My Brother Got Married

I mentioned that it would happen, but Willie got MARRIED! Craziness. I am so happy for him, though. We all love Stephanie, so that's good, too. Here are some pictures that I took from the big day. There are other better pictures, not taken on my phone, but there you go. :)

The happy couple at the reception

The parents

I have a picture of each of the siblings at the temple. It was so fun to have us all there.

What a handsome man.

Just barely married.

What a happy day!

Physics in California

I have a lot to update you about, but first I thought I would post about Physics.
Surprised? Yeah, me neither.
I mentioned in my last post that I was hired to do physics research for BYU over the summer. Well, that happened. I worked 8-5 every day doing research. It was a good job. I loved my coworkers and my work. Most of the time I just fixed broken things, and broke new things to fix. In the end, we did get it all working, and took some cool data.
Well, Physicists want their data to be reproducible. So we decided to go get the same data on someone else's equipment. Some BIG somebody else's equipment. We got on a plane and flew to use the Advance Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They have an sychrotron--a big thing that circles electrons around at near the speed of light--that produces the light we needed to study, and they have awesome equipment to study that light. SWEET.
Their equipment is pretty cool, and under fairly high demand, so we got the night shift. We did research all night, played around Oakland and San Francisco all day, and barely slept for three days.
Here are some pictures of my adventure:

The view from our very nice Marriot Hotel room in downtown Oakland.

Gotta love unnecessary quotations. :)

This was our lab station, beamline 6.3.2.

Dr. Turley looking like a ghost behind the plastic shield
 by the chamber where we tested stuff.

This was the computer program we used. It was niiiiice. :)

Me on a ferry on the way to San Francisco (the one with a bow).

An Awesome street performer that pretended to be a robot in San Fran.

This black lady drove our bus. She was very friendly.

Summer Joy

Hey all. I thought I would send an updater your way. :)
First of all, I graduated!! I always thought that I would never feel ready to be done with my education, but it felt so right and so fulfilling to look back at all that I have done at BYU. It just feels great.

Wahooo!!!

I already mentioned in a previous post that I have a job teaching at Mountain View High School in Orem starting in the Fall. I am super excited about it. But I needed something to fill my time (and make some dollars) for the summer. I was thinking about looking for a job when God intervened. He literally threw the perfect job for me out of heaven.
See, one day, I was sitting at home and noticed I had a missed call from my professor at BYU. I called him back and he told me that BYU had a job opening and were looking for someone to fill it ASAP. The job was for a local teacher to do research for BYU for the summer. The teacher would be paid their teacher salary to work full time for the summer, and also get a $1200 budget to buy equipment for their classroom. What is not to like? They asked me if I wanted the job and I said yes. What a blessing! How often do people just have jobs thrown at them like that!
Just like that, I got a summer job. I am working in the Extreme Ultraviolet research group. The short explanation of what I do is fix equipment and clean it. The longer version is that we want to figure out what materials reflect Extreme Ultraviolet (XUV) light the best. The problem is that XUV has so much energy that it is absorbed by everything. And it is hard to make (the light, I mean. As well as the mirrors). A girl I work with is working to make the mirrors, but mostly I am the handyman in the lab that is working to fix broken equipment. I am working to make the plasma work (it worked today!) because that is our source of light. I am getting good with wrenches, troubleshooting electronic connections, soldering, and making vacuum seals tight (we have to be under super low pressure because air absorbs XUV).

Me taking the plasma chamber apart to clean it. The big black
 part is where we reflect the light off of stuff. This monster
of a machine is my life.

That probably doesn't make sense, but really, I am not doing very much physics. I am enjoying myself, though. It is also nice to have an 8 to 5 job.
My calling is the Temple Preparation teacher, and I LOVE IT. I don't have news about that, but everyone should go to the temple. It is the best. :)
Oh, big news: my beloved little brother is getting married.

I approve. I always thought it would be hard to have my brother get married, but Stephanie is amazing. She is a great match for my brother. I feel completely comfortable around them and I am happy for them. Life is changing! What an exciting day!

