life lessons – mom's musings

Like a Moth to a Flame

Teaching at two of South Carolina’s technical/community lessons taught me lots of lessons and shaped much of my behavior. I learned to multi-task, prioritize, manage stress, work with a variety of different people, and change with the times. Because of the experiences of those decades, I know which battles to fight, how to form alliances, and how to sidestep negative energy. And that was even before stepping into a classroom! I learned those lessons in the hallways, offices, and off-campus when struggling with different issues.

Sometimes I wonder if my experiences honed me or whether it was just a good person/environment fit from Day One. Over the years, I saw many people come and go, and sometimes it was clearly because they didn’t understand the magnitude of the task at hand. I don’t think magnitude is too powerful a word here. As someone near and dear to me recently said, “Teaching is hard.” He was right. It is hard, and it’s not for everyone

For about a dozen years I served as department chair for the social sciences and humanities department, and one fall semester I hired an adjunct faculty member to teach economics. He looked so promising! Poised, confident, and knowledgeable, he appeared to be the part-time teacher sent from above.

All was well for the first week. Monday of the next week, however, he was a no-show. One little class did him in. All those students (25), all that preparation, so many details like financial aid forms to sign, attendance to keep up with, names to learn, questions to answer. He had misjudged the nature of the work involved, and I truly feel confident in saying that he has never taught in any academic setting again.

I took to the profession like a moth to a flame. Sorry about the cliché (sort of). I had to work like the dickens (oops, another one), but I thoroughly enjoyed most of the experiences I had and the people I met. Most of my co-workers were fine people whose hearts and minds and energy were directed towards helping their students. As in any profession, there were a few who were arrogant and dismissive (to students), but they didn’t last long.

Time to bring this to an end and get on with my day. I’ll have to mull over the person/environment fit a little more. I do think it’s incredibly important in career choice. I also think that the profession and all that it entails continue to hone and shape the person.

I’m not complaining one iota. I am saying that even in “semi-retirement” I still have a hard time relaxing. I still prioritize, multi-task, rub shoulders with fascinating people, and sidestep negative energy whenever possible.

Comments from anyone about teaching or about the person/environment fit and its importance? Any advice or experiences to share about your profession?

Eggs in One Basket

Lately I’ve been thinking about the truth behind the cliché, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Yesterday I thought of how it lines up with Stephen Covey’s concept about finding one’s center. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a huge Covey fan, and I’m amazed and pleased at how often his writing comes to mind.

According to Dr. Covey, in order to get where you’re going, you need to find your center, what it is that you’re all about. After writing about the various centers that a person can have, he discusses the importance of having universal principles of fairness, love, equality, integrity, kindness, and honesty at one’s core. These values are timeless, unchanging, and present in every culture. They won’t let us down.

Often we have other centers that give our lives focus and direction. Examples from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People include self, family, spouse, friends, work, and religion (or church). All of those things are good and are valuable. BUT sometimes when they’re at the very core of a person and he (or she) loses one, then the person’s whole world falls apart.

If your family is more important to you than anything else, and then someone in your family dies, gets put in prison, goes astray, or lets you down, your world could come crumbling down if that’s all you ‘ve got. Think empty nest syndrome.
If your job is primary in your life and you lose it for whatever reason and have nothing else of importance, you’re anchorless.
If you’re enemy-centered, and thoughts of getting even are foremost on your mind, then that person is in control of your life and thoughts, not you. Covey gave a great example of a man who was thinking of leaving the university and taking his family with him to another locale because there was a person in his department who was the bane of his existence.
If you’re friend centered, your friends might get busy with other aspects of their lives and neglect you. What then? Are there other eggs in your basket?
If you’re spouse centered, that person could disappoint you, perhaps even find another.
If you’re church-centered, what happens when its teachings don’t line up with what you consider to be “right?”

Again, caring about the above events and people are important. Covey just reminds his readers to have some balance in their lives and to have fundamental values and principles as guiding forces in our lives, thus keeping us from cracking when our baskets drop.

Have you ever put all of your eggs in one basket? If so, how has that worked out for you?

Clouds with Silver Linings

I’m feeling a bit philosophical after yesterday’s birthday and am determined to find a way to use this great photograph in a post. I was standing in a classroom in Blanding Elementary School in Rincon, GA during an Open House last week, and my granddaughter Brooke looked out of the window and said, “Oh look, there a cloud with a silver lining.” It was gorgeous!

Don’t think I have a lot of cloudy weather in my life today. I don’t, not unless you consider my brother and I having issues with our meal last night or being disappointed with the movie afterwards. Those are minor things, and fortunately, we both have the ability to say, “That chicken is completely tasteless and definitely not grilled,” and move on. We can watch a disappointing movie and say that we learned something from it. What was Matt Damon thinking???

That’s not to say that I haven’t had my share of storm clouds. Like everyone else who walks the planet, I too have experienced loss, disappointment, and the doldrums. No need to go into detail here. What I will say is that storms always pass. It’s nature’s way for the sun to come out again. It’s also true that often there is something good about clouds and storms and fog so dense that you can’t see through it.

Last week when Brooke pointed out the cloud with the silver lining, I asked, “What exactly does that mean to you?”

“It just means the sun is behind the cloud but about to come out.”

“Oh,” I replied, impressed with her knowledge. “How’d you know that?”

“Daddy told me,” she said, leaving my side to go find her father and show him the beautiful sight.

Later, I told her that there would be times in her life when she felt sad or gloomy, and that she just needed to remember the cloud with the sun behind it. “Sometimes tough times in our lives teach us lessons,” I said in my best grandmotherly voice.

She tilted her pretty face up to look at me as she pondered that remark, and although I don’t know how her 8-year-old mind processed that information, I hope she’ll remember our conversation. One day, it will make more sense to her.

There are so many applications of clouds with silver linings. A person could lose a job and find that it offers the opportunity to go back to school and prepare for a totally new and more rewarding career. Someone could get her heart broken so badly that she feels she can never trust or love again. Later she realizes, with relief, that she “dodged that bullet.” A family could be hit with sickness, loss, or disability, and while it’d be hard to find the sun behind those clouds, perhaps the situation will give them increased strength, faith, or courage.

What about you? Have you experienced rainbows after rain and sunshine after clouds? Have there been times when there really were silver linings (lessons, blessings, insights) in the cloudy times in your life?

Lessons from the Onion Field

One of the nice things about having a personal blog is that I can write about anything that crosses my mind. Therefore, this is sort of a hodgepodge blog of topics ranging from exercise and health to family and faith…and a ton of stuff in-between. For instance, sometimes the blog becomes a travelogue, and other times I might decide to pontificate on politics.

That said, today’s post is about a revelation (that’s what I’m calling it) that I got in church Sunday. I had been pondering an issue that someone near and dear to me was having, and then suddenly the speaker said a few simple things that provided immediate insight. He began by talking about the importance of families, and then he shared some relevant stories from his childhood. It was a fabulous talk, filled with several references to scriptures, pertinent articles, and personal experiences.

Here’s one of the stories that I particularly liked, probably because of the underlying lesson. As a young child, he and his younger brother had the task of watering onions on a huge family farm. The onion planting was somewhat experimental, and the adult males on the scene, the speaker’s father and grandfather, had rigged up some newfangled way of making sure that the plants were watered. Unfortunately, the scheme didn’t work as well as planned, and watering became a hot, arduous, and dreaded task.

“You might wonder why we did it,” he said. The speaker then went on to say that he and his brothers and other siblings clearly understood their role as children and the adults’ roles as parents and grandparents. “As children, we knew we were to do what our parents told us to do, and although we didn’t always like it, we also knew that it was eventually going to be for our own good. It’s the same type of relationship that we have with God. We need to do what he tells us to do just like children need to do what their parents tell them to do.”

That’s when it hit me—the parallel between God’s instructions and those of earthly parents. He doesn’t tell us to do anything that will hurt us or cause sorrow, and neither will our biological parents. Well, quite honestly, some parents are pretty crummy in their role, but not the ones I’m thinking of at the moment. I know, just as we all do, some people who are great at following God’s commandments to keep the Sabbath holy and refrain from killing other people, and yet they totally diss their parents and their instructions to come home on time, do their homework, clean their rooms, and a myriad of other things.

Doesn’t this seem a little paradoxical? It could be that I’m expecting too much from children to truly understand the parallels between the two parental sources, our Heavenly father and our earthly parents. In any case, I’ll leave the explaining part to the grown-ups. For now, I’ll just say that children need to be obedient to their parents and to God.