Paradigm shift!!!...by Emily

I'm taking a youth leadership class this semester and we're reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In addition, we have a journal type thing to fill out where you answer questions like, "What is the definition of 'consequences'?" and, "What are principles I need to stay true to?" and stuff like that.

Well, as I was looking through it at the beginning of the class, I was drawn back to another time...another time in which I was brutally FORCED (okay, so I exaggerate--I take my cues from Kathy!) to fill out just such papers and turn them in, and if you didn't write the kinds of things the teacher expected you to write, you didn't get such a good grade. In fact, in this other time, I found out how to put my brain in the right mindset where I would write all the kinds of things the teachers would absolutely love, and hardly have to think about it at all! Thankfully, since this other time, I've learned that that sort of thing really doesn't teach you anything, and therefore have avoided it like the plague.

So of course you can see how I didn't want to do such a thing in this class. I tried to get out of it, with not much luck (since my mentor is wonderful and wants me to do my work). So today I was sitting there trying to think of schoolwork that I needed to do that wasn't that journal, but I really felt like I should do the journal. So I got it out and started doing it. And I realized that since last week when I had tried to get out of doing it, I'd had a paradigm shift about the assignment. I realized that if I actually tried to get something out of the assignment, I would, because the people who wrote it didn't write it just for busywork or to get me to write a certain thing. They actually wanted me to be able to have a better experience reading the book. And it was giving me new insights on how I could use the book to help myself.

So that's my SGBD for today--and hopefully I can keep up in this new paradigm as I read on!