Happy Pi Day!! :)
Yep, I still feel like it's an uber special day even though I'm not making mini pies to share with my students...which I only did the first year I taught because it was more difficult than I expected to make 300+ bize size pies (and then my students would complain they wanted this flavor...no that one, Can they have another? Why not? ... If you have kids, you know how that goes, I'm sure!)
But it got me thinking back to my teaching days and the lesson I used to teach the first day of school: THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS.
I've always whole-heartedly believed in professional development, and I've always enjoyed reading. While I was interviewing for my first teaching job, I read countless teaching books in hopes of becoming a great teacher one day. One of my favorites was, you guessed it, There Are No Shortcuts by Rafe Esquith.
One of my favorite quotes from the book:
"'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'
I realized then where the problem lay. My students, and so many of our young people today, want a good life. They love (even if they don't always appreciate) liberty. They all want to be happy. But I realized that day that my class was a microcosm of what is wrong with some any of nation's young people.
What happened to pursuit? We aren't handed happiness. We're given an opportunity to pursue it."
This lesson seems to be taught to me almost daily on my new venture of owning and growing my own business as an entreprenuer. It is certainly not easy and success will not come without a ton of labor and hard-work.
When you are starting out, at anything really, it is easy to look at someone who has been around a while or is more established and think, "It must be easy for them." But the truth is that their hours of hard-work and grind are now just painted with some success...and typically, they are not happy or content with where they are, but working hard to continue to improve.
So when it gets tough and it seems easier to throw in the towel than continue on, just remember, there are no shortcuts. You have to work through the sweat, tears, and grind to make to that other side. It's the only way.
Besides, it wouldn't be worth it unless you did!
Happy Monday!
