Pathways to Personal Growth

            I really enjoyed our last two presentations from Wayne and Bryan this week. I enjoyed how Wayne pointed out something that I’ve seen as a theme for the past 6 years that I’ve been teaching, these young boys need a positive male role model. I wish there were more male teachers out there for our students to benefit from. Unfortunately, no matter how nurturing and great the female teachers are nothing replaces that void for a father except a male role model. Honestly I had a lot of great female teachers but I don’t remember a single one of them as well as I can remember every detail about any one of my male teachers. I think this is because good, bad, or indifferent the male teachers always made a bigger impact on me then the female ones because I missed my father and connecting with my male teachers was my way of filling some of that void.

            Bryan’s presentation was equally significant and fun. It was great learning so much about him as he’s one of the people in our class that I’ve had minimal contact with. It was also fun getting to walk through the minefield with a guide because it was impossible to even imagine trying to navigate that course without someone else telling you what to do.

            I can’t believe this is my last week blogging about Corey and Corey and all the topics we’ve covered. I’m very proud that at the beginning of this course we were challenged to make three goals for ourselves that we hoped to attain within this next year. My three goals were to find a new job, lose weight, and make new friends. I’ve already succeeded in making new friends with many of the people in this class and I’m so thankful to have the new friends that I’ve made. I’m in the process of looking for a new job and I fully intend to leave my present job as soon as the school year is over. Last, I plan to start my workout plan this upcoming week after I finish my finals. I know it will be hard to maintain school, work, Josep, and working out as each semester comes and goes, but any gains that I can make in this regard will be a good thing. All of that being said our last chapter was all about seeing the changes that we’ve begun making in ourselves and continuing on this path. I definitely feel that I’ve made great strides towards the changes that I wanted to see in myself this semester. Having this first semester under my belt feels very good in terms of now knowing what to expect as each new semester comes and goes. I came into the semester very confident that I’d be able to maintain the work load of two classes because I already have one master’s degree. However, I didn’t factor in how much time my son takes/requires. It was very difficult to get all of my reading done and when papers or big projects were due it was very stressful to make sure to budget all of my time wisely. That being said our wiki project has caused me great strife in this regard. I had my last two weeks budgeted out completely with exactly how I would write my reflection paper and my paper due in my other class and then study for both finals, etc. Then when the wiki was sprung on us it through my whole world for a loop. I still haven’t started my wiki contribution for that reason because so far I’ve opted to keep my original schedule of completing my other assignments and studying and now that I’ll have everything else done I will work on my wiki contribution either tonight or tomorrow or both.

            At any rate, Corey and Corey discusses documenting our dreams as a means of better understanding themes in our lives. I have sporadic patches of dreams that I remember and usually my dreams are in the forms of nightmares. I’ve always thought that if I wrote my dreams down and turn them into movies they’d make the best scary movies of all times. That being said I’m not sure what my terrifying dreams would say about myself. However, I do know that I suffer from night terrors (I think that’s what they’re called) when you wake up but you’re muscles are still frozen so you typically end up feeling like there is a demon sitting on your chest or something…they’re the most terrifying of my dreams because I try to wake myself up and I can’t or I do but then I very quickly fall back into the same state. Regardless I think it would be interesting to document my dreams and see if I can find any recurring themes.

            In summation, it has been a great semester. I couldn’t have asked for a better start to my graduate program than this one. I have learned and gained so much in such a short amount of time it will feel weird not having this common meeting place to work through all of these valuable lessons every week. However, I know that I will definitely see my peers not only in future classes but outside of classes (whether it’s to kick back and relax, study for an exam, or to introduce my three year old to new friends over ice cream) we’re all bonded together by this one important factor: we all want to help others grow and persevere through whatever life throws their way.

References:

Corey, G. & Corey, M. S. (2010). Pathways to Personal Growth. In Brooks/Cole (9^th edition), I Never Knew I Had a Choice (406-419). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning.