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Writing into the day
(8/21/20) What keeps me up at night is the fear of the world changing forever. I wonder if we will ever go back to a normal life where people are safe to go out for dinner or to a movie or anything for pleasure and not have to be afraid. I also wonder if the world especially the United States will one day not be so divided and people will get along and everyone will live a better life.
8/25/20: Most Days I feel as If I am not sure what to do with myself. I wake up "early" at about 9-10 am depending on what time my first Zoom meeting is as that day. I usually eat something shortly after I wake up then shower to try to make it feel as if i'm getting ready for something. Spend a few hours on the computer doing school work. Then will spend the nights watching sports with my roommates and decide what to make for dinner that night. watch some TV or do more home work. Get to bed then do it all over again the next day.
9/3/2020: You don't know what it's like to be born with clubfoot. At birth I had some complications with my feet, I was born with clubfoot. In some minor cases it can be corrected using casts and braces. In more severe cases which mine was, surgery is required in order to have a chance at ever walking normally. When I was only about a couple weeks old I under went my first surgery that would put me in casts for almost a year (while having casts changed frequently due to feet growing). Any ways the first year of my life was spent wearing casts all the time. Looking back on it I could probably testify for my parents that not many parents know what it's like to have a child with club foot. I've heard endless stories about how I used to kick my parents with my casts leaving bruises. The nightly routines of getting ready for bath time try to get me to sit still enough to cover my legs with plastic bags. Then trying to get me to sit still while in the bath so that I didn't submerge my casts. Things were going pretty well with the surgeries for the first few years until I was about five and was having some pretty serious issues again with my left foot. I went to see multiple specialists in Minneapolis and found out that another surgery was needed to correct the problems that had came. After another surgery and many more months in casts I was out running around outside and playing again. My parents always tell me this story and these are times I can look back on and actually remember. But when I was five every morning I would get up to have a bowl of cereal and go to the living room to watch cartoons. My parents always knew it was me because they could hear my one plastic brace going click, click, click, with each step I took on our hard kitchen floors. I have played hockey my whole life so i'm sure you could imagine there has been some implications along the way with that. From finding the right skates, shoes for training, playing through injuries and pain. Hockey has thrown endless obstacles at me that have made me a stronger person in general. Being born with clubfoot has also made me a stronger person in that I knew I always had to work a little harder than everyone else. I like to try to translate that into the real world and in all life lessons. One goal I always set for myself in hockey was to always be the hardest worker on the Ice, and that is something everyone can bring to their everyday lives.
9/8/2020: When I step outside my door I see my apartment parking lot with my mom's car that I am currently driving and brought all the way here form Minnesota. I generally make an assumption immediately for what kind of day it is going to be based off of a few quick observations. Is it warm out? Is it humid? Is it Windy? Does it look like it might rain? I enjoy spending as much time as I can outside so these are important aspects for me to determine so that I am able to plan the rest of my day accordingly. Generally when it is warm my daily plans will consist of doing something fun. Such as go golfing or go to the lake (not necessarily here in Normal), but back home in Minnesota everyday it is nice out. Other things I like to do for pleasure is going golfing, hiking, biking, fishing, or just sitting outside enjoying the fresh air. Other days where I plan to utilize a nice day I will help my mom out with things around the house like landscaping, mowing the lawn, or other things needed. On days when I go outside my door and my instant observations tell me it is going to be a gloomy day and won't allow for fun outside. I try to keep myself occupied by being productive and work on school work, read something I find entertaining or watch something valuable online. I have recently sparked a passion for cooking so a lot of the time I will look for new challenging recipes I can attempt to make. when I step outside my door I hope it is going to be a good day for all and hope to see steps of a world coming back together.
9/16/29: My Saturday night looks like almost any other night of the week. Especially now during Covid I spend most of my time in my apartment with my roommates watching various sporting events. The NHL playoffs have been going on for some time now so that has been the main focus of our watching. It is quite entertaining to sit in the living room and listen to my minor gambling addict roommates stress over a game and the money that they have on the line. Each time one loses a bet I make jokes with them like, "you should have consulted your agent before placing that bet". Referring to myself as their agent of course. Other than that my Saturday night might consist of looking up a fancy recipe to try to make something fun and new. I have also recently been attempting to learn the guitar so I like to spend my Saturday nights annoying my roommates with loud raucous coming from my guitar. I usually end my night with a face time call with my girlfriend to see how her day was and to say goodnight.
10/4/20: My parents wanted me to be able to live a great life with endless opportunities, have a great childhood, be able to play the game I love for over 20 years, go to school to get educated and one day get a good job. They did this by working harder than any other people I know. For as long as I can remember my mom has worked at least three jobs at once in order to allow my brothers and I to do the things we wanted as kids. My parents wanted me to learn what it takes to be successful in life and that was modeled through them as making a lot of money. As they were both in education their whole lives so it is quite evident that they were not in it for the money aspect. My parents wanted to teach me all sorts of life lessons of being kind to one another and helping others when they need it. They taught me to work for everything you get and to appreciate what you have because there are so many people who are less fortunate. My parents wanted me to grow up to be someone that would help make the world a better place and if I can do any thing close to what they have done in education I will feel accomplished.
