4||What Is My Passion?

What are you passionate about?

I suppose that as a teacher, I should say my passion is teaching.

Look! It's my official teacher picture from 2014-15!

Thank you, Thailand, for bleaching my face and arm to an even more unnatural shade of white. Not.

I suppose I could also say my passion is teenagers. Or working out. Or baking. Or making color coded lists. And although I immensely, enjoy teenagers, working out, baking, and color coded lists, none of them is my true passion.

I thought long and hard about how to best answer this question. But after much thought and introspection, I came to realize that my calling in life is not my passion. And, really, I'm okay with that. God has placed on me the call to be a secondary English teacher and I feel honored to answer that call. I love working with teenagers, helping guide them through life, and teaching them how to effectively use language for a variety of purposes. However--

My passion in life is equipping others.

I was sitting in chapel earlier this week when I finally figured out how to properly verbalize my passion. I am passionate about building people up, edifying today's youth, and preparing them to succeed in the world outside of my classroom.

I have made known to multiple school administration, both in Thailand and the States, that I teach students first and English Language Arts second.

My calling is teenagers. My gateway is the secondary English classroom. But my passion is equipping.

Right now I cannot imagine myself in a place other than the high school English classroom, but I still day dream and wonder. Maybe someday I will be teaching adults who didn't make it through the traditional American classroom the first time around. Maybe I will be teaching New Americans some place in the States. Maybe I will be running my own school on the plains of Africa. Maybe I will be living in the mountains of South America and teaching kids to read there. Maybe I will be a college professor preparing university students to go out and equip students of their own. Regardless, my passion is definitely to equip others. It is part of my greater purpose to change the world for the glory of God which, right now, is by teaching teenagers the subjects of English language, literature, and composition at an international high school in Bangkok, Thailand.

Near the end of my time as an undergraduate student, a campus ministry leader asked me where I wanted to be in ten years. I answered "Within the will of God. The specifics won't really matter. I cannot imagine anything greater."

I can say confidently that right now I am within the will of God and it is a sweet place to be. I am working and pushing myself to be the best equipper I can be. People have graciously invested so much in me and I desire to pass those skills, traits, and understandings on to others.

A weekend as a chaperone for a youth group canoe trip on which 

I realized my desire to work with teenagers in a school setting...

The first step to realizing my passion in life. Soli deo gloria.

The 2015 Blog-Tember Challenge. Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. Day 4.

Near Miss

Counting Crows, well Joni Mitchell originally, said that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.  Luckily, what which I once thought I had lost I was able to find.  I found this little beauty on one of my friend's Facebook walls back in the days of undergrad.  The night I found it, I was procrastinating from my unit plan, so I had plenty of time to watch it and watch it I did... like six or seven times.  I went back a couple of days later to watch it on Facebook and it wasn't posted anywhere.  So sad.  Then I looked for the video on YouTube earlier because I wanted to share it, but it wasn't posted there yet.  But, fortunately, it was eventually posted and will continue to be available until Youtube ceases to exist.

Do yourself a favor and watch it now.  It is stinking hilarious.  And if you knew my crew of friends who fit the personas of these four guys, you would be able to appreciate it that much more.

Just have some fun for the day. May your day be blessed. :)

To My 18 Year Old Self

As many colleges and high schools are holding graduation ceremonies in the next couple of weekends, I've become a little reminiscent. Or a lot reminiscent. I've also been going through my keepsake boxes from when I was younger and earlier this week I went through all of my graduation cards from high school. I graduated high school with big dreams and high hopes. The next five years didn't exactly go as planned but I wouldn't change them for the world. As such, a note to my 18 year old self.

I wish I could go back and tell my naive 18 year old self that, in all reality, her college education would be a bust, but it would be the life lessons and friendships made during college that will count the most.

I wish I could tell her to just start off in education, but to be prepared for the joke that will be her English degree. I wish I could tell her that her education won't lead to the Master's degree she planned, to the accomplishment she assumed, or even the satisfaction she thought would come with finishing college- just like both of her parents have... multiple times.

I wish I could tell her that she may feel like she ended up becoming a teacher because she wasn't smart enough to do anything else, but she, as a pre-service teacher, had a better understanding of what it means to be an effective educator than do many veteran teachers because she has a special gift in working with adolescents.

I wish I could tell her that college will not nearly be the experience she thought it would be but it will draw her deeper into a faith that she didn't really think possible... that she will fall more in love with a God who cares so deeply for her, who has such a crazy awesome plan for her life, who made her in His perfect image and wants so badly for her to love herself, who doesn't intend for college to be the climax of her life because He has so much more in store for her.



I wish I could tell her that despite the struggles and the tears and the doubts...

It will all be okay in the end.

Finals, Yo-yos, Planners, College, Books, Makeup, and Weekends

Well I clearly missed "Five on Friday" this week so I'm moving on to "Seven on Sunday."

One. Well, this week sure got away from me. It was the last week of the semester at school so along with administering finals, student work that magically appeard from all over the place, parents and students alike all worked up as to why said finals and work weren't graded and in the book 3.8 minutes after submission, we've had practice all week, a four game quadruple-header on Thursday, a triple-header on Saturday, and I never really did sleep more than four hours a night.

Two. This week had also been one heck of a yo-yo week. Well, it wasn't been so much up as it had been crashes and then back to baseline. But thankfully there were enough good things in the week that the baseline was been frequent and attainable. 

Three. I have switched back to my beloved classic Franklin and my life feels so much better again. I tried to downsize planners this last semester and I just couldn't handle it so back to the big ol' binder we go and I am loving every minute of it!

Four. Between undergraduate credits required to earn a new edorsement and my graduate level courses this semester, I will be taking nine credits... While carrying on with life as normal. This is my last semester of structured class, though, so at least I have that light to come up on at the end of the tunnel. I'm looking forward to my classes this semester and I'm secretly all nerdy excited that one of my profs already posted the syllabus so I'm not too upset about getting classes underway on Monday.

Five. To date, I have really enjoyed all of Dan Brown's books (especially The Lost Symbol) and I have been super stoked to read Inferno since it came out last May. I even considred buying it while in Thailand on my break from reality this summer, but I just couldn't justify the $30 on a hardcover book that I knew I'd be able to check out from the library. I started the book once this fall and couldn't get into and I started it again about two weeks ago and I still can't get into it. I'm about halfway through it and I'm darned and determined to finish it just so I can say I've read it. I have one more Dan Brown book to read after Inferno and then I will have caught up on all of his books. 

Six. Not that I have ever been skilled at all in the area of makeup, but I have recently decided that I am going to learn to wear eyeliner. Easier said than done... Uffda. Does anybody have any tips or tricks for making eyeliner look more chic and less like I just lost a boxing match and/or an morphing into a raccoon?

Seven. I was definitely spoiled by my two and a half week Christmas vacation. This weekend is a typical two day weekend and I am far from ready to go back to work tomorrow. But only 18 more weeks of school... We can do this!