A Night to Remember

This last weekend was our ward Oscar's Night. All of the FHE groups made a movie and then we had a black tie event to view them and vote for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

It was so much fun to dress up and eat a delicious free meal, but the best part was watching the movies that we all made. See, this ward takes the Oscars seriously. The FHE groups spend hours and days on these movies, and they turn out SO WELL.
Our group decided to do a Film Noir style movie (kinda). Here is a link to the final product and don't judge my acting. I just did the best I could.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U65N8GqXl_w_e8JEmF3q6pQYIYUFFtkG/view?usp=drivesdk

If you want to see other films shown that night, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
I the end we swept four of the five awards given that night. We won best film, Grant won best Actor, LaNaya won best Actress, and Brandt (aka "Rose") won Best Supporting Actor (He almost won Best Supporting Actress, too).
The Oscars were definitely a Night To Remember.

Teaching

It has been a crazy and amazing semester. More than once I have tried to sit down and write about my student teaching experience, but there is so much to say it makes it difficult.
The biggest thing is that teaching is hard, but so rewarding. Hard for different reasons than I thought, and rewarding in ways I didn't expect. It isn't hard to plan lessons, get students to test well, do their homework, or even behave in class.
What is hard is getting them to change the way they think and really learn. I want the way they view the world to change because of Physics. I want them to learn to be problem solvers and world observers, and curious, life-long learners.
What is rewarding is not teaching a good lesson. It is rewarding when the students teach a good lesson and I didn't do much at all. What is rewarding is building personal relationships with them and caring about what is hard for them outside of Physics.
The thing about student teaching that I have struggled the most with is realizing that the way I viewed education my whole life up to this point is wrong. I knew that lecture wasn't the most effective way for students to learn, but I didn't really know it. Now I do. Direct instruction followed by group or individual work on homework isn't effective either. I want my students to be discovering, not for me to get a chance to tell them all of the things I think are exciting.
I don't know if that will make sense to the non-teacher world, but teachers know (or at least good teachers) that the classroom can't be about them or they will be a failure.

"It is the pupil that must be put into action. When the teacher takes the spotlight, becomes the star of the show, does all the talking, and otherwise takes over all of the activity, it is almost certain that [she] is interfering with the learning of the class members." (Asahel D. Woodruff, Teacher the Gospel [1962], 37; in Virginia H. Pearce, "The Ordinary Classroom--A Powerful Place for Steady and Continued Growth," Ensign, Nov. 1996, 12)

On a lighter note, being a teacher is fun for a lot of reasons, and one of those is that the students are just so silly. High school is quite the eventful time in a person's life!
I have one student who really makes me laugh. He is so well meaning and so happy, and so distracted. One day I walked up to check on how his homework was going. I found him not working on the problem at all and asked him about it. He responded, "Miss Atkin, I am so sorry. I went to do the problem and I was going to really try, but then I accidentally drew my calculator instead..." He dropped his gaze sheepishly to his paper. I looked at his paper, and sure enough, there was a perfect, life-sized drawing of his calculator. "And then Amanda drew a Flappy bird on it..." and there on the screen of the calculator was a flappy bird, a creature from a new popular game for smart phones that I only became aware of because of my students. Oh, dear. The thing is, I couldn't be mad because I knew that he was telling the truth. You could really say this student was without guile. He meant no harm, and really tries his best, but gets a bit distracted sometimes.
Another day a similar thing happened, but he had drawn a Chinese man with a long mustache. Oh, dear. I can't help but smile. Or when my students tell me about "Swag Energy" as one of our energy types. Or when they tell me about the dance over the weekend, or turning 16, or getting their Learner's Permit to drive, or when they make the "mind blown" hand gesture more than once in a lesson, or....
Teaching is the life.
Which is why I am doing it. :) Most readers know this by now, but I have accepted a job teaching in the fall at Mountain View High School in Orem. I will be the one and only Physics teacher there. I will teach Conceptual (without much math), Honors, and AP Physics (which is a lot for a first year teacher). It will be a challenge, but a good challenge. I go through phases of being scared out of my mind and being super excited. It will be a great experience. I am really blessed to get a job so soon and so close. The classroom is big and fairly well equipped.
I'm going to be a teacher! EXCITED! :)

