1. How did today differ from how I expected it to be?
2. What are the high points of the day?
3. What are the low points of the day?
4. What is one experience that caused me to grow today?
5. What am I excited about for tomorrow?
1. Well, I expected today to be awesome, and it mostly was! We got to go inside our school today to observe teachers and meet students, to which I have been looking forward since I got accepted into City Year last October! I think today pretty much met my expectations, but I'll go into detail while answering the other questions.
2. High points started early, at 6:00 when Shelby and I left the apartment. I decided to take the bus to school today because 1) I really don't want to fill my tank and I'm almost out of gas and 2) I didn't have time to map/ride a bike route and 3) we got our bus passes yesterday and I want to break it in! It was a rousing success. I only have to make one transfer, and even though it takes longer than it would for me to drive, I didn't have to worry about traffic, I didn't have to worry about navigation, and I could slowly awaken out of my stupor without having to be responsible for operating heavy machinery. I think I'll do it again tomorrow!
It was also awesome to meet all the people that operate in our school. Everyone we met was welcoming and many mentioned that they appreciate us being there and that they're happy we're back. It felt good and reminded me that we are "standing on the shoulders of giants" that came before us and built a good reputation for City Year at our school! We got settled into our City Year resource room, which had a whole bunch of stuff that we can use in our tutoring. I'm excited to go through all the supplies! While it wasn't necessarily fun to observe for 3 hours, I did get a good feel for the school climate and how students handle their class time, and I can safely say that I am so excited to work with these students! They were generally well-behaved and respectful to the adults in the school. I know there will be struggles, but there were some sweethearts today that I just can't wait to interact with. The students also reacted to us in the hallways and in classrooms. They muttered to their friends, "Hey, look! It's City Year!" and "Yessss we get City Year in this class!" It was heartwarming. Also, it was fun to watch parents' reactions to our power greeting as they dropped their kids off in the morning. One mom even videotaped us on her phone while her son walked by us. :)
Today was also awesome because I felt our school team really starting to click. We joked around while we were power greeting and after our observations and on our way back to our training session after lunch, and it made me really happy to start really getting close to these people that I'm going to spend most of my next 10 months with! They're pretty cool people.
Almost forgot! A totally restore-faith-in-humanity moment! On the car ride home, there was annoying traffic on 35 due to rush hour, and once we got off the highway, it wasn't much better. We were putzing along when all of a sudden, we see two men in army fatigues dash up to a van that had stalled in the middle of traffic! They talked with the driver then pushed the van into a median area out of the way. There was only two of them, so it was pretty heavy lifting. The best part: After they got the car out of the way and the driver had thanked them, they high-fived each other on their way back to wherever they came from. It was perfect.
3. While I did get up and moving on time and drank my green tea and felt like a productive human this morning all before 6am, I started to dragggggg by the time we got to professional development. I really think that the information that they gave us was extremely useful, I was just so tired that I didn't want to participate or really do anything except get the information as quickly as possible and be on my way. Which isn't really the best attitude for someone in my position. I enjoyed seeing all my friends from different school teams, but I didn't even get to talk to them very much. I was just in a very negative mood, especially compared to how much I've loved all the other sessions. It'll be my goal tomorrow to stay engaged and active the whole time during our trainings for the rest of the week. I think I'm gonna need some more trail mix (which is really just what I call my mix that is 90% chocolate and 10% dried fruit to make myself feel better).
4. There were several small growing experiences today, so I will briefly share a couple of them. On the bus, it was my first time on this route (really my first time navigating any major city's transportation system on my own) and I was a little iffy on where I had to get off near the school. So I pulled the stop request string thingy a stop too early, then realized that I didn't want to get off, and got a confused look from the driver. I told him which street I was going too, and he told me it was 2 stops ahead. So I felt like a TOTAL noob, but there was really no harm done. I mean, I'm sure that bus driver has that happen a lot. The reason it made me grow was that I realized that there's really no reason to be worried about looking like a noob. The important thing is that I got where I meant to go and I got there on time and safely. No one is really going to care if I don't know where I'm going, and if they do, then I don't really care. It's the one kind of apathy that I'm okay with.
It was also a growing experience for me today to manage when people around me complained about things. I've known for a while that I hate complaining in any circumstance, sometimes to the annoyance of, oh I don't know, EVERYONE around me. Well, City Year is no exception. Even though I wasn't really engaged by what we did this afternoon, I still defended the sessions against anyone who had anything bad to say. I warned a couple people on my team of my tendency to do that, so I hope it doesn't totally alienate me, but in the afternoon, I think I managed to defend in a way that didn't make my conversation partner feel like a jerk. That's what I am striving for: to correct someone who's complaining/defend anything that people complain about without making them feel judged or guilty. Maybe the secret is to say nothing. I'll get back to you when I figure it out.
5. Tomorrow, we aren't observing for the first couple hours. Instead, the administrators in the Diploma's Now office at Rhodes are going to serve us breakfast! I'm excited for this opportunity to get to know some of the important people that we'll be working with this year AND get to eat free food. Win-win.
