My Thing
16. The last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about My Thing. And yes, I wrote it like that so that you would get a dirty image, but let me explain further. With grad school fading out of next year's picture, it's prompted me to take a good hard look at what I think "my thing" really is.
It's easy to peg on some people. His thing is medicine, and to become a great doctor. Her thing is animals, she wants to rescue them. His thing is acting, he's going to audition for anything he can get in his radar. Her thing is cooking, his thing is computers, her thing is photography, his thing is biology.
So what's my thing?
To this question, my boyfriend immediately responded, "I thought your thing was education," and well yes, that's what I would say. But what does that actually mean? I spent most of my younger school life just doing well at whatever I wanted to do. Then I go to college and study a little bit about biology and a little bit about child development and a little bit about teaching and learning theory. But I'm probably not going to make the rest of my life studying science, so I piece together this idea that I will learn about science curriculum and help create more effective methods for teaching science. But on that end...I don't really see myself becoming a teacher anymore. And I don't think that would bode well for wanting to learn about curriculum and finding ways for teachers to be better if I haven't experienced it myself.
So this is where I got caught up a bit. I don't think I'm going to be a teacher, this year will probably be one of my few teaching experiences (and with my sporadic schedule, a very light teaching experience), how in the world can I say that my thing is education?
Well, always in the back of my head has been this desire to work in a higher education institution and be on the admin side of the kind of work that I did in college. Today while talking to a friend about writing articles and being published, I had the urge to look up some youtube videos of old Archi performances. And boy, was I in for a rush...looking at videos, linking them to my friends, being commended on performing and having "actually did stuff in college", there was my answer...part of the answer anyway. When it came down to it, my stuff, my thing, or rather, things, were all of those crazy activities that filled my days to bring some sparkle to college life. My college life, and hopefully, the lives of my friends and other people in the community. Even now, I can't help but feel like it would be so freakin cool to help college kids create awesome events, or kickstart a student group, or stir up some buzz about all the opportunities students have for doing something, for finding their stuff. And yeah, it might be one of those things where I'm clinging on to How I Was Before since I'm having this meta-identity crisis over here in Japanthelandofnothingtodo. But if I just take a few steps back, this kind of stuff is education in some sense, the out of the classroom/building upon passions/learning to be independent and execute ideas kind of education...and wouldn't that be so very cool to be a part of?
...so work's done for today, so I'll leave it at that. I do have a couple more ideas floating around, but I think for now I'll just simmer on this for a bit :)
It's easy to peg on some people. His thing is medicine, and to become a great doctor. Her thing is animals, she wants to rescue them. His thing is acting, he's going to audition for anything he can get in his radar. Her thing is cooking, his thing is computers, her thing is photography, his thing is biology.
So what's my thing?
To this question, my boyfriend immediately responded, "I thought your thing was education," and well yes, that's what I would say. But what does that actually mean? I spent most of my younger school life just doing well at whatever I wanted to do. Then I go to college and study a little bit about biology and a little bit about child development and a little bit about teaching and learning theory. But I'm probably not going to make the rest of my life studying science, so I piece together this idea that I will learn about science curriculum and help create more effective methods for teaching science. But on that end...I don't really see myself becoming a teacher anymore. And I don't think that would bode well for wanting to learn about curriculum and finding ways for teachers to be better if I haven't experienced it myself.
So this is where I got caught up a bit. I don't think I'm going to be a teacher, this year will probably be one of my few teaching experiences (and with my sporadic schedule, a very light teaching experience), how in the world can I say that my thing is education?
Well, always in the back of my head has been this desire to work in a higher education institution and be on the admin side of the kind of work that I did in college. Today while talking to a friend about writing articles and being published, I had the urge to look up some youtube videos of old Archi performances. And boy, was I in for a rush...looking at videos, linking them to my friends, being commended on performing and having "actually did stuff in college", there was my answer...part of the answer anyway. When it came down to it, my stuff, my thing, or rather, things, were all of those crazy activities that filled my days to bring some sparkle to college life. My college life, and hopefully, the lives of my friends and other people in the community. Even now, I can't help but feel like it would be so freakin cool to help college kids create awesome events, or kickstart a student group, or stir up some buzz about all the opportunities students have for doing something, for finding their stuff. And yeah, it might be one of those things where I'm clinging on to How I Was Before since I'm having this meta-identity crisis over here in Japanthelandofnothingtodo. But if I just take a few steps back, this kind of stuff is education in some sense, the out of the classroom/building upon passions/learning to be independent and execute ideas kind of education...and wouldn't that be so very cool to be a part of?
...so work's done for today, so I'll leave it at that. I do have a couple more ideas floating around, but I think for now I'll just simmer on this for a bit :)
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