Professional Issues Class Post 1: Snow forts and lightbulbs

For my final graduate school course, we are charged with creating a blog that will serve as a tool for making personal reflections on our journey and the path ahead.    This first assignment involved perusing 6 pages of quotations about education and learning, to find the ones that “spoke to us” about the journey we have made thus far.    I was tempted go just go with:

D'oh!

-- Homer Simpson, Matt Groening cartoon, Unknown

I mean, my entire life to now could probably be summed up in a series of Homer Simpson quotes, but rather than the above (which actually was included on the list for the assignment!) I would have picked:

Alright Brain, you don't like me, and I don't like you. But lets just do this, and I can get back to killing you with beer.

-- Homer Simpson, Matt Groening cartoon, Unknown

I may or may not have had that exact same conversation with my brain every time a writing assignment has been due for the past 3 ½ years.   Alas, that one wasn’t on the list. 

So in an effort to write something a little more inspirational, I picked the following:

Don't wait for something big to occur. Start where you are, with what you have, and that will always lead you into something greater.

-- Mary Manin Morrissey, Unknown, Unknown

People often say that if you wait for the "best time" to have children, you never will.  Having been a parent for the past 12 years now, I can heartily agree.  Is there ever a "best time" to decide to forgo sleeping in on weekends for the rest of your life?  When is the best time to decide that your DVR no longer needs to be full of action movies and trashy reality TV, but rather 782 episodes of My Little Pony:  Friendship is Magic in HD?

In the end, most people just go for it.  They find a way to fit those adorable little beasties we call children into their lives and most of us are better off for it.    I find the same is true of going back to school.    I already covered the Who, What & Why in my now defunct Grad School Mama 2010 blog, but the When is really the point of this post. 

Is there ever a perfect time to spend $30,000 for the privilege of replacing all fiction reading with peer reviewed research journal articles?  Is there ever a perfect time to choose to stay up late for class 3 nights a week and turn your social life into a distant memory?  Is there ever a perfect time to drag yourself out of bed at 6:30 in the morning to don scrubs and march into the Skilled Nursing Facility to be drilled by your supervisor on various dysphagia exercises?   

Nah,  you just do it.  You take that first step and then keep at it, one foot in front of the other.   FAFSA, GRE, Admission Essays, transcripts, textbooks, Blackboard, research papers, clinical placements, CPR training, lesson planning, laminating, Pinterest, childcare juggling, Praxis, resumes and before you know it, you are writing blog posts for your final class.   

Reading back on that old blog, I am glad I decided to go for it.   I worried that I would be 40 by the time I graduated.   Well, as the old saying goes "you'll be 40 anyway. "  

What I have discovered along the way is that despite the journal articles and late nights, it really has been an amazingly fun ride.     I love laminating and lesson planning and working with kids.  I love that feeling that comes when a client "gets it" for the first time.   

 

Which leads me to the last quote from that 6 page list that resonated with me.  

It feels a lot colder when you're shoveling snow than when you're building a snow fort.

-- Cynthia Copeland Lewis, Really important stuff my kids have taught me, 1994

 

Because school is work, and if you just focus on the drudgery, it's enough to make you quit.   But building a snow fort is fun!   My snow fort is built with bricks of knowledge, friendship, accomplishment, inspiration, empathy, growth and humility.    Or maybe it looks something like this: