Lessons Learned

The “Blog Challenge” has been postponed… understandably.  However, it felt good to return back to my blog a couple of days ago to reflect and clear my mind. So here I am, once again.  It’s truly amazing that teaching and learning happens all around us.  Sometimes it happens in the classroom.  Sometimes it happens in everyday life.  When life presents you with a lesson to learn, you have to be cognizant of it to learn it.  Otherwise, it just comes back to you AGAIN in some other way or form so that you can receive the message.  Most times we are numb to these messages and move forward in life not knowing.  Other times we take in the wrong messages and internalize them as if they were truth.  Our journey is to discern what is meaningful to learn.  Just the other day I was helping an adult learner with his LSAT preparation.  During our session I said… be flexible… don’t overthink it… trust your intuition… don’t be scared about being wrong… make mistakes… keep practicing because it will get easier.  Whoa.  I had to catch myself.  Is this the opportunity when I say “pot-kettle-black”?  A rude realization. This is exactly how I feel about my dissertation.  I’ve written many drafts, many years ago, and got burned.  It felt like I did all that work for nothing.  It’s tough picking yourself up again when you feel defeated.  No wonder when students feel challenged in mathematics, let’s say, they would avoid the subject area so much so that poor achievement was inevitable, thus validating.  Hello?  #potkettleblack