A New Beginning: My Ed.D.

 

I had to make a visual representation of where I am currently in my career, so, uh, ta da!

I composed the following post for one of my class assignments and decided to re-post it on my lovely EduBlog. Enjoy!

I am very excited to begin this new journey in my educational and professional career. I am most excited to see myself as a student once again, as it has been ten years since I completed my master’s program, and, in that time frame, I have occasionally wondered whether I would approach school differently if I were to be in school at this stage of my life or if I would have a greater appreciation for being a student than I did years ago, when being a student was all I knew, as I had not yet begun my career. With as excited as I am to begin this new chapter, I know that I will face a variety of challenges in the years ahead.

I (Think I Might) Love You, Internet (Even If I Don't Always Like You)

In the past, I've sometimes contemplated how I would explain the concept of the Internet to a person living 100 years ago if I somehow found myself sitting in the past after stumbling into a rip in the space-time continuum. Imagine having to explain the concept of the Internet to people who predate the computer!

"The Internet is a place," I could see myself starting. "I mean, it's not a physical place, but it's not solely in your mind, either. You can physically see it, engage with it, and communicate with almost anybody! Most people in the US have access to portable devices with glowing screens that can connect to the Internet. It's an infinite source of knowledge."

"Indubitably," responds the hypothetical person from the past, who, regardless of time period and region, would definitely use that term, "people in your time must love taking advantage of its infinite knowledge! Everybody must be so intelligent in your time. Oh, it must be divine to come from a most learned civilization of scholars!"

"Yeah...you would think so, but most use the Internet as a source of completely mindless entertainment. Also, much of the 'information' provided by the Internet is unreliable, and people have moved away from reading books. Actually, this guy named Ray Bradbury is going to write a book about this in the 1950s that will predict all of this, so if you want to know more, I'd say read that book and you'll get the idea."

Corona Time in Teachingland

Life in 2020...or is this 2008? Hard to differentiate.

One of my biggest regrets of the past few years has been my complete negligence of maintaining this EduBlog; to be honest, it would have been nice to have more detailed documentation of my teaching life, pre-coronavirus (P.C.?), at my fingertips, for a reminder of my "normal" routine, but I digress. To be honest, I have thought of several ideas for Edublog entries over the years and left those ideas in the drafts, to be written later. Yet here I am, remembering a particular item on the list of study tips that my eighth grade science teacher relayed to us at the beginning of that year: Don't refuse to start a task until the inspiration strikes; it probably never will. You were right, Mrs. M: later never came, and there are seven or eight half-completed (I'm an optimist!) drafts sitting in the queue. But again, I digress.

For right now, I just want to take some time to discuss the changes in the last few weeks: of my routine, of my experience as a teacher, of my state of mind as a human being.

As a side note, please excuse what is likely to be a composition that flows as a stream of consciousness as opposed to a polished piece of writing. Does anybody really want to proof read at 3:00 AM?