Pushing Forward

There are a lot of things I think of as I say/write/type “pushing forward”. It stimulates reflection on the past, and visions of the (immediate) future.

I spent this past Wednesday at the Aquarium, volunteering for the school program I am involved with. Due  to a busy semester and a bit of re-prioritization (I gotta graduate sometime!) it was only my 3rd time doing the program in about 10-12 weeks of programming. All day I was very aware of the stark contrast between my experiences on Wednesday and this time last year. One year ago (1-2 months into this weekly volunteering job) I was terrified to take a small group of students and lead them on my own. Each week I would hope to team-teach or shadow someone because I just didn’t feel comfortable. On Wednesday I was team-teaching, and found it very challenging. It’s interesting how your attitude can completely change once experience or “expertliness” is added to the equation. Now that I feel comfortable teaching the program, it’s more challenging to share the dissemination of knowledge with a partner.

Could it be that I’m already an old curmudgeon at this program? If that’s true, I think my fellow volunteers are guilty of this as well. More likely, I felt uncomfortable because I’ve rarely been around this term or because we didn’t discuss our approach very much before jumping in. My approach was to let the newer volunteers do their thing and hold out on the urge to add or (on one or two occasions) correct. I found that sometimes, when I would chime in with a new idea or comment, I would meet some resistance from my partner. It was very interesting. I remember well being nervous of leading, and now it seems I wanted more talk time. At some point in the last year, I pushed through the comfort zone of fading into the background.

Beyond my volunteering experiences, “pushing forward” also makes me think of my recent teaching opportunity – the one in which I gave a 50-minute lecture to 200 undergraduates. I had discussed the possibility of teaching with one of the Instructors a month before, and we had decided to revisit the idea next semester. Lo and behold, an opportunity arose out of the blue, and I had only a week and a half to prepare (though really, what would I have done with more time?). I decided I simply had to dive in and just get ‘er done. It was scary, but it was time to take the next step. And I received such positive feedback as a reward.

Finally, I think of “pushing forward” through the next thesis hump which is to: start writing and continue?/finish up experimenting and analyzing. I’m currently frustrated with an important data set I feel like I can’t resolve without another huge push, and I want to start writing but get overwhelmed. I feel like in order to write more than I’ve got, I have to read, and I am afraid of reading.

So all in all, I this thesis data/writing push is what’s next/now on my agenda; hopefully I can draw from my previous push-throughs as inspiration. I’ll let you know how it goes….