What a journey it has been.
Since January of 2014 I’ve been on a path of rebirth, renew, and rebuilding. It hasn’t been without pain – those moments where I found the need to change required some hard decisions. It hasn’t been without heartache – having to lose the social life I had to focus my time, effort, and energy on the work of becoming a teacher. It hasn’t been without failure – messing up on big assignments and having to repeat one class due to my lack of planning.
Yet, these things also have benefited me. I’ve learned that change is a part of life. That I have to rework myself to become a better person and a better worker. That I’ve learned that sometimes closing the friends circle to a trusted and reliable few is the better call. That I’m a life long learner – and that through my “Charlie Brown Kicking the Football” moments of fail – I realized what I needed to do to be better at it. That I had to refocus my time management, that I needed to make the time to do the work, and that I needed to realize to be a teacher, I would have to work very hard to get there. And that meant relearning, redoing, and redrawing my work, myself, and my perspective.
I have one last semester of classes left and then Student Teaching kicks off in Spring of 2018. I don’t imagine I’ll have much time to write about my days when I’m busy working during that time. Which means there’s probably one last blog post to write next semester – and it’ll be a hard one to write. I’ll be saying goodbye to four or so years of college. I’ll be leaving behind some of the greatest professors on the planet. And I’ll be leaving behind a community of college students that I’ve grown to love and respect. Yes, this is how it works. Yes, I have to graduate if I want to get a job and do this. But it doesn’t make the change any easier when you know it’s coming. I’ve become friends with some great future teachers and shared moments filled with tears, anxiety, fears, panic, and nervousness. I am somewhat saddened that those people will still be in my life, but we won’t be doing the daily grind together anymore. We’ll be off on our own new paths meeting our new teams in our new schools with our new students.
I never thought that I would grow attached to the professors and students with whom I’ve shared the last four years but it gives me hope that in those moments where teaching pushes each of us to the limit and we’re in the weeds in that first year of teaching – that we’ll remember we’re not alone and our friends are with us in conquering the world of education.