10/4/20: My parents wanted me to be able to live a great life with endless opportunities, have a great childhood, be able to play the game I love for over 20 years, go to school to get educated and one day get a good job. They did this by working harder than any other people I know. For as long as I can remember my mom has worked at least three jobs at once in order to allow my brothers and I to do the things we wanted as kids. My parents wanted me to learn what it takes to be successful in life and that was modeled through them as making a lot of money. As they were both in education their whole lives so it is quite evident that they were not in it for the money aspect. My parents wanted to teach me all sorts of life lessons of being kind to one another and helping others when they need it. They taught me to work for everything you get and to appreciate what you have because there are so many people who are less fortunate. My parents wanted me to grow up to be someone that would help make the world a better place and if I can do any thing close to what they have done in education I will feel accomplished.
10/6/20: Family looks like a lot of different things. To me family can be anything from the people you are related to by blood. Or they can be someone that you have never met but share they same interest in. For instance when you go to look at a new car at a dealer ship, and the salesmen says are you trying to join the Mazda family? While I understand he is not literally talking about a family but rather a group of people that all share an interest and are proved of what they are interested in/ own in this case. Family to me has been team mates that I spent almost every day with for several months at a time going through several ups and downs and always just being there for another. There was no better feeling to know you always had 20 plus guys who would go through a brick wall for you. Family to me is the ones that love and care about you. My dad was adopted and never met his real parents. His adopted parents though have always been my Grandparents with no question to the fact that we are not blood related. We as students at Illinois State are all part of some kind of family as we are all here trying to further our education and get a degree so that we can live successful lives. Family does not have a concrete definition to me and I think that it is something that can always be interchangeable
10/14/20: Now is the time in the semester where things can get a little tricky. patience are starting to run out and being over whelmed becomes the normal. You start to look at all the big projects coming up and ones that are currently ongoing and you try to schedule how you are going to make it work. Now is the time you will start to feel doubt and question if you are able to get it all done, but you just keep plugging away at it and find that everything takes care of it's self as long as you put in the work. Now is the time to learn more about yourself. How interested am I in what I am pursuing? What are my strengths and weaknesses as a future educator? What can I bring to the classroom to benefit students? These are all things I have been learning about myself and want to continue to develop. Now is the time for enjoying the fall weather and spending time with family doing fun things like going to an apple orchard or taking a trip to a state park. Now is the time to worry about your mental health and make sure you give yourself the time you need to recover and release some pressure you deal with. Now is the time to grow!
10/19/20: I was raised to believe that you have to work for everything you want in life and that nothing would just be handed to you. From a little kid I have had to work harder in some areas of my physical being than others because I was born with clubfoot. The day I was born doctors told my parents that I may never walk normally and could possibly be in a wheel chair or need to use a walker. That was when the work started going through multiple surgeries for the first five years of my life. Going to the cities in Minnesota almost monthly to get casts changed and then once a year for the next 10 years until I was about 15 years old when they finally told me I could stop coming. I spent my whole life going to PT and working on flexibility and strengthening the ligaments in my feet and ankles. I loved hockey and wanted to play it so bad that I wouldn't let anything stop me so I just kept working and working and never gave up and now can say I have played hockey for over 20 years and made it to a college level. My learning to never quite and work for what you want carried over to other things in life and I found myself working harder in school. In high school I became so uninterested in school for some time that I questioned if college was for me or not. Instead of giving up aspirations to be something I went to a community college for a year after high school to get my grades up enough to get accepted here at ISU. Now I am here with two more semesters left and a semester of student teaching until I am all finished.
10/29/2020: Greatest challenge is my own insecurities. I often times feel that I do not know how to do something correctly and because of that I tend to push the task off for longer and longer until it comes time I need that task to be done then I have to cram and work for several hours being stressed out to get the task done. Even as I am working on the task right before it is due I still feel that as I am completing it I'm still doing something wrong. It usually is not until I am completely finished that I take a step back look at my work and then realize I had the ability to do it all along.
11/5/2020: My American story started when I was born. I was born in a small town in Northern Minnesota and that was were I lived for my whole life until after high school I moved to Madison WI to go play junior hockey for a few years before attending ISU. I also am a duel citizen being that my father was born and raised in Canada. He never met his real parents and was adopted by my grandparents who I have never even thought of to not be blood related.
11/9/2020: I never expected that I would be able to raise my GPA from a 2.2 from after my Sophomore year to now a 3.1 with a year of classes left to take before student teaching and graduation. I had previously had my eyes set on teaching Elementary Education. After speaking with advisors the had advised me that my best decision would be to switch my major to either Middle Level Ed. because it only had a minimum of a 2.5 GPA. Or the other option was to ditch education entirely and choose a new major. After deciding I wanted to continue perusing education. I changed my major to middle level. That does mean that several of the classes I took for El. Ed. were no longer useful, but I feel that I have made the right decision after being in setting in both El. Ed. and the Middle Level, and I feel that the middle level is a much better fit for me and I am excited to continue my learning at the middle age level.
11/16/2020: What gets me out of bed in the morning is the anxiety I receive when I think about all the school work I need to get done by a certain time and knowing that I had other stuff going on like work. I knew I needed to get my butt out of bed and get working. It is easy to fall into ruts especially now during Covid sometimes I do not even realize what day of the week it is. Everything just blurs together because it is all so similar. I can't wait to be able to spend some time at home this winter break and get outside and go ice fishing and finally feel free from home for a while.
11/30/2020: I took a risk when I decided to come to school in Illinois. I am from MN so it is about a 9 hour drive each time I come to ISU or make the trip home. I had only previously known a few people that were attending ISU at the time I applied. I am happy to say that it was a risk I'm glad that I made. ISU has introduced me to a lot of great people that will be friends forever as well as I met my current girlfriend of two years that I would never have met if I did not take that risk.
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