Living and Living Well

Today marks week number 2 of my second to last spring semester at Utah State. It's a little bittersweet, knowing that college is drawing nearer and nearer to an end...but then I remember that when I'm done I'll have a real job with a real paycheck and I won't have to worry about walking all over campus in the bitter cold.

I started Level 1 (of 3) of the teaching program and have really enjoyed it so far. It's going to be a very busy semester but a great one nonetheless. (Except for my ag fabrications class...I don't do math) One thing that I'm really excited for are the 30 hours of clinicals that I'll be doing this semester. One of the requirements is to observe a teacher and ag program for 30 hours and take notes, participate when needed etc. One thing that's difficult in the ag ed program is that they are fewer and farther between than say, an English or Math education class-so this requires most of us to travel anywhere from an hour to 6 hours away. We can't go to a school that already has a student teacher for this semester and all of the nearby schools do and you aren't allowed to go to the high school you graduated from. I'm actually excited to have to go somewhere completely different and see a new program and a new teacher.

We haven't been assigned yet but we were able to choose a top 3 list from the options we had and mine were 1) Grace, Idaho-1 hour 15 minutes away 2) Malad, Idaho-1 hour away and 3)Blackfoot, Idaho-2 hours away. I had a couple of reasons for choosing all Idaho schools. The first being that those 3 schools are all closer than any of the Utah schools available for me, as I am from the most northern part of Utah. The second reason being that I have only been retired as a state officer for less than a year and want to have a fresh pair of eyes for whatever program I get to go to. I want to go where the kids and teacher don't know who I am which is hard to do after being a state officer. I also want to go somewhere that I don't know the kids or teacher either so I don't have any preconceived notions about them or their program.

I'm so excited to finally be at least ankle deep in the program and so happy to finally be in the classroom-even if only observing. If there's one thing I miss about being a state officer it's being in the classroom. It's what made me want to teach and I can't wait to do it for real.

But the most important part of this post is this: I can't begin to describe how good it feels to be excited about my future occupation and that I know I'm where I need to be. Life's been a bit eventful, to say the least, since the middle of December but I've been tremendously blessed through it all.