Another Look Over My Shoulder

Recently I had the strange realization that I'm almost done with school. Like forever.

(Unless I end up going to grad school, which I won't plan on doing until I've been teaching for 5-10 years with no marriage prospects...yes, pessimistic sounding, I know, but I'm just basing that off what I've seen with all my non-married professors--and there are quite a few of them who are very awesome women.)

This is my last semester of classes for my major and then I have to stay for spring term to finish up the last 6 credits for my TESOL minor. Holy cow. Only FIVE more months of classes. That blows my mind.

I am not old enough to be a responsible adult with a real job teaching people's children, am I? I certainly don't feel like it. I'm still just a kid hoping I'll get asked out on a date for this weekend. The next six months are the last ones where I am free to do as I please. Where I’m free to stay out until 3 in the morning on a school night because it doesn’t really matter if I doze off in class. I can’t justify doing that next year as a teacher. That’s not fair to my students. It will sure be interesting learning how to balance my professional life with my fun, “crazy” social life...haha yeah right. I know that the first year teaching is the hardest and I’m gonna be crazy busy, probably constantly wanting to shoot myself. I'm gonna be even more of a bore next year than I've been this year.

Alright, that sounded very pessimistic, I’m sorry. I’m really not that pessimistic about it all. I’m super excited. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was like ten, so this is my dream. I can’t wait to have my own classroom where I can love and help those kids and make some kind of difference in their lives. Yeah, yeah, I’m just another one of those crazies who believes that I’m gonna change the world because I’m a teacher...well, it’s because I believe I’m going to, at least for some of those kids.

I guess the point of all of this rambling is that it’s so crazy to think about how far I’ve come in just a short few years. I mean, I think about the person I was 3 years ago as a senior in high school. I’m pretty sure if that girl saw me today she would be so surprised that she was looking at herself. I don’t think that I’ve necessarily changed in super dramatic ways like I’m a completely new and different person, I just think that I’ve discovered a lot about myself and have grown more confident in who and what I am.

For example, I have become almost completely non-self-conscious. Like a couple of days ago in one of my classes I was part of a group presentation that required me to need a yellow bouncy ball. I had absolutely no qualms carrying that yellow bouncy ball around campus. I just walked around like it wasn't a problem in the world, and it wasn't. I didn't even care to notice if people were giving me strange glances or not. That isn't the first strange thing I've carried through campus either. I think my favorite was the pizza. Lindsay called me one day when I came home from lunch and told me to grab a pizza to bring to math, so I walked all the way from Little Caesar's on 9th all the way to the Talmage with a pizza. Didn’t care. I’m not afraid to wear what I want, to say what I want, to listen to or watch what I want. I’m me and I’ll do whatever I darn well please because that’s who I am. I want people to like me for who I am, not for something that they think I might be. I think back to high school and even freshman year and I’m not sure I could say that. I think that I still kind of sheltered the real me that year. I will admit, I got made fun of a lot less by my friends, but I think it’s fun and endearing to get to make fun of each other for the silly quirks that make you you.

I also think it’s fun to look at the school aspect of this change. I remember back to high school when I had to write a ten page literary analysis paper. Oh man, writing that thing was as bad as having to sit through six plus hours of church meetings on a Sunday. Awful. I wanted to die. Well, thankfully I only ever had to write one ten page paper for the one English class I’ve had to take in college, and it wasn’t that awful because it was on a subject I was interested in (I’m trying very hard not to go off on one of my teaching philosophy tangents right now about motivation…) and my time and resources were much better suited to the task than they were in high school. Even if I’d been asked to write a five page paper, that would have been so hard and taken me days. Then I think of freshman year. Child development. I don’t know how many hours I sat at my desk trying to write that stupid six page adolescent autobiography. Then I think about those three page papers for music civ. I stayed up all night writing those dumb things, three out of the four times I had to write them. Why did it take me six hours to write those things? I sure wish I knew. Sure, they were research papers, but our teacher told us to use wikipedia as our main source. Now I look at the stuff I’ve been doing the past two or three semesters and just laugh. This semester alone I've already written probably like five or six papers. I haven’t stayed up past midnight doing homework probably since last winter semester. I can spit out a three page paper in twenty minutes, thirty tops. I wonder though if that’s just me becoming more apathetic toward my grades, or if I really have improved in my paper writing skills. Either way, it sure does save me a lot of time.

Ok, I can’t help it…I’m gonna go off on one of my educational tangents. Extrinsic motivation. They say you shouldn’t extrinsically motivate your students, i.e. give them candy or awards for good behavior, etc. You should motivate them in such a way that they are intrinsically motivated…they want to succeed because they want to. I think that’s a load of junk. I will illustrate with an apparent example in my life. I have always been very conscious of my grades. All through elementary, middle, and high school I always had to have that row of "A"s on my report card. So I always did. I would work hard and sacrifice sleep to get all my loads of homework done every night. My motivation? College. I had to get the best grades so I’d get into BYU and hopefully get a good scholarship. Well, it worked and I got to college. Then the motivation for good grades? Keeping that dang scholarship. That was the only reason why I have cared for the last 5 semesters. I just turned in my last application for my last scholarship though and the grades from this semester aren’t counted toward that. So, do I care about my grades? Nope. I mean, yeah, there’s still a part of me that just won’t let me fail any of my assignments, but I’m not going to kill myself trying to get an A in all my classes. I have a lot of partner projects and papers for this semester. Am I stressing? Nope. She doesn’t seem to care too much, so neither do I. Extrinsic motivation? It works.

Alright, enough. I guess I just find it interesting looking back at the past few years and seeing how far I’ve come. I had never done that before. I don’t know if it’s because I just hadn’t ever come very far when I looked back, or I just hadn’t bothered to look back. I would suggest it though. Look back at who you were three years ago, two years, one year, six months, maybe even just a month ago. It’s amazing to see how the things you see and do and go through in life shape who you are today.