The Important Things

It's that time of the semester when things get pretty overwhelming--for the students and for me.  In addition to the usual crunch of teaching, assignments, community service, research, that is part of the routine, I have been busy with helping get ready for our final site visit on the masters program, along with co-presenting a series of workshops.  I'm exhausted, and today, headed over to Tupelo for a day working on our curriculum grant.  It was all I could do to convince myself to get out of bed this morning and gear up.  From now until May, it will just be put one foot in front of the other and do the next thing due, and there is a whole lot of stuff due!

One of the things I try to do when I start feeling the stress of overload is to think about things that are important and remind myself why I do what I do.  Riverside is one of those things that adds stress and workload.  The first group of students from this semester's class went to the community a couple of weeks ago.

Like always, they were excited we were back for a few weeks.

This group wanted to provide a healthy and nutritious snack.  Will kids eat fresh raw vegetables?  Yep, they sure will.  Little baby cheesecake filled cupcakes were passed out after veggie snacks.  Then, they came back and asked for more veggies.

Two really great outcomes for me:
1.  One of the kids asked one of my students:  "Are you in class right now?"  We are not in class, but this is part of our class.  He replied, "Wow, I think I am going to like college a lot!"  


Bingo!  This is what we want:  loving education, loving learning, and putting it in one's path.


2.  One of my students said at the end of our time: "I wish we could do this every day!"


Bingo!  This is what we want: loving service learning, loving community practice, and realizing how much prevention and early intervention can contribute to healthy communities.

I must have the greatest job in the world.