As I settle into my mahogany-style desk piled high with stacks of student work, a cup of steaming coffee sitting invitingly to my left, I begin to reflect on my year. A fog of exhaustion has settled around me in a comforting embrace, enticing me to close my eyes just for a moment. This time last year I was working frantically toward finishing the last few requirements of my Master's degree in anticipation of an easier and more glamorous lifestyle. I was a grad student who had only experienced teaching in the comforting arms of a cooperating teacher. A mentor to catch me and direct me down the path of "more." There's always more in education. More rigor, more core-based lessons, more differentiation. Always more. I held stubbornly to the delusion that once I was in my own classroom I would If I had only known then what I know now...
When I started college, I was older than the 18 year olds that roamed the corridors of the campus, though I was in the same lost fog. Life had taken me by the collar and shaken me a few times; chewed me up and spit me out even. I was determined to do better than my parents, and I knew that I could. I was 24, the age that most people graduate with a Bachelor's degree. I was embarrassed, but on a mission. I lived the whole of my time at community college in solitude, only making one friend by accident. It wasn't until I transferred to the university that I truly blossomed. No one can believe it now, but I rarely spoke unless I was spoken to in those early days. Then I started meeting the others. The outspoken, vibrant, beautifully creative teacher types that were like me, only younger, louder, and somehow.... MORE. I would never admit it out loud, but I was intimidated. How could I NOT be?
