Student Teaching.

Well my time in school is winding down to an end...or a beginning, depending on how you look at it. I am at the point where I can't wait for the end, but I don't want to let go of what I have now...and at the same time I am looking at what I have now, and wondering if it will be enough to carry me through.

Student Teaching:

I feel like I am giving my all. Everything I have, and yet I am not where I want to be. I feel mediocre. In many ways student teaching has brought out all of my weaknesses and placed them right before my eyes.

In some ways they haunt me, and I feel powerless to overcome them...and at other times I have sweet moments of success when I can tell that I taught something new, and my students understood.

I guess I am a perfectionist...because failure even in the slightest degree makes me sick to the point where I feel nauseous.

I guess that is fitting for Halloween...today might have been a colossal fail...and I'm not sure if I'm feeling all dramatic lately or if I'm internalizing things that weren't supposed to be...but I want to be great, and I'm not. This is not an over-dramatization...it really was a fail. It's hard to accept that I still have a lot to learn. It's not something I can learn by taking a test, or reading a book...It's something that will take time...and a lot of patience.

Today is the first day that I really thought to myself, "maybe I can't do this." It's a scary thought near the end of this journey. I have fought for so long to get to where I'm at, and now that the end is staring me in the face I feel like reality has settled in, and all that I worked for over the past years is not enough.

The worst thing is I honestly feel like I am giving it my all...I am doing everything I know how...and it still feels insufficient. I feel insufficient. Which is something I've been used to throughout school...it's just part of what I've decided to do... it seems to have hit all in a few days, and I am overwhelmed to say the least.

Wow...this feels like a dump session...maybe it is. Well...it is what it is.

Different.

I feel so different from who I was. I think differently, and I respond to things differently. I care or don't care differently. I am learning that life...is a learning experience. Life is not a pass or fail - It's a how you play the game thing.

I feel older. Sometimes wiser. Sometimes...not at all.

I don't think I am less dramatic...maybe more. I feel like I can open up more. For some reason, I have had this wall of insecurity up...I built it slowly over the years. Brick by brick. It was okay because I could still see daylight, and smell the open air. I could still hear the hustle bustle of the outside world. One year, I didn't want to hear or smell, or see the outside world. I didn't want to look into the face of reality. I felt bruised and broken. I put up many bricks that year, and several years after. But my wounds healed, and I went to look again for daylight, and I found that I had built my wall so very thick. I didn't know if daylight still existed. Instead of fighting. I sat down inside my wall and cried, and moaned, and I waited for someone to rescue me. I waited for an absolution. When no one came, I knew I had to be the one to tear down my own wall.
And, that is what I have been doing. Little by little the wall is coming down. Sometimes I forget what I am doing, and pour the mortar for new bricks, and sometimes I even get them in place before I realize I really do cherish the daylight. After all the darkness...I am seeing the daylight with different eyes. Everything is different, even though it is the same. I am different.

Faint traces of scars sometimes seem to re-appear, but I don't feel like I need to hide them... I don't feel like I need to flaunt them either. They are simply there. Part of who I have become. I am not even sure I know yet who I have become...but I do know...It's definitely different.

Summer "to do" list

Summer is well on it's way! It's even starting to feel like summer here in Rexburg...and there are SO many things I want to do before it's over...so here is the check list:

[x] Bonfire @ the Dunes
[x] Egin Lake
[ ] Playmill Theatre > 7 Brides or Beauty & Beast
[ ] Summer Music Festival - Jackson Hole
[ ] Drive in
[x] Caves
[x] Porter Park Water Fight
[x] Roommate Date night
[ ] Train for 1/2 marathon
[x] Visit with Aunts & Uncles
[x] See Toy Story 3 (SO GOOD!)
[ ] Zoo & Tauphus Park
[ ] Hike
[ ] Mesa Falls
[x] Monkey Rock
[x] well...
[ ] that's all I can think of for now...

[x] ...oh yeah, and school

Dear AmyJo,

I have spent so much of my life...wishing...

...I wished to be popular,
I wished to be pretty,
I wished I could sing,
I wished I could be skinny,
I wished I could have my pick of the boys,
I wished I could be confident,
I wished he'd like me,
I wished anyone liked me,
I wished I didn't do that,
I wish I didn't care so much,
I wish I studied harder,
I wish I had understood better,
I wish I had listened,
I wish I had already graduated,
I wish I hadn't listened,
I wish I was faster,
I wish I could have more money,
I wish I had known.

I have spent so much time wishing that I could find future happiness instead of being happy right now. I have spent a lot of time hating myself for things I didn't have that I wish I did...I can't believe I have spent so much time worrying and wishing.

Now here I am. Single. 26. Still in school.
I am looking back at all the dreams I had when I was younger, and how much time I have spent worrying and wishing, and now I am left with nothing. I feel like I am too old to fight for what I want. That I just need to slip quietly into the hum drum of life, and keep wishing that things turn out happy.

How much time do I have to waste to realize that my life is my own?
While I do not always choose the path, I do choose the means of traveling.

I am facing another jury next week. This time is a little different - because of my injury I was not able to jury last semester, so this is a make up jury. As I think about it my lungs constrict and my heart beats faster...if I didn't care so much I might actually be confident enough to get a good score...isn't it funny how that works.

I feel like I put all of this imaginary pressure on myself.
I feel old, and "behind," not confident, not skilled. I worry that they will judge me based on what they know of me. You know what's funny...a lot of teachers think I don't have the skills I do because I hide them behind a curtain of doubt. (yeah. not that funny.) I don't want to hide anymore.

I am not going to look back and wish I did better. I am going to do better. I am going to be confident. I can't keep hiding behind wishes.

If I keep doing this I am never actually going to live my life.
(while I say this...I have not a clue in the world as to how to change my mindset, but life is about learning, and I will do it.)