This blog post was originally part of a video, but the video was twenty minutes long and extremely boring to be honest. In short, I gave myself a challenge to write a post in ten minutes. What you see below is that post.
I never really sat down to think about this prompt. It’s like one of those questions that they ask you in job interviews, isn’t it? What are your flaws, or what do you think you can do to improve yourself? And you always practice these formulaic answers ahead of time, but they don’t necessarily sound natural when they come out in conversation.
So, what do I want to improve upon? The first thing that comes to mind is my stress level. I tend to want to do everything and do it well. Sometimes I take on too much. I try to fit in too much in a day, and I need to step back and smell the roses a bit.
I have improved in this area the last year or so. I think that if you set time aside for what is important, you can really start to see what you want to make use of in your day, week, month, year, etc. Anyway, I’m already thinking about the amount of time that was left in this stopwatch. This is not the best blog that I’ve written, and now I realize what my students must go through when I put a timer on the board and give them an assignment.
Stress. Saying it even sounds stressful. By the way, did any of you English nerds notice all of the alliteration in that sentence? Stress, saying, sounds stressful? It’s like it’s out of a Dr. Seuss book. With remote learning and grad school coming up, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The last few days have been nothing short of overwhelming. We’ve attended wonderful PD’s, but with every seminar comes new information. It’s hard to know where to begin to prepare for the year.
I have all of these wonderful ideas, but I don’t know where to start. Sometimes, I have to learn to step back, go for a walk, breathe. I know that I will get there. I know that it will be okay, but the hardest part of the roller coaster is when you are at the top, preparing for that quick descent. It will be a fun ride, but I’m just sucking in my stomach from the fear that lies ahead.
With just over two minutes left here, I will say this. I hope you learned something about the writing process. The first draft is hardly perfect. This wasn’t my favorite topic in the world, but I made something out of it anyway. Now I will go through and edit it. Thanks for watching and reading!