It had to end sometime...

Well folks school is coming to a close. It's been a pretty crazy year and now here we are at the end. It's been a really bittersweet time for me. On the one hand, it's summer and that's great. No more grading or planning or anything work related. On the other hand it's a little depressing. My first year is over. I will never have another like it. My students that I have this year will stand out from all others for me because they were my first. And so it's with a little sadness that I started pulling stuff down off my walls and shelves over the past couple days. I'm also sad that I didn't write in this blog more. I just noticed that I only have 38 entries... 38 out of 188 days of school ain't too good. But oh well.

All this reflection and stuff got me thinking about back when I was in 7th grade. It was a really tough time for me. So tough that it makes the slight depression right now feel like a cake walk. What made it so bad then though wasn't feeling bad leaving school, it was having to go everyday.
Some of you know my story here but for those that don't I'll try to keep it short.

In about 1993 or so we moved from WV to TX. I went from a small town with mostly white people to a school where whites were the minority. I went from not knowing any culture besides my own to being tossed into an environment where almost no one was like me. I'll never forget having a locker by a guy named after the son of God and wondering why he put so much baby oil in his hair. I'll never forget eating my first fresh jalapeno or my first Frito pie. I'll never forget chasing down horny toads and tumbleweeds because they were like this foreign oddity to us. But as new and wild as all that was, it's tough to even describe how hard that year was. For the most part I think it was because I was so different. My attitude was foreign and my life experience was abnormal but truly it was my accent that garnered so much junior high style verbal pounding.

Anyone who talks to me now knows I have an accent. I like it because I feel like it's a trait that sets me apart from others and makes me unique. Unfortunately for me, being a new kid in a middle school isn't the time to be unique.... often times I really wished I could have just blended in.

Luckily, this "first" 7th grade year wasn't nearly as rough. Today I wanted to really put a good ending note on it all so I just got up and talked to the kids. I talked to them about my life story and how the fact that I'm in such a good place now happened largely due to luck. I explained that most people who squander years of college, thousands of dollars and multiple opportunities don't really get the chance to recover and have a really happy ending. I talked about my wife and how different her life was compared to mine. She was a top graduate in high school, had scholarships at UT where she was a business honors student. Now she gets to stay home with our baby and work from the home office and is doing well with it. I tried to convey that the differences between her life and mine could be traced all the way back to around the same time my students are living in now. In middle school my wife made alot of decisions and set goals for herself academically and professionally. She would spend her school years tenaciously pursuing those goals. Like her I also set goals. However instead of setting personal expectations with an eye toward college and career, I was much more in the here and now. My main purpose in life became earning respect and friendship from people around me.

I'm happy to say that at least on some level I managed to overcome the fact that I was a huge dork and talked like I'd just crawled out of a turnip sack. I'm glad to say that by the time I got to high school, I knew alot of people and had several friends that I was pretty close to. I had girlfriends, I got into yearbook alot and everybody knew who I was. This isn't to say I was like the prom king or anything... but I was the prom king's best friend! Anyway the point is that I accomplished what I had set out to do. Unfortunately I really had no plan beyond that. My wife on the other hand was just getting started when she finished high school.

The moral of this story is that you need to set goals for yourself and then go after them. If you manage to get them knocked out, be sure to set new ones. That's what I told the little budding teenagers on their last real day of school and that's what I'm telling you folks now. Don't get caught in the doldrums of life because you failed set the bar. Find something you want to learn, accomplish, see, do, find, overcome, etc. and go out there and grab it. Remember the rabbit and the snake from day 1? If you don't, go back and check that out. Be fierce bunnies out there kids... the world will be a better place for it.

Thanks for an awesomely fantastic year class of 2014. I love all you knuckleheads and I'm going to miss you more than you know.

Overheard @ WoRMS

Kid: Why do you have Miracle Grow in here?
Me: Well I do have several plants.
Kid: Why would you put that on plants?
Me: To help them grow....?
Kid: But isn't that stuff for your hair?
Me: Well.... at least you asked before you had to find out on your own... woog