Why

So after a 2.5 year hiatus, my personal diary has returned to the web. I've always found it funny that I stopped writing when I got really busy and started doing so much fun stuff. Finally, I had stuff to write about, but didn't want to take the time to write it because I had other stuff to do. So, this time around it will be less about what I am doing, but rather what I am thinking. Less on the event, more on the reaction, and thus hopefully, a bit more personal. So to begin...

Work has been nearly unbelievably great this year, up until this week. It's been the return of old frustrations. Over the last few weeks I've noticed a huge decrease in my freshman student's focus and work ethic. I can tell they're just treading water rather than trying to get anywhere, not so much out of desperation to stay afloat, but just because they're a little tired and want to work less. Well, they had a test this week, and the results aren't good. The average was 75% and I have a bunch who flunked, which means that I get to spend next week calling parents. We made ice cream today in class as a wrap-up to thermodynamics, but before the fun they had to listen to me tell them how annoyed I was with their approach to learning over the past few weeks, and the consequences they now have to deal with. I hate being that kind of teacher. I'd like to be able inspire kids to work without having to nag them to do it. Teaching is so much more enjoyable and they get so much more out of the experience when they want to learn and willing to work for it. I can't understand why people don't want to learn. I've spent time this week going through my Differential Equations college text simply because I forgot how to solve some second order ODEs and I want to know how to do that. My most hated college class (humanities something or other. It was art, architecture, and writings within historical context) I still learned a ton from. I bought a certain book years later simply because of that class.

On another note, I love dancing. Ridiculously so. I went dancing monday and tuesday night to halloween dances. Monday night I even won 3rd place in a partner scored Jack & Jill contest. The only reason I didn't go dancing last night was because maturity won out so I stayed home and got some rest. 3 nights of late night dancing is too much for me when I have to get up at 6:15a.m. I have practice tonight. We're going to get worked like crazy because we have a performance over Thanksgiving weekend that we're trying to learn and perfect a Charleston routine for, and I've been looking forward to it all day long.

I'm still kicking myself for taking all that time off from dancing. For 5 years I didn't dance because of who I was married to and because lessons were on sunday and because I was too insecure about my dancing ability to just go out and dance and meet people. I've often said that the thing I missed most about being a kid was all of the opportunities to go dancing. How dumb was I to not realize there were even more as an adult if I just took advantage of them? So now I go several times a week and I come home exhausted and sweaty with a huge smile on my face, excited about going out again.