2. What are the high points of the day?
3. What are the low points of the day?
4. What is one experience that caused me to grow today?
5. What am I excited about for tomorrow?
1. Well, I expected today to be awesome, and it mostly was! We got to go inside our school today to observe teachers and meet students, to which I have been looking forward since I got accepted into City Year last October! I think today pretty much met my expectations, but I'll go into detail while answering the other questions.
2. High points started early, at 6:00 when Shelby and I left the apartment. I decided to take the bus to school today because 1) I really don't want to fill my tank and I'm almost out of gas and 2) I didn't have time to map/ride a bike route and 3) we got our bus passes yesterday and I want to break it in! It was a rousing success. I only have to make one transfer, and even though it takes longer than it would for me to drive, I didn't have to worry about traffic, I didn't have to worry about navigation, and I could slowly awaken out of my stupor without having to be responsible for operating heavy machinery. I think I'll do it again tomorrow!
It was also awesome to meet all the people that operate in our school. Everyone we met was welcoming and many mentioned that they appreciate us being there and that they're happy we're back. It felt good and reminded me that we are "standing on the shoulders of giants" that came before us and built a good reputation for City Year at our school! We got settled into our City Year resource room, which had a whole bunch of stuff that we can use in our tutoring. I'm excited to go through all the supplies! While it wasn't necessarily fun to observe for 3 hours, I did get a good feel for the school climate and how students handle their class time, and I can safely say that I am so excited to work with these students! They were generally well-behaved and respectful to the adults in the school. I know there will be struggles, but there were some sweethearts today that I just can't wait to interact with. The students also reacted to us in the hallways and in classrooms. They muttered to their friends, "Hey, look! It's City Year!" and "Yessss we get City Year in this class!" It was heartwarming. Also, it was fun to watch parents' reactions to our power greeting as they dropped their kids off in the morning. One mom even videotaped us on her phone while her son walked by us. :)
 |
| The team in power-greeting formation! |
Today was also awesome because I felt our school team really starting to click. We joked around while we were power greeting and after our observations and on our way back to our training session after lunch, and it made me really happy to start really getting close to these people that I'm going to spend most of my next 10 months with! They're pretty cool people.
Almost forgot! A totally restore-faith-in-humanity moment! On the car ride home, there was annoying traffic on 35 due to rush hour, and once we got off the highway, it wasn't much better. We were putzing along when all of a sudden, we see two men in army fatigues dash up to a van that had stalled in the middle of traffic! They talked with the driver then pushed the van into a median area out of the way. There was only two of them, so it was pretty heavy lifting. The best part: After they got the car out of the way and the driver had thanked them, they high-fived each other on their way back to wherever they came from. It was perfect.
3. While I did get up and moving on time and drank my green tea and felt like a productive human this morning all before 6am, I started to dragggggg by the time we got to professional development. I really think that the information that they gave us was extremely useful, I was just so tired that I didn't want to participate or really do anything except get the information as quickly as possible and be on my way. Which isn't really the best attitude for someone in my position. I enjoyed seeing all my friends from different school teams, but I didn't even get to talk to them very much. I was just in a very negative mood, especially compared to how much I've loved all the other sessions. It'll be my goal tomorrow to stay engaged and active the whole time during our trainings for the rest of the week. I think I'm gonna need some more trail mix (which is really just what I call my mix that is 90% chocolate and 10% dried fruit to make myself feel better).
4. There were several small growing experiences today, so I will briefly share a couple of them. On the bus, it was my first time on this route (really my first time navigating any major city's transportation system on my own) and I was a little iffy on where I had to get off near the school. So I pulled the stop request string thingy a stop too early, then realized that I didn't want to get off, and got a confused look from the driver. I told him which street I was going too, and he told me it was 2 stops ahead. So I felt like a TOTAL noob, but there was really no harm done. I mean, I'm sure that bus driver has that happen a lot. The reason it made me grow was that I realized that there's really no reason to be worried about looking like a noob. The important thing is that I got where I meant to go and I got there on time and safely. No one is really going to care if I don't know where I'm going, and if they do, then I don't really care. It's the one kind of apathy that I'm okay with.
It was also a growing experience for me today to manage when people around me complained about things. I've known for a while that I hate complaining in any circumstance, sometimes to the annoyance of, oh I don't know, EVERYONE around me. Well, City Year is no exception. Even though I wasn't really engaged by what we did this afternoon, I still defended the sessions against anyone who had anything bad to say. I warned a couple people on my team of my tendency to do that, so I hope it doesn't totally alienate me, but in the afternoon, I think I managed to defend in a way that didn't make my conversation partner feel like a jerk. That's what I am striving for: to correct someone who's complaining/defend anything that people complain about without making them feel judged or guilty. Maybe the secret is to say nothing. I'll get back to you when I figure it out.
5. Tomorrow, we aren't observing for the first couple hours. Instead, the administrators in the Diploma's Now office at Rhodes are going to serve us breakfast! I'm excited for this opportunity to get to know some of the important people that we'll be working with this year AND get to eat free food. Win-win.
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