2 Days ’til 40: 40 Favorite Posts from My 400 Days ’til 40 Journey

I must say that it was much easier to choose 40 photos than to choose 40 posts!  One of the fun things about this particular journey is that I allowed myself to write (or post photos) about whatever I felt on any particular day.  As a result, I have a wide array of followers who each connect in different ways to what I write – this has been amazing.  I imagine that in the future, as I become a bit more focused, I may have a less diverse group of readers, though I hope not!

Here is my top 40 list of posts, hopefully as eclectic as my readers are.  Some I chose because of the importance of the content, some because they make me laugh (yes, I realize that I have a weird sense of humor that others do not always appreciate) and some because I like the way the words flow.

 

16 Days ’til 40: Sleep Deprivation

 

Show me an educator and I will show you a sleep deprived person!

 

20 Days ’til 40: Why I LOVE My Education Job

Today was one of those days….  I started the day with 58 emails in my inbox (a low number for me) and seemed to have an inordinate amount of complaints and issues arise throughout the day.  I answered email after email for most of the day, communicating with concerned parents and teachers re:a variety of issues.  I sent out at least 60 emails, maybe it was closer to 75 or 80, and at the end of the day my inbox still had 64 emails I need to respond to…. Yes I responded all day and the number grew!!!  I was, for lack of a better analogy, chained to my desk for hours as I assisted many with their concerns.  I definitely felt a bit more like a complaint department than an educator.  Of course, all I really wanted today was to be out in the classrooms and with the teachers and the students – these moments are sometimes hard to come by as an administrator – the tyranny of the urgent replaces the important as small fires of concern need to be extinguished (when I want to be out there helping to light fires of desire to learn!)

 

26 Days ’til 40: Email Insanity!

 

It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you. ~ Stephen Fry

 

37 Days ’til 40: Education Attitude Change

Education seems to be in America the only commodity of which the customer tries to get as little he can for his money. ~ Max Leon Forman 

Education … has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can lade a man up to th’ university, but ye can’t make him think. ~ Finley Peter Dunne

The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done. ~ Jean Piaget

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. ~ Mark Twain

I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free. ~ Indigo Girls

 

85 Days ’til 40: Unisex Bathroom Prude

Yes, today I am breaking from my self-help norm to go into more of a rant mode (albeit, a very small rant).  I must confess, as evolved as I would like to think I am, I have not yet arrived.  I am a unisex bathroom prude.  ”What,” might you ask, “is a unisex bathroom prude?”  I am so very glad that you asked!  A unisex bathroom prude is someone who just cannot wrap their heads around the idea of a unisex bathroom.  (As a side note, I am referring to a unisex bathroom with multiple stalls and men and women using private stalls, side by side).

 

120 Days ’til 40: Great Colleagues

 

One of the things I have learned over time is that colleagues can make or break a work experience.

 

135 Days ’til 40: People are SOOO Human!

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. ~ Albert Einstein

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ~ e.e. cummings

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments. ~ Jim Morrison

 

140 Days ’til 40: Negating Negativity

 

Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation. ~ Michael Jordan

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative. ~ W. Clement Stone

 

141 Days ’til 40: Pausing to Recognize Accomplishments

Today was one of those days when everything went well at work.  We had been planning for an important visit since last spring and the visit went very well.  The visitor was impressed and offered words of praise and encouragement.  This was a day that, for all intents and purposes, should have been highly uplifting.