Goals, shmoals.

I've never been good at setting goals. I know how to set them, I just never follow through. Maybe I just don't make them exciting enough to want to follow through with. Or maybe it's even a combination of the two.

Whatever it is, goals and I definitely aren't best friends. That being said, I feel like I have accomplished a lot of great things in my life so far. Now if I can just figure out how to get my goals out of my head in some form or other I'll be all set!

Recently, I've been working on a few things of my own. I'm the type of the person that's driven by interest-led learning. I learned from Googling it that interest-led learning is a term used frequently by unschoolers to describe how they teach, but in my case it's more like I find something I'm interested in and then I learn as much as I can as quickly as I can. I like to research things and read as much about them as possible. Some of these interests are quick and fleeting (like soap making - my enthusiasm lasted until I got halfway to Michael's for supplies), and others stick around for a long time (I had been figure skating for 3 years and acting for 5 before I got tired of them both).

Right now, my interests (obsessions?) have been floating all over the place. I've decided it's because a) it's summer and I have free time finally, and b) I made some big decisions recently and I don't know where to go from here.

So this brings me to my first list!

Things I've been Googling/Reading about/Dreaming about/Planning for:
  • Teaching - This is one of those interests that's been around since I was little. I remember (and my dad just won't let me forget!) when I was little I would line up all of my nail polishes in cute little rows and put my bottles of nail polish remover in front to teach them the day's lessons. I divded them into small groups for centers, made grade books, sent the trouble makers to the hall for detention, and on and on. I loved my colorful classes and creating all kinds of school activities. There's so much more to share on this (my thoughts about teaching, not my nail polish schools days!), but I want to keep my list short...for now.
  • Nail Polish - Okay, so I guess I should explain my history with nail polish. Right now, in the cutest pink and orange set of drawers are approximitely 200 bottles of nail polish. How the heck did I get there? It all started with a shoebox of inherited nail polishes from my mom when I was little. I rarely painted my nails at that age, but as I grew older my collection slowly grew. Now, my Google Reader has feeds from multiple nail blogs, I order from online wholesalers ($8 for OPI or $2.99? Hmm!), and during the school year I always had people visiting my room to do their nails. It's an addiction, be warned.
  • New Orleans - Ever since I first visited New Orleans in the summer of 2006 I have been in love with the city. I feel it pulling me. It pops up all over in my life. I've been reading books that are either set in New Orleans or about the city in general recently and this is one of my favorite quotes to sum things up.

    "New Orleans inspires the kind of love that very few other cities do. New Orleans has a mythology, a personality, a soul, that is large, and that has touched people around the world. It has its own music, its own cuisine, its own way oftalking, its own architecture, its own smell, its own look and feel."
    - Tom Piazza "Why New Orleans Matters"

Well, there you go. A little glimpse into what's been rolling around in my mind recently. I'm going to try to create my own set of goals soon, hopefully incorporating different aspects of what I've listed above. Maybe. Possibly. I hear goals are essential, so I might as well TRY.

What prompted all of this? I did a little math yesterday:

  • Credits needed to graduate: 180
  • Current number of credits: 85
  • After Fall Quarter: 101
  • After Winter Quarter: 117
  • After Spring Quarter 133
  • Credits left: 47 = 3 quarters (at 16 per quarter)

So, even though I'm Class of 2012, I'll be finished with college in two years. TWO YEARS!
That's SOON. And it could be even sooner than that if I take any summer classes.

How exciting! And a little scary. Mostly exciting. I can't wait, there's so much out there I want to accomplish. Now I just need to get some plans together and start the ball rolling.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello and thank you for the blog comment. :) You and several others have reassured me that a communal bathroom won't turn out to be a nightmare. So I am going to stick with what I got.

That's so funny about you playing teacher with your nail polish. I did the same thing with my brother's matchbox cars (haha) until my two younger sisters came along. Then I bribed my three younger siblings into being my students. :)

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