Mariola Zyglowicz is a senior who is just beginning to start her student teaching at local schools. She is majoring in English education and is getting a minor in psychology education. But there's a twist.

"I was actually born in Poland, but I want to teach English," she said. "I think that's the ironic thing."

Zyglowicz's father moved to the United States when she was four, and Ola — as Mariola is known by her friends — followed with her grandmother when she was six.

Zyglowicz now lives in Chicago with her father and stepmother while her mother and two half-sisters still call Poland home.

"I love going there and hanging out," Zyglowicz said of her month-long visit to Poland last summer. "It's totally different and really fun, but I wouldn't want to live there permanently."

Zyglowicz said her father came to the United States looking for "better opportunities" and it seems like she will be achieving some of those opportunities when she graduates from the University in May.

Although Zyglowicz has been observing junior high school classes since last year, she got a taste of the nitty gritty on Oct. 28 at Champaign Central High School when she taught without the help of another teacher.

"It was actually really good, but I think more so because about half of the kids weren't there," Zyglowicz laughed. "We're observing low track freshmen, so there's lots of discipline issues."

Zyglowicz said low track means those students who have varieties of learning or behavior disorders.

But not everything ran smoothly on Zyglowicz's first day of independent student-teaching. Things got interesting when Zyglowicz read a folk tale to the class.

"It dealt with God and the whole tale of how women take advantage of men ... It was really humorous," she said. "But this one kid raised his hand and said, 'well, I hate that story because I'm Muslim' and we had no idea what to say."

Still Zyglowicz remained positive and came home to put on her pajamas and get a good dose of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor on the classic sitcom Home Improvement — which is something of a daily ritual — before cooking dinner.

Zyglowicz's apartment is a neatly trimmed, sparsely decorated, two-bedroom — a cream colored vision if you have obsessive compulsive disorder — but by far one of the neatest living quarters on campus.

Roommate and senior in Biology, Monica "Mo" Nawrocki described Zyglowicz as a loyal friend.

"(She's) very loyal, someone who you can always count on," Nawrocki said. "I would die without her in my classes."

Zyglowicz helps Nawrocki edit her science papers to which Nawrocki said she is eternally grateful.

"Without her editing skills I would fail out of college or something," she said. Nawrocki lived with Zyglowicz last year in a triple and also plans on teaching after college.

Zyglowicz described her bedroom as being "girly" and boasted of her love of cows, sitting on her bed with her stuffed cow, "Common Wealth."

"I love cows, I have a tremendous fear of birds, but I love cows," she said. Interesting ... Cows — lovable creatures. Birds — scary little devils.

But why Ola? Why?

"I was attacked (by a bird) on my grandma's farm back in Poland," she said. "That was kind of traumatizing ... It chased me and bit me in my ass." That was when Zyglowicz was five.

There is also the issue of when she was four; she had a pet chick that she kept in her apartment. Her mother stepped on a chair to reach some shoes on a ledge then "squashed it to death" when she stepped down. Although Zyglowicz said both experiences were "traumatizing" she does boast at her own insect killing braveries.

"I'm definitely the designated bug killer in our apartment," she said. "We had a huge issue with those beetles earlier this year, so much that an exterminator and sealing my bedroom window didn't help. So, needless to say, I was killing like 20 bugs a day," she said.

No bugs were seen at the time of the interview, only honey loving bears and small pigs and tigers.

Next to her computer — equipped with a Winnie the Pooh screen saver — are pictures of her best friend Katie, her boyfriend Jesús and her grandmother.

"I still talk to my grandma all the time," she said. "She just recently moved back to Poland but she raised me here since I was little."

To wind down, Zyglowicz said she enjoys going out and dancing or staying at home and playing drunken Monopoly.

"I'm very big into just chilling, watching movies ... hanging out with my boyfriend when he comes down for the weekend," she said.

Her boyfriend is taking classes at Northeastern University in Chicago and just graduated from the Marine Corps last December. Zyglowicz said she sees him almost every weekend.

"The only weekends I don't see him are when he has to do his Marine thing ... He has to go about once a month," she said.

Zyglowicz said her biggest pet peeve is people who cannot be themselves.

"I really admire people who can be really genuine and tell me the truth at all times even if I may not like it," she said.