In an effort to do something interesting and different today I kept track of the totally (mostly) unrelated to what’s going on things that went through my head today while I was doing other things, you know the things you think about in the back of your head. Some other day I’ll keep track of and talk about the things actually related to the events of the day. Anyway maybe you’ll gain some insight into my insanity or head; maybe you’ll just be amused. Either way it was a very interesting activity to occupy my day.

This morning at work we had about 550 middle school student council members from the region at a workshop and motivational speaker. Part of my job was to help separate them into groups and direct them around the building for their breakout sessions. As I was down in the room standing, leaning against the doorpost, waiting to do this and looking over them I considered how much I love working with kids who are excited about learning. I thought maybe I should go into teaching after all. This is a struggle in me every time I get a chance to interact with students. I do seem to know I wouldn’t like the politics or the bad attitudes of teaching either though. As much as I like the idea of inspiring and leading future generations of students, exposing them to the wonders of the world I don’t think I will actively pursue a teaching career at this time. Maybe at some point in the future I’ll pick up a teaching certificate and do it on the side or in retirement. Anyway I was just struck by the influence I can have on a young person’s life seeing this group of students today.

The next thing that ran across my mind was sitting in speech class. We had to turn in these montage projects I spoke of last time, and yes I did just fine on mine. Anyway I was awed by the power of non-verbal communications and my ability (from what people in class were saying) to drive a point home in a short paragraph. Another thing I thought about in speech class today was how much I would have liked to get up and do an semi-improv informative speech. While my professor was talking about visual aids for our next speech I was looking at his Aquafina water bottle and was thinking how easy it would be for me to get up, use that as a visual aid and talk for several minutes about how plastic pop bottles are made, just using the knowledge in my head. Gosh I love talking to people, teaching them about science, technology and the world around them. How many of them have ever really looked at a pop bottle and wondered how it’s made?

Later in the day, during lit class in fact, I had a “college moment” as I like to call them. These are when I realize that I really am in college; you know what you look towards for your entire schooling career. This time I realized that I will be graduating with a real college degree, which is an amazing thing, to think of how much I’ve learned in the past twenty years and how this really is a landmark to that. The next two things I thought about in Lit are totally unrelated to that, first I was thinking that next time I’m home I’d like to go out on a night drive of the cities and do some night photography, I’ve decided I really like dusk and night pictures, and I’d like to take some of them myself, also take some winter scenes and winter night scenes. I also decided I’d like to do some portrait photography sometime soon as well.

Then later in the evening I did a Compline night prayer with some people from the Newman Student Association here. This was a great time and I really enjoyed it. Once I got back from that I was sitting down for a moment and I realized that in December I’m turning twenty years old. For some reason this seems to be a major step from youth into adulthood at least on a symbolic level and it just struck me for a minute.

So now you’ve had some insight into what goes on in the back of my mind, maybe you learned something, or had a chuckle, maybe both. In any event please share your insight because I am certainly still learning about myself and appreciate all input. Well many Minnesota races are still undecided but it’s time for me to get some sleep, we’ll see how this all turns out tomorrow.