An Everyday Inspiration

Yesterday I was driving home from giving my roommate a ride when I saw something worth celebrating.
On the side of the road was a man who was probably in his fifties, balding, pale, and wearing his weight differently than he used to. He was wearing a thinning white button-up shirt with a nondescript tie. He looked very unassuming and a like a quieter person.
Next to him on the sidewalk was a teenager boy in jeans and a leather jacket with messy hair. It took me a moment to realize that they were together because it was an odd combination of people. The older man kept looking at the paper in his hands and up at the numbers on the houses. It was clear they were looking for a house they hadn't been to before. The punk teenager didn't look super thrilled and just followed the man as he tried to figure the address out.
Then it hit me. They were going hometeaching.
And my heart went out to that man for doing his duty, fulfilling his calling, and in a quiet way, impacting that young man's life. Even though I will never know who those two men were, I celebrate that man's efforts. I'm sure God was smiling down at them.

Inn Keeper for the Lord

Over Christmas Break I went on a road trip with my family. We traveled through St. George, to Queen Creek, Arizona, to Flagstaff, and back to St. George again on our way home. We saw a lot of my extended family, but the main purpose of the trip was to visit my Grandma Atkin in Flagstaff, Arizona. I haven't been to her house in years, and it was good to visit her, but one thing that she talked about stuck with me enough to share with all of you.
My grandma is one of the most generous people I know. She never has been much for housekeeping, but it is because she puts people first and always has. We always say that she has rubber walls and infinite beds. The number of lives she has personally blessed is countless. Her house is always open for people who need a place to stay for the night, and her wallet has probably lent and given more money than she has ever spent on herself. The people she helps are often strangers and sometimes they don't even speak the same language. There are many Japanese, Hawaiian, and Navajo people that know and love her.  Her garage is full of other people's things that needed a place to put things just for a little while (which turns into years). She goes out with the sister missionaries weekly, and is working on the guy at the Verizon Store (she had him over for dinner and everything). My dad still remembers how mortified he felt when she shared the gospel with a motorcycle gang at McDonald's when he was young. She truly has the right perspective on life.
You might think what she does might not be safe, and surely she has had a few people use her and take things valuable from her, but she doesn't let it stop her from continuing to give. They are just things after all, and things aren't really what matter in life, she tells me.
I was talking to her while we were visiting, and she shared how one day while she was riding a train home from somewhere, an analogy for her role in life occurred to her (by the spirit, I think). She is quite the writer, so she wrote a short essay about it. I don't have her essay or her eloquence, but I do want to share the idea of it. When Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem and couldn't find a place to stay, a thoughtful inn keeper who realized that a bustling inn full of people and animals wasn't the place to have a baby let them use his stable for more privacy. That innkeeper provided a place for the birth of the Lord.
When the Lord shared the parable of the Good Samaritan, he wasn't able to take care of all of the hurt man's needs. He picked him off of the road, bound his wounds, and took him to an inn where he left him the care of the inn keeper to be cared for. He didn't do all of the healing himself, he just paid for it.
Similarly, Christ needs inn keepers on earth. He pays for the healing his people need, but he needs inn keepers to help him with his healing work. My grandmother views her role in life as an inn keeper for the Lord. And she is. That inn keeper on the road back home is there to help heal. That road is a dangerous place, but the inn keeper won't suffer too severe of damages because everyone recognizes the need for a good inn keeper on that road. They are protected.
I'm not sure that my role in life will be to be as literal of an inn keeper as my grandmother, but in some small way I hope to help with the healing of the Lord's people and in that way serve as an Inn Keeper of the Lord.