i made it through yet another semester of higher ed. i always swear, at the start of each new term, that i'm going to make much more time for personal career development. practicing, writing, marketing, preparing educational mumbo jumbo that i can handout later. yes, i'll be committed to my students (both applied and private) and will work to be a better teacher. no, i won't put my own stuff on whole. yes, i'll be at their beckoned call. no, not at the expense of my physical/mental health. it's like new year's resolutions over and over again.
looking back on what has transpired, i realize that i'm the same old me: great initial intentions, small steps towards personal goals, simply hanging in there during my teaching, making a guilty push towards personal growth, back to surviving the final swash of student & departmental needs. my students did well, and i am particularly proud of my applied saxophonists. they trust me (or have got me believing that) and work for me in ways that are obviously uncomfortable or foreign. their final performances for this term are representative not only of the work they have put in, but the ideology they have embraced. the performing groups are working hard to be their own people which, on a musical level, is totally what i'm going for (and excuse me for ending with a preposition.)
they say that the three best things about teaching are june, july & august. i'd also like to throw christmas break into the mix. i see it as a small window of opportunity to overhaul a lot of things in my life (including resurrecting my blog activity.) i'm ready to tackle the new practice routines i've been sidestepping, sweat to the P90X dvds that have been sitting in my gym for over a year, and capture the tunes that i have managed to keep rattling around in my head. per usual with me, the concern is to not create an unreasonable list of goals for this short period - just enough good habits that can stick during the lean times (because who knows - this period may just be a primer for things to come...)
so today, me & this 3x5 card are gonna make it happen. step one: get out of these apathy-inducing sweatpants...
One thing I have done to help keep from spinning my wheels too much is to keep a 5-year journal (the January 1 page has 5 spots, one for each of 5 years). This way when I write in my journal I can see that I said the same damn thing last year and sometimes it motivates me to do something. It also helps me give myself a pat on the back when I actually see changes over time.
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