got a little girl on the way after all. 'Bout time I started setting a good example. ;) Cheers everyone, have a good week!

-Ken

PS: Here's hoping your Monday won't be needing a cake the next day.

Relics of the Past

If only I could send them a message through this artifact....

The image above - I assume it's above although it could easily be below or in between - is the cover of a booklet I found in the filing cabinet of my office. The booklet is titled "Teacher in Space" and was designed to be criteria for lessons that would be taught by the teacher going into orbit on the space shuttle Challenger. Yes, that Challenger. It references the mission in the future tense. It was a strange sensation, almost as if I could imagine the ignorant bliss of the people at the time completely unaware of the tragedy that was to befall them. No doubt the same could be said about any tragic event with memorabilia. I digress.
Today, I observed some more classes as well as nearly finished preparations for my classroom. I found out that I'll be teaching 2 classes of Biology, 1 class of Chem, and 2 classes of integrated Sciences (with one of the classes being of the accelerated format). I am looking forward to starting albeit a bit unnerved at the massive amount of work that lies ahead. I pray that the students prove to be cooperative.
Of note today, I discovered a number of relic items - many of which came from before my birthdate - and had the opportunity to sift through the now obsolete materials. Guide to test preparation from 1976? Tossed. Overhead projector from the 80s? Set aside for removal. Windows 95 NT Install Discs? Set aside to be locked with other random obsolete tech. Textbook about the evolving field of computer technologies from 1990 with a picture of what seems to be a PC with Windows 1 installed? Locked away in my office where it can't hurt anyone else anymore.
That sums up most of the day, looking forward to a new day of planning tomorrow!
-Kenneth

[EDIT]: Fixed the positioning of the picture and added caption.

The First Three Days (An Update)

I have been perhaps a bit negligent in updating this old blog for a variety of reasons. Truth be told, it had become way too much upkeep considering the obligations and responsibilities I had throughout the past year. Over this year I have posted two different posts. One was regarding an assignment from my English 102 class (fantastic class, Mr. LaGuardia is highly recommended) and the other from New Years. My reasons are that I simply had too much to juggle between the lab I was working in, working as president of a leadership club (upgraded from vice president), working as a senior intern at my church, being a full time student, and trying to keep my marriage from falling to pieces was pretty much my limit. Lesson learned, a good lesson, but perhaps at a greater price than I ought to have paid. Regardless, I learned quite a bit about myself these past years, and grown tremendously, too much so to cover within the confines of a single blog post.  Perhaps an update is in order for those of my readers that don't keep personal tabs on me.

I ended up graduating from the University of Arizona this past May with a Bachelor in Molecular and Cellular Biology with a Minor in Chemistry (that minor has served me well.) I am now an expecting father with the baby's due date being March 21st, I am super excited about that. My responsibilities over the summer dropped from everything to practically nothing and it's done wonders for my marriage, however I did have a heck of a time trying to find a job, a search that lasted well over three months. I am proud to say though, that I finally landed one as a High School Biology and Chemistry Teacher at Project MORE High School. I decided on this profession back in June based on the fact that all of my efforts would end up making a significant difference. It has been a most trouble endeavor trying to get my certifications done and ended up being a costly initial investment from myself (roughly $500 in fees for certifications, proficiency exams, and other misc. things alone.) However, the good Lord has seen fit to reward my faith in his provision by providing a job in an alternative high school where I can truly make a difference and things are a bit more rough. Just my cup of tea.

My time here officially has been short (a mere three days), however my time here has been fairly productive and I've learned a plethora of things thus far. My mind has not been this active for some time and I am absolutely loving the sensation. On my first day I was introduced to my classroom and had a chance to try and unpack all the newly ordered supplies as well as sit in on a couple classes. Day two went similarly in that most of my time was spent unpacking things. I ended up staying until about 7pm setting up the classroom (which still remains unfinished.) I als had an opportunity to meet more of the teachers and sit in on more classes. From everything I've gathered, the class pace of most other classes move a bit slower than I'd anticipated, but this hasn't fazed me at all. I digress. Today was spent continuing to organize the classroom as well as sitting in on more classes. There is also an open house tonight that I am looking forward to.

That should just about bring anyone and everyone up to speed roughly. Obviously a significant number of events and experiences have gone unspoken, however I believe that this should cover it. Now I would like to say that I am going to be better about updating this blog, unfortunately history has shown this to be an unwise decision. As such, while I hope to keep the maintenance of this blog up, I make no promises. Make no mistake though, much of the direction this blog will take will likely regard my new employment at Project MORE High School and my experiences here. With that, I bid my fair readers ado. Let's see how often I will update.

-Kenneth (Mr. Kim) Kim

The Decision of Internet Privacy

Photo from logo-s-collection


A look at internet privacy from the perspective of a college student's perspective. The dangers, the perks, and what you can do about it. We'll be looking at a number of things, the first of which will be the fact that I won't really be continuing in such a monotonous tone. (I'm fairly certain it was read that way, that or in the soothing voice of Morgan Freeman) To that I say nay. It's a matter of preference really. I prefer not to talk like I'm slightly autistic. Just like I prefer to keep my phone not in my pocket for fear of getting ball cancer from the ridiculously high amounts of energy my phone puts out. Sure it might seem a little strange at first, but we'll see who's little friends are still concocting ways of escaping my body versus figuring out ways to grow uncontrollably and eventually kill me. (Hint: I will be the former.)

Magnificent Monday: Starting the New Year

Picture by The Ken via his Samsung Transform using Vignette Demo

And it's Monday, once again. However, this Monday is a little different as it marks the start of the first week of the new year and new decade. Bet ya didn't think about that, did you? Regrettably, I couldn't get this post out in time so it's gonna be really late and really short. Cheers!

So for Christmas Heidi and I got new phones! Exciting! I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but it's really exciting! In fact, I'm using it right now to type this very post! :-) I'm rather enjoying my new piece of technology, particularly the fact that I figured out how to get a GBA emulator (google those two words if you don't know what they mean) onto my phone and now have Pokemon FireRed. Oooooh yeeeeah...


I'll be sure to give a meatier post on Wednesday, but for now let me just say that this year is looking to be rather exciting. Have a smashing week!

-Ken

(Memo to myself: blogging next to wife while she is trying to sleep results in a short post and a possibly cranky spouse if you continue to blog.)