Last Day...First Day
Today was my last day and my first day, all at the same time. It was the last day I will work as a teacher in a public school....and it is the first day I will be a teacher to my own children in our little homeschool.
People have asked me all week "Are you just SO ready to start your new adventure?" My co-workers and friends have been genuinely excited for this big change I am making, even though they have expressed that they will miss me around the school. It is such an interesting question to consider. This sweet, but repetitious question has begun plaguing my mind. Am I ready? Any time I have ever made a decision after thinking about it for a long time, I am always ready to jump into the new thing. There is only so much time that an idea can live inside my brain without making me feel jumpy and anxious just to get it over with. This is true for visits to the dentist's office and it is true with starting a new job. At some level I think there's a tipping point between anxiety over making a change and discomfort in waiting for the change to finally happen. I'm ready to get it over with and get this thing started. The dreams and ideas have been pounding around in my head for months and I'm ready to start seeing them come to fruition.
I also think there's a level of innocence about this process (and maybe ignorance) that is leaving me feeling dreamy and surreal. I suspect that homeschooling is going to be one of the hardest things I have ever done. But since I've never done it before, I don't know how hard it will be. Mentally I'm still on some sort of honeymoon with the idea of homeschooling. I've got the cute classroom decor plan ready to go and fun hands-on curriculum ideas. I picture it all going a certain way and I know, realistically, that none of this is going to look or feel quite as nice as the picture in my head. I'm ready to get started just so I can get back to reality instead of having more time to create more and more elaborate dream-homeschool scenes inside my brain.
As I think about my last day of school and my last day with students and co-workers and the last day of having the structure of public school, I am excited by the first day of something new and challenging and full of opportunities. Check back in a year to see how it stacked up against the dream.
People have asked me all week "Are you just SO ready to start your new adventure?" My co-workers and friends have been genuinely excited for this big change I am making, even though they have expressed that they will miss me around the school. It is such an interesting question to consider. This sweet, but repetitious question has begun plaguing my mind. Am I ready? Any time I have ever made a decision after thinking about it for a long time, I am always ready to jump into the new thing. There is only so much time that an idea can live inside my brain without making me feel jumpy and anxious just to get it over with. This is true for visits to the dentist's office and it is true with starting a new job. At some level I think there's a tipping point between anxiety over making a change and discomfort in waiting for the change to finally happen. I'm ready to get it over with and get this thing started. The dreams and ideas have been pounding around in my head for months and I'm ready to start seeing them come to fruition.
I also think there's a level of innocence about this process (and maybe ignorance) that is leaving me feeling dreamy and surreal. I suspect that homeschooling is going to be one of the hardest things I have ever done. But since I've never done it before, I don't know how hard it will be. Mentally I'm still on some sort of honeymoon with the idea of homeschooling. I've got the cute classroom decor plan ready to go and fun hands-on curriculum ideas. I picture it all going a certain way and I know, realistically, that none of this is going to look or feel quite as nice as the picture in my head. I'm ready to get started just so I can get back to reality instead of having more time to create more and more elaborate dream-homeschool scenes inside my brain.
As I think about my last day of school and my last day with students and co-workers and the last day of having the structure of public school, I am excited by the first day of something new and challenging and full of opportunities. Check back in a year to see how it stacked up against the dream.
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