Summer is coming!!

I have been doing this blog for just over a year now. I missed posting about the bloggiversary--oh well. I was just about to talk about how it's almost summer. Just one week of teaching and one week of finals and all the grading are left!! That made me think about the posts I did last year early in the life of the blog.

I always have the same frantic/lazy feeling at this time of year. In the last weeks of the semester the students and I both alternate between wanting summer to come faster and wanting more time to do what needs to be done before finals. Time limited learning. It is a good thing because the end is in sight, the pain and agony of learning takes place in a finite semester (aprender es sufrir, as one of my students told me!). But the time limit makes your failure very clear. I don't mean a failing grade. I mean a failure to do better. In almost every other part of life we can say, I'll do better tomorrow, or next week, or after this crisis, or after I just have this one last day of irresponsibility. In school the day of reckoning comes and you see that you will be stuck with your failures, whether on the transcript or in your own private record.

Wow, that sounds sad! But here is the good part. The failure is recorded, but you don't dwell on it too much. You go on vacation! Plus, you know that you will (all too soon!) be starting a new semester with a clean fresh slate! Not totally clean, because your previous failures are still all there, but you have new hope that this time you can do better!!

This semester by semester accounting and the opportunity for fresh starts is why I like teaching. On the other hand, the fact that you always fail to do enough is what drives other people to new careers. If you can't feel ok about the distance between your aspirations and reality, then it's not a good career fit.

I keep this quote on my office wall for myself and my students. A few of them (especially the reentry students) have commented on it.

"Far away there in the sunshine are my aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
—Louisa May